The black swan of trespass, by Katherine Hattam; oil on linen, 217cm x 155cm (framed), $17,500; Artwork Photograph by Clare Rae.CREDIT:
Her thing. Colourful paintings incorporating collage and considerable word-play.
Our take.Katherine Hattam has spent her life in and around the Melbourne art scene. Her father, Hal Hattam, was the art world’s obstetrician of choice and a talented amateur painter. Katherine has been exhibiting regularly since the late 1980s, and lately her son, William MacKinnon, has made a name for himself as an artist.
In The Landscape of Language, Hattam’s third solo exhibition at Arthouse, she continues to use old paperbacks as collage in her larger paintings. The book titles invite us to look for meanings that may or may not exist, beyond whatever memories they conjure up in the artist’s mind. Hattam favours old Penguins that would have disintegrated by now anyway.
In terms of colour, and the riotous Australiana that runs through these canvases, this is one of her boldest outings. Hattam’s swans may be black but her kangaroos can be bright blue or pink.
Her subjects range from domestic still lifes to allegorical landscapes. On the way, she pauses to consider the attempts by the First Fleet’s William Dawes to learn the Eora language; environmental issues (symbolised by Hokusai’s menacing wave); and a favourite picture by American master Philip Guston.
In a painting called Pantheon (1973), Guston wrote a list of the artists he most revered. Hattam has undertaken a feminist revision, replacing Guston’s all-male list with a female cast. As statements go, it’s more playful than strident.
Can I afford it? For a well-established artist, Hattam’s prices are very affordable. The most expensive picture in this exhibition is the oil painting, The black swan of trespass (pictured above, 217cm x 155cm), at $17,500. This would equal her existing record price. There are 12 works selling for the low price of $2200. This includes small oil paintings such as Pink kangaroo, Swans dream phthalo, and The friendship garden (each 43cm x 31cm).
Where can I have a squiz? Arthouse Gallery, 66 McLachlan Avenue, Rushcutters Bay, Sydney,
until March 28; arthousegallery.com.au.
AND stateside at Morton Fine Art, 52 O St NW #302, Washington, DC USA.
Salon style wall of contemporary art at Morton Fine Art, Washington, DC
As an art collector, you invest time, energy and money in a collection which fits both your aesthetic and interests. Oftentimes you develop strong relationships with galleries, auction houses and sometimes the artists themselves. How do you translate your passion for your collection into a shared family value?
A few questions to ask yourself:
What reflected in your art collection is most relevant to your family members?
Does your collection mirror family values or non literal family narratives or concepts?
What art on your walls most influences you?
What art on your walls most inspires your respective family members?
Do you have family discussions about art?
Do you visit art institutions and galleries with your family?
Have you shared the influences which have lead to you collect as you do?
Stein collection (detail), Paris
Here is a wonderful example of family legacy created by a shared passion for art collecting:
Did you know that the legendary American writer and art collector Gertrude Stein actively and profusely collected art with her brothers Leo and Michael and her sister-in-law Sarah? In fact, the family was integral in the rise of modern art in western Europe and America including early acquisitions of Cezanne, Gauguin, Renoir, Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso – much of the art which now fill the world’s museums. In the early 1900’s Henry McBride (the critic for the New York Sun) commented that Stein “collected geniuses rather than masterpieces. She recognized them a long way off”.
The long-time wood engraver and painter has spent the last 40 years at the Torpedo Factory with collections of her work on display around the world, yet the process of making her work hasn’t gotten easier. The challenge – the fear, “the edge,” in Covey’s words – is intrinsic to her work.
“You kind of have to skate this edge between being very uncomfortable and yet still being able to have the skills and be conscious yet almost unconscious at the same time,” Covey said. “As soon as you relax, the thing starts to not work. It can work, but it won’t have life to it.”
Given Covey’s preoccupation with death, fragility and the darker side of the natural world, the sentiment might seem at odds with her work, but her wood engravings and paintings come to life precisely because of that tension.
“My work has that duality to some extent,” Covey said. “It used to be what people always considered very dark with themes connecting to medicine and death and fragility. But out of that came a series of work that surprisingly had great, larger appeal.”
Covey was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1954, a time of intense social and political upheaval. She left the country at age 10 with her family because her father had been invited to pursue a Ph.D. in the U.S.
“Sins of the Fathers” (Courtesy image)
Covey’s formative memories of South Africa are still tinged with nostalgia – the memories of a child unaware of the time in which she was growing up, happy in the self-contained world of her family.
It’s also a nostalgia for the early days of her artistic curiosity. At five years old, Covey was expressing an interest in creative expression both in class and at home, where she worked on crafts with her grandmother.
