Thursday, November 14, 7 - 11pm: The Party at Angel Orensanz Foundation

The year's most anticipated networking schmooze-fest celebrating the American Photography 40 and American Illustration 43 winners is just 20 days away—get your tickets here

Once again AI-AP brings the art, photo and design communities together in a one-of-a-kind, trifecta gathering of photographers / illustrators / and creatives to launch the new AP40 and AI43 hardcover award books. American Illustration and American Photography (AI-AP) offer an expansive view with hundreds of images selected by an outstanding jury from thousands of entries submitted to our two annual competitions. 

American Illustration 43 designed by Paul Buckley with Brianna Harden [above]. The Jury: Michael Houtz, GQ; Chuck Kerr, Entertainment Weekly; Jia Knetzer, Garden and Gun; Lisa Larsen-Walker, ProPublica; Taylor Le, Los Angeles Times; Kelly Lynch, Workman Publishing; Chris Mihal, Southern Poverty Law Center; Anjali Nair, WIRED; Marci Senders, Disney/Hyperion; Minh Uong, The New York Times; Alexandra Zsigmond, The New Yorker]

American Photography 40 designed by Thomas Alberty; cover photo by Lindsay Kreighbaum [above]. The Jury: Thomas Alberty, New York Magazine; Michael Baca, BASIC Agency @ Google; Lydia Chebbine, The 19th News; Donna Cohen, Bloomberg; Amy Feitelberg, Freelance Director of Photography; Natalie Gialluca, Vanity Fair; Julie Hau, National Geographic; Stephanie Heimann, The New Republic; Gabriel Sanchez, TheNew York Times; Christine Walsh, South James; Alison Wild, Entertainment Weekly

Angel Orensanz Foundation, 172 Norfolk Street New York, NY Info

Here at DART, we celebrate five AI award winners with projects and  exhibitions launching soon and continuing: 

Igor Karash | Slaughterhuse Five | Easton Press Limited Edition

Just in from Igor Karash on Instagram: This wonderful introduction of my latest project - illustrated edition the #slaughterhousefiveby #kurtvonnegut published by the @easton_press came [November 4^th] from the @thedailyheller at @print_mag. Thank you Steven for a great interview!

Following is an extract of the interview:

Steven Heller: I’ve read Slaughterhouse–Five at least five times over the past 20 years (and saw the film three times). I am very taken by your visual interpretation. How did this project begin?
Igor Karash: In the fall of 2021 (about five months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine) I was approached by the publishing company Easton Press in Connecticut. Honestly, I believe it was only the second or third time in my illustration career that a publisher contacted me directly with a commission. Easton Press is best known for deluxe editions of illustrated classics. When I heard they were interested in me illustrating Slaughterhouse–Five, a book I always admired, it only took me a few seconds to reply with a confirmation that I was fully on board….

SH: When were you introduced to Vonnegut’s writing, and what was your initial impression?
IK:I was first introduced to Kurt Vonnegut’s prose during my “previous life” in the Soviet Union. There were few translations of his novels published in the  USSR—most notably Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five. Not a lot of American authors were lucky to be published in my country (I say this with sarcasm in my voice). I think the Soviets liked Kurt Vonnegut’s rebellious criticism of the West, satirical commentary of the system, and anti-war sentiment. For us, the then-young generation (in contrast to the official government’s stance), his books were a small window to the West and we mainly enjoyed Vonnegut for his dark humor, surreal settings, fantastic worlds, elements of eroticism, and the oftentimes unusual structures and timelines in his books.

Read the entire interview here

Saturday, Novemer 9, 11am-5pm: Sarajo Friden | the earth laughs in flowers

In conjunction with The Dome Open Studios, where 13 artists will open their doors for a day of exploration, Sarajo presents a new series of large-scale mixed media works in which plant forms mingle with their mythic surroundings. She includes a link to the history of the building, which the legendary ceramics artist Peter Voulkos purchased in 1976 to make space for his signature, large-scale ceramic and bronze sculptures, as well as to nurture an affordable live/work space for Bay Area artists. The creative community encapsulated within the hundred-year-old walls continues to thrive today.

Works on display range from Ceramics, Collage, Painting, Sculpture, Textiles, Custom Furniture, Jewelry, with Music & Garden/Cactus Tours and music by Mishmash from noon to 2 pm.

