Filed under: Art World, Noteworthy, Vote! | Tags: Ann Toebbe, Annual Prize, Bill Arning, BLICK Art Materials, Brion Nuda Rosch, Daniela Rivera, Erik Parker, Erin Payne, James Rondeau, Jeremy Couillard, Joe Bussell, Josh Reames, Maja Ruznic, Marcus Jansen, Marcus Kenney, NEXT ART, Noteworthy, Peter Boswell, William Betts
As we have previously mentioned, it’s time for our Annual Prize. Every issue of New American Paintings features two “Noteworthy” artists, one selection made by our editorial staff, and the other by the issue’s juror. Those twelve artists are automatically in the running to receive top prize, which includes cash, a gift certificate sponsored by BLICK Art Materials, and a chance to have their work displayed at the Next Art Chicago fair. If you haven’t already voted for our Reader’s Choice component, you have until January 7th! The winner will be announced January 13th.
For the second component, the winner will be determined by a panel of distinguished curators. The panel for the Annual Prize consists of three previous NAP jurors who have not made selections in the last year, including Bill Arning, Director, The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH), James Rondeau, Curator and Chair of Contemporary Art, Art Institute of Chicago, and Peter Boswell, Senior Curator, Miami Art Museum. The winner of the Curator’s Choice will be announced on January 20th.
Noteworthy artists of 2011 nominated for the award included: William Betts, Joe Bussell, Jeremy Couillard, Marcus Jansen, Marcus Kenney, Erik Parker, Erin Payne, Josh Reames, Daniela Rivera, Brion Nuda Rosch, Maja Ruznic, Ann Toebbe.
Works by all artists follow below the jump. To see more about each artist, and to vote, click here by January 7th!
Filed under: Noteworthy | Tags: Disney, Duccio, Giotto, Jason Dunda, Josef Albers, Noteworthy
The Most Beautiful Electric Chair in the World (Comfy Chair Proposal), 2010 | Gouache on paper, 8 x 9 inches. Courtesy the artist.
Chicago artist Jason Dunda might work with gouache on paper, but his real love is wood. Featured as a Noteworthy artist in edition #83 of New American Paintings, Dunda’s work is as humorous as it is highly reductive. His love of wooden forms in his work led him to build his own object out of the material, and his attention to the hard-formed lines in his work is offset by subtle applications of paint and giant fields of negative space. I caught up Dunda this week to talk wood, his recent work, and what he considers painterly. —Evan J. Garza
EJG: You were featured as a Noteworthy artist in edition #83 of New American Paintings in 2009. Tell me about the work you were making then, and what you’re working on now.
It was such a great surprise to see that I’d been featured [as a Noteworthy artist] in the front of the magazine. At the time I was making this work, I was thinking a lot about the end of the world… but in a kind of stupid way. I had just read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Wall-E had just come out, and there was this show on cable called “Life After People” that digitally produced—pretty badly, mind you—what might happen if every human being on earth suddenly disappeared. I started thinking a lot about how futile it is to control our surroundings when the natural world is so powerful and chaotic. I can’t make make art without it being at least a little funny, so I responded to these thoughts by making these beautiful semi-abstractions of landscapes with pathetic man-made alterations. These led to the paintings of the useless ramshackle towers and trees made out of cut logs also published in the magazine.
Ghosts of Industrial Past, 2008 | Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches
Michelle Mackey was included in edition #60 of New American Paintings and was selected as a Noteworthy artist in edition #80. The Brooklyn-based artist has made some recent changes, not only to her paintings but some geographic changes as well. Now in Texas teaching at universities in Dallas, I caught up with Mackey this week to discuss her work, and to see if now that she’s gone black, will she ever go back. —Evan J. Garza
EJG: Last you were featured in New American Paintings in early 2009 you were working on your Portal series, which featured colorful, almost collage-like oil abstractions on canvas. Your current work is quite different, much more reductive in both composition and palette.
The Portal series was an effort to show a crack in the fabric, perhaps a reveal of another world. Not so much an escapist world, but a glimpse into what’s really going on. A bit more like the possibilities that quantum mechanics reveal. I’m always wanting to take a closer look at possibilities and at my own misunderstandings—that is what Portal was about and it is also what the recent black work is about… The “black” work is more about a slow reveal and less about a crack in the fabric. I had a more meditative approach to these paintings and I’ve been told the viewing process is also meditative, and the associations go into vast territory.
Trefoil, 2010 | Acrylic and enamel on resin-coated panel, 47 x 47 inches
EJG: Why the switch to black and white (and gray)?
In short, I reacted to the panels. I was working at a scene shop where they produce sets for TV shows. They had these black panels, essentially masonite with a black shiny resin coat, that I had seen for years but never really considered for my own work. When I was packing up my supplies for a residency at Vermont Studio Center, a co-worker challenged me to experiment on those surfaces. I said “sure” and threw them in the truck along with my canvases. The juxtaposition of multiple edges, landscapes and points of view in the Portal series was done through color and edge. In these panels, I could work with surface-sheen and precision, so my color voice needed to be quieter to allow for this. And, since it was a new surface, I did approach it quietly and reflectively. The black, white, and gray seemed clarifying to me. I felt like I was getting further into what I was searching for in the Portal series.