“She had big boxes of scraps and we made things together all the time, so leaving South Africa was hard for me because she and I spent all our time together,” Covey said. “She was the biggest influence on my life ever.”
Covey and her family ended up moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where her father finished his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. The family then moved to Ashfield, Massachusetts, where Covey’s father had secured a position at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
In Ashfield, Covey’s passion for the arts continued to blossom. An art teacher at Williston Northampton School introduced her to print engraving at the age of 14; Covey returned years later, after college, to learn wood engraving from the same teacher.
Covey was set on the path. She knew she wanted to make art, but, like many artists, she found barriers at every turn. Her parents warned her about the scary, impractical path of an artist. Collectors and artists openly questioned her ability at portfolio showings.
The cynics only strengthened Covey’s determination. Covey’s early career was defined by finding a way around the blockades that were thrown up around her, she said.
Covey’s parents refused to pay for her college education, so she left Cornell University after two years. At 18 years old, she married a man who helped support her artistic ambitions, but after divorcing at 21, Covey found herself in need of a way to support herself financially.
“Then I’m on my own at 22 and I have to make a living,” Covey said. “My parents were like, ‘Now you’re on your own.’ So, coming [to Alexandria] I started doing commissions and slowly it became my career and way of making a living.”
Covey immediately fell in love with Alexandria. The history and character of the city were captivating, and the detail of the streets was like catnip for a wood engraver, Covey said.
“Red Handed” (Courtesy image)
Wood engraving, at its most fundamental, involves carving an image into a block of wood, applying ink to the face of the block and pressing the ink onto a surface to leave an impression.
It’s a process that is easy to learn but difficult to master, partially because of the intense concentration it requires, Covey said.
“You can’t make a mistake and if you do, you have to incorporate it, which really creates that panic, nervous energy that I think propels work,” Covey said.
Prints created through wood engraving also need to be designed in reverse, since the print will be ultimately be a reverse image of the original design. The reverse engineering makes executing facial expressions difficult for many engravers, but Covey said her dyslexia helps.
“I have extreme dyslexia. I have problems with all kinds of simple tasks, but the reversing of things comes more naturally [to me] than it might [to others],” Covey said. “It’s very difficult to do facial expression and … to get a likeness of any sort when you reverse it, but it helps to have dyslexia.”
Covey came to the Torpedo Factory in 1976, two years after it opened as an arts center. Although she can trace thematic patterns in her work all the way back to those early days, her work has evolved creatively and procedurally.
Death and fragility are still at the core of her work, but Covey has started to find new ways to explore themes that have captivated artists forcenturies.
In collaboration with botanists, evolutionary biologists and entomologists, Covey now finds new inspiration in the natural world, the duality of decaying lifeforms and life under the microscope.
“Insects” (Courtesy image)
Her series called “Insects” came out of a residency at Blue Mountain Center in the Adirondacks. Combining printing and painting, Covey depicted the bodies of butterflies and dragonflies as beaten and bruised yet beautiful.
“[One entomologist] said, as a scientist, you see them under the microscope and they’re battered and beaten and their wings and their short life are scratched,” Covey said. “They’re not pristine. And what I had been noticing was that, as they lie dead, they strike these human poses.”
Another series of prints and paintings focused on fungi and lichens and the above ground beauty that masks monumental, monstrous rooted webs just below the surface, Covey said.
“I don’t do it, when I work with a scientist, to be an illustrator or scientific illustrator,” Covey said. “[I’m] not interested in that at all. I’m interested in what they can tell me that sparks my visual imagination.”
Covey’s science-inspired and research-driven work hasn’t been limited to just insects and mushrooms.
“David with Astrocytes (Brain Tumor 8)” was part of an intimate series of portraits that captured the eponymous David, a man Covey had met at her Torpedo Factory studio, in various stages of treatment for a brain tumor.
“He looked really haunted. … He’d had all this surgery and you could sort of see what happened behind his eyes, that something monumental had happened,” Covey said. “He hired me [and] I ended up working for him for three years to do a piece on his brain tumor experience.”
“David with Astrocytes (Brain Tumor 8)” (Courtesy image)
Collaboration has become an integral part of Covey’s process, whether it’s incorporating a partner’s scientific knowledge or pieces from fellow artists.
“The best thing in the world is to find other people that are crazy about what they’re doing and that fits with what you’re doing,” Covey said.
Her process has changed even as she uses the same tools. Covey said she’s still driven by the same unknowable passion to create that drove her when she was alone at 22.
“It’s the same exact thing and I still don’t know quite what it is,” Covey said. “You get the idea in your head and then you have to push it. And you’re hoping that you’re gonna push it and it’s going to be better than anything you ever did before. … Once I’ve done it, I’m not even concerned anymore. It’s getting it there.”
For Covey, the elusive “there” is a place she can’t stop working toward.
