“Deep Dish II” © 2004
graphite, ink, colored pencil
“Satellite Shooter” © 2005
graphite, ink, colored pencil
“Untitled” © 2008
graphite, ink, colored pencil on paper.
Christopher Skura
Walking The River Making Art
“Walking The River Making Art”
[Postponed due to infrastructure damage at Jack Island Preserve.]
Despite its ubiquity in the everyday walking is an activity obscured by its own practical functionality. It is employed literally and understood metaphorically as a slow, inefficient, and increasingly anachronistic means to a predetermined end. Rarely is walking considered as a distinct mode of acting, knowing, and making. As its necessity diminishes and its applications rarefy, the potential of walking as critical, creative, and subversive tool appears only to grow. Conceived of as a conversation between the body and the world, walking becomes a reciprocal and simultaneous act of both interpretation and manipulation; an embodied and active way of shaping and being shaped that operates on a scale and at a pace embedded in something seemingly more authentic and real.
Using the walk as a guiding metaphor “Walking The River Making Art” is a multifaceted effort that seeks to nurture both a theoretical and applied approach to knowing and interpreting place as we experience and construct it through walking.
A Guided tour of the Savannas, the Indian River Lagoon, and other “land art” significant landmarks, will be organized between July and August, 2011. (Travel date will be finalized by 15 July, 2011.) Arrangements will be for a maximum of four (4) persons per tour. Tours are one day, arriving on site by 9:00 a.m., and returning by sundown. Contact me via the comment form below, or the contact page for costs and additional questions.
**NOTE: Jack Island Preserve is closed pending construction of a replacement bridge to the island. Information current as of 5/31/2011. For latest news, see the Fort Pierce Inlet State Park website.
Savannas Preserve State Park
St. Lucie County, Florida
(in the red rectangular area on the map below)
Indian River Lagoon
N. Hutchinson Island
St. Lucie County, Florida
(photo credits: Onajide Shabaka)
Italian Vogue: “Toyin Odutola: Drawing as a tool for change.”
For all those that told me they loved her drawing, but wanted to see more. You missed the opportunity to obtain her work in Miami. Now, you’ll have to travel to NYC.
ITALIAN VOGUE | BLACK: “Toyin Odutola: Drawing as a tool for change.”
BY: Yomi Abiola
“‘It must be every artists dream, that whilst obsessing over a piece of work in the studio some magic is taking place in the outside world that lands you a gallerist and a sold out show in New York.
For Toyin Odutola, her dream came true, one year in to graduate school at California College of the arts the Nigerian born artist can barely contain her excitement. Between breathless giggles she describes how a coping mechanism (drawing) became a tool for change and possibly a way to put her name on the map.
‘I moved around a lot when I was a child, two of the houses I grew up in have totally disappeared. One was burnt in a riot, and the other was pulled down.’ This sense of instability inspired the Nigerian artist to start drawing aged nine. ’I needed to create something I could take with me wherever I went.’ What started out as little doodles have become bold expressions of work that have had an overwhelming reaction.
Odutola’s gallerist Jack Shainman describes the artists work as detailed and almost obsessive, but beyond the appearance of the work the artist is making firm declarations. Odutola says that her work is an exploration of self. ’I kept wanting to push my image as validity, I wanted to see my portrait on a wall and know it was okay.’ Fans claim to see themselves in Odutola’s work, they see a deep resemblance, and they ask the same questions [as] the artist herself: Do you see me? and Can I just exist now? The answers lie in Odutola’s work as [she] continues the quest, hunched over her canvas, pen in hand creating bodies of work that speak to the world.
Toyin’s work is exhibited at the Jack Shainman Gallery until June 25th.’”
(Via obia, the 3rd.)