The Dome Center for Art, Music and Dance, 951V 62nd Street, Oakland, CA Info

Surday, November 9, 5-7 pm: Anita Kunz | Original Sisters at Norman Rockwell Museum

Original Sisters is a series of portrai that reveals and honors the contributions of history-making women. To create the series, award-winning illustrator Anita Kunz carefully researched, wrote about, and portrayed each subject, sometimes compiling scant available information to establish a more complete picture. Her portraits present famed and lesser-known women in the fields of art, science, technology and invention, education, history, and politics, offering a needed expansion and revision of the historical record. In the words of author Roxane Gay, Original Sisters offers “possibility and promise …. You will be introduced to many of these women for the first time, because history is rarely kind to women until it is forced to be.”

Kunz’s project began in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when the artist spent hours in her Toronto studio seeking inspiration by searching the internet for information about notable women in history. Though the subject had always interested her, Kunz realized that her knowledge base was limited, and she became determined to fill in the gaps. She began painting portraits of accomplished women across time, cultures, and geography, accompanied by texts she assembled to tell their stories. These portraits form the ever-growing nucleus of Original Sisters: Portraits of Tenacity and Courage, an exhibition and book that together bring to light hundreds of women trailblazers who made and changed history.

Norman Rockwell Museum, 9 Glendale Road Route 183, Stockbridge, MA Info  

Continuing through December 20: Esther Pearl Watson | Generating Auras at Andrew Edlin

The paintings featured in this exhibition, Esther Pearl Watson’s third with the Andrew Edlin Gallery, were inspired by the artist’s stay in Italy this past summer, caring for her father in his hometown of Ferno. “…my father who is seventy-eight, was in a motorbike accident in Italy. He spent three months in the hospital, and I found myself traveling back and forth [from her home I California] as a long-distance caregiver,” Watson said. “There is a painting in the show, Generates Auras, that features a large stoic donkey. 

“Donkeys are often used as guardians of herds, bonding with them and protecting them from predators, she continued. “I have to be a guardian for my dad. Lately, I’ve thought a lot about comets. The auras they create are spectacular. In his own way, my father is like a comet, generating his own aura, shaped by the changes in his body and mind. Just as a comet emits invisible light, he radiates a presence and energy that is deeply felt but not always seen.”

Andrew Edlin Gallery, 212 Bowery, New York, NY Info 

Continuing: Satoko Okuno | Eyes on You at Hey There

Hey There Projects, founded by Mark Todd and Aaron Burns, now with Esther Pearl Watson, present Satoko Okuno’s portrayals of animals and mythological creatures, which draw inspiration from various sources such as her two cats, encounters at the zoo, and ancient art forms like Greek pottery and Egyptian sculptures. Her vibrant mixed-media paintings, adorned with impasto textures, and glazed stoneware breathe life into these creatures, establishing them as guardians within her art and inviting viewers into a comforting and safe realm.

This profound exploration of guardianship is rooted in Okuno’s Japanese upbringing, steeped in the cultural richness of Shintoism—the belief that all things, ranging from natural materials, animals, and humans alike, have a spirit. Having grown up with traditional Japanese sculptures of guardian animals, often placed in front of shrines to bring safety and protect inhabitants, she recasts those animals as central characters in her modern-day sanctuaries, providing solace and gentleness in a world often laden with life's traumas.

Hey There Projects, 61675 Twentynine Palms Highway, Joshua Tree, CA Info

Continuing through December 6: Drawing Lessons: Poems by Paul Jaskunas, Art by Warren Linn at MICA

In the shadow of ongoing ecological and political crises, artist Warren Linn and writer Paul Jaskunas have collaborated on a timely, provocative series of images and poems. The project began with a sketchbook created by Linn in 2022-2023. Sketchbook #1 2023 was acquisitioned by the Art Institute of Chicago Print & Drawing Collection November 2023. Inside its pages, Linn fashioned an assortment of contorted seaborn travelers that animate drawings, collages, and paintings infused with the irreverent, manic energy of bebop and the uncanniness of dystopia. At once comic and disquieting, undeniably contemporary yet steeped in tradition, Linn’s images tap into the apocalyptic anxieties of the age.

Over the past year, moved by the artworks’ vitality, Jaskunas has written dozens of ekphrastic poems in dialogue with this sketchbook and other pieces in Linn’s oeuvre. Rather than describing the art, the poems riff off gestures and visual ideas enacted by Linn, crafting poems touched with dark comedy, grief for a fallen world, and the playful tenacity of the blues.

Warren Linn, MICA Professor Emeritus, is a visual artist whose work has garnered numerous awards including AI43, as well as gallery and museum credits. He has exhibited nationally and internationally since the mid 1960s, and for fifty years, his editorial illustrations appeared in major print-media outlets throughout North America.

MICA, Pinkard Gallery, Bunting Center, 1401 W. Mt Royal Ave., Baltimore MD Info