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“Bravo! Martin and Mike have resurrected the traditional woodcut in Chelsea. The exhibition evoked in me sensations of pure visual pleasure. However, it has left me on a quest to unearth why this printmaking tradition is becoming extinct. ” -Amy Misurelli Sorensen

http://artificeau.blogspot.com/2007/03/extinction-of-printmaking-cannonball.html

http://www.kingsborough.edu/announcement/body_map/index.html

David Krut Print Workshop launches new portfolio of prints: response by Nathaniel Stern

Multimedia artist, Nathaniel Stern moves without hesitation into the unfamiliar ground of traditional printmaking in his new portfolio series – response. Stern has exhibited internationally, with critical acclaim for his installations in New York and Australia, and has won the fondness of the South African public for his collaborative physical theatre and extensive multimedia performance work.

Stern’s ongoing body of work entitled Compressionism can be described as a ‘digital performance and analogue archive’. ‘I literally compress bodies, spaces and objects by transversing their surfaces with an image scanner, tracing varying 3-dimensional paths. I might scan in straight lines across tables, tie the scanner around my neck and swing over flowers, do pogo-like gestures over bricks, or just follow the wind over lilies.’ Stern

With the resultant digital images, Stern approached printmaker Jillian Ross at the David Krut Print Workshop, with the idea of interpreting the images through new media. Their experimental collaboration grew into a year-long project resulting in a magnetic body of work, a special selection of which is proudly featured in this portfolio box set.

response comprises six prints and a digitally printed colophon page housed in an archival box. The original prints explore technical processes, etching, engraving, monotype, chine collé, polyester plate lithography, aquatint and carborundum.

For more information on this series visit the following links:

http://callandresponse.co.za/  http://compressionism.net/  http://nathanielstern.com/  

Justice Albie Sachs was intricately involved in the design of the Constitutional Court and the selection of its art collection. On January 24, 2007, his lecture on building the Constitutional Court of South Africa at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art received a standing ovation.

November 2006 saw the launch of David Krut Publishing’s latest book Light on a Hill - Building the Constitutional Court of South Africa. The launch event, held at the Constitutional Court with all the Judges of the Court present, was a culmination of three year’s work involving the Constitutional Court Art Committee, the architects and David Krut Publishing. The book seeks to explain the democratic processes and the new democracy that is represented by the Court. The book features the exceptionally stong photographs of the site by Angela Buckland, whilst text and editing are supplied by Bronwyn Law-Viljoen, Managing Editor of David Krut Publishing. The DKP location at the Constitutional Court is also the new home for the Taxi Art Education Programme (TAEP) which has grown in its outreach over the last two years. The book store is managed by two members of the TAEP team, Gadi Magagane and Roxy Carim. DK Arts bookstore at the Constitutional Court is open Mondays to Fridays 09:00 am – 17:00 pm and Saturdays 09:00 am – 13:00. Phone Gadi Magagane at 072 339 0663 and Regii Mabegenza 082 697 1996.

“…one of the most original and strangely beautiful opera productions of our time—an artwork in itself that never overshadowed the musical element of this endlessly enigmatic piece.” —OPERA MAGAZINE
BY WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
CONDUCTED BY PIERS MAXIM
DIRECTED BY WILLIAM KENTRIDGE

Created at the peak of the Enlightenment, The Magic Flute, Mozart’s glorious expression of the epic struggle between good and evil, undergoes a bold interpretation by the renowned South African visual artist and theater director William Kentridge.
A lifelong resident of Johannesburg, Kentridge witnessed apartheid’s rise and fall. His work explores peril as well as hope through inventive charcoal and pastel drawings and low-tech, animated movies created by a fascinating tactile process that involves drawing, filming, erasing, and re-drawing. He brings his profoundly humanistic sensibility to his Magic Flute, a mesmerizing production originally staged at Belgium’s acclaimed Royal Opera House, La Monnaie. Singers, dressed in 19th-century attire, enact a fairy tale set in an ancient Egypt populated by a high priest, a spiteful queen, a carefree bird catcher, and a heroic prince hoping to win the heart of a vulnerable princess.
Inspired by the brilliant libretto and Mozart’s resplendent music (conducted here by Piers Maxim), Kentridge fills his panoramic projections with all manner of fanciful creatures, classical temples, and swirling celestial bodies, conjuring a magical and dangerous place where wisdom and love—and more than a little pluck—triumph over malice.

For schedule details http://www.bam.org/events/07MAGI/07MAGI.aspx

El Anatsui, Artist (Ghana)

“When the British Museum’s director, Neil MacGregor, was asked to choose an object from the museum’s collection to sit behind his desk, he chose one of El Anatsui’s bottle-top cloths. When the curators of the Africa collection sought a work to create a contemporary interface to the collection, they chose one of Anatsui’s cloths. This is profoundly considered work, self-assured enough to give an aestehtic context to some of the most potently ethnographised objects on earth, yet it stands as a powerful symbol of modernity.”

This traveling exhibition is an art project developed from the Memory Box Project, a community outreach program initiated by the University of Cape Town and Medecins Sans Frontieres, in response to the growing number of South Africans living with HIV and AIDS. The Bambanani Women from Cape Town were invited to tell their stories through the creation of Body Map art works. The process encouraged participants to sketch, paint and verbalize their memories on a large sheet of paper showing the outline of each body and a supporting figure in the background. The 14 original Body Map works are in the South African National Gallery in Cape Town. These life sized art works have been digitally reproduced to scale on canvas and will be presented at Widener Gallery along with a series of works on paper.

Works generated in the extension project, Community Response, were on display at the Broad Street Gallery also in Hartford.