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I'm BAAAAAACK - and looking at art.

September 15, 2009

Richard Dana's "Lit From Within"

Jenny Freestone's mask

Wow – the velocity of re-entry this year has been hypersonic. I wasn’t back in the swamp for more than a day before the whirlwind of the fall art scene sucked me into its vortex. It definitely feels like a fall “back to school” moment– a bazillion openings in the two weeks after Labor Day (my own at Nevin Kelly on Thursday among them, of course.)

Jeanne Garant's mask

Novie Trump's

First things first: “Courage Unmasked” on September 9, an exhibition and fundraiser for the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship, featuring art made from the spooky metal mesh masks made from each individual head and neck cancer patient’s face in order to administer radiation treatments. Over 100 artists made pieces and many of them obviously spent a lot of time and thought on the projects, which may have had something to do with the fact that they were working with the auras of real people and the freight of responsibility that comes with that.

Sondra Arkin's

Susan Feller and Bridget Lambert smiling it up

Some that caught my eye were Novie Trump’s in-your-face depiction of courage and pain, Richard Dana’s visually vibrating “Lit from Within”, Jeanne Garrant’s ghostly encaustic, Jenny Freestone's delicate but solid feathery head and Sondra Arkin’s brave and defiant piece based on an African fetish.
The event was held at AU’s fab Katzen Center. Bravo to the Katzen for making this high-prestige venue available but I gotta say that the space allotted was inadequate to contain the crowd, the food and the art and combined with the lack of directions on how to bid, many in the crowd seemed mystified on how to bid on the work and most of the fine work went un-bought. Note to organizers: job one is selling the work and next time you need to think more about that.

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