“That’s the goal,” Covey said. “You hopefully never stop.”
(Read the first entry in the City Creatives series: Alexis Gomez)
Nigerian artist OSI AUDU brilliantly discusses his graphite and pastel “Self Portrait” artworks delving into the Tangible Self and Intangible Essence of Self. Fascinating!
After nearly 9 years on Florida Ave, Morton Fine Art will be relocating the gallery to 52 O Street NW, Washington, DC, 20001 in November 2018. The building at 52 O Street NW was built in 1914 in what was then a remote, industrial part of town. It was designed by architect Clement Didden who previously assisted Richard Morris Hunt in the design of landmarks including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Before becoming an arts-dedicated space in 1978, 52 O Street NW housed a meat-packing company, a plumbing company, a Hecht’s furniture factory and Decca Records. NoMA is a vibrant, growing neighborhood nestled next to Capitol Hill, Shaw, Mt. Vernon Triangle and H Street NE corridor in Washington, DC. It also has ample street parking, easy metro access, and close proximity to Union Station.
We look forward to continuing our active solo and group exhibition programming in our new location and also to participating in projects locally and nationally to promote Morton Fine Art’s artists in new markets. Upcoming out-of-gallery, outreach projects include Prizm Art Fair in Miami from Dec 3-9, 2018 where we will showcase the artwork of select MFA artists to a national and international collector audience; an MFA curated group exhibition of gallery artists honoring Black History and Women’s History months at Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton, VA mid-Feb through the end of March 2019; and two month long “pop-up” exhibitions at Gallery B in Bethesda, MD in March and April 2019.
New Location:
Morton Fine Art
52 O Street NW #302
Washington, DC 20001
New Hours:
Wednesday – Saturday: 12pm-5pm
Sunday – Tuesday: By appointment
Map of 2 mile route down Florida Ave NW from our Adams Morgan location to new NoMA location – SO EASY!
For more than a decade, artist Maya Freelon has created striking abstract sculptures and installations from tissue paper and water stains. Her technique — letting water gently drip so the paper’s color bleeds organically — arose from happenstance, when, as an MFA student, she discovered a stack of old tissue paper in her grandmother’s basement.
Freelon’s assemblages reside in collections around the world, from U.S. Embassies in Madagascar, Swaziland, and Rome, to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. This month, she’s installed a monumental, interactive tissue paper sculpture for the first annual By The People International Festival at the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries Building. Named “Reciprocity Respite & Repass,” her artwork is one of a selection of immersive and interactive art installations at the AIB, the headquarters for the festival. By the People will also feature a series of workshops and talks with experts.
As for Freelon, however, there is perhaps no better introduction to her than the late poet Maya Angelou, who described the tissue paper artwork as “visualizing the truth about the vulnerability and power of the human being.”
When did you discover your medium, working with tissue paper and water?
In 2006, I was in graduate school in Boston at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, now part of Tufts Museum School. At the time, I lived with my grandmother and it was a found artist’s dream treasure trove because she did not throw anything away. Queen Mother Frances J. Pierce said, “We grew up a family of sharecroppers that never got their fair share.” She would always speak in rhymes and her sayings come up often as titles in my work, such as Bloom Where You’re Planted. She was very proud of her African heritage and really embraced it before it was cool. She followed the original Black Panthers. And she had stuff everywhere— books, papers, magazines stacked to the ceiling. She just collected and collected. There were journals and Confederate money I found, just things that had not seen the light of day in 50 or 60 years. Eight track tapes. Hot combs (the original kind that you put in the oven stove). Thousands of keys and pens.
So one day, I went to the basement and discovered this tissue paper that was water damaged. It must have been a leaky pipe or something because it was right under the bathroom. There was a watermark from a constant drip, which had to be years ago, on this rainbow pack of colored tissue paper.
What was so powerful about the visual manifestation of this leak for you?
The watermark is a familiar sign to most people in the entire world. It just means: water was once here. You can see that in a lake that has receded. You can see it in the desert. You can see it in a rainforest, creek bed, even the Grand Canyon. It’s a marker of time or evaporation — a familiar sign to all human beings. I felt the commonality and a kind of interconnectedness of our humanity. This beautiful little accident sparked a world of discovery for me.
And three weeks after I found the stained tissue paper, Hurricane Katrina wiped out the Gulf Coast. So, I’m finding a parallel between water moving color literally and water as destruction. Seeing the images in the media and simultaneously watching water push ink out of tissue paper, I was struck by how a constant drip of water can dilute pure color— and I reflected on the fragility of life. I also questioned the hierarchy of art materials. My grandmother used tissue paper in elementary school art classrooms, and there I was, discovering and using tissue paper for my graduate art class.
Did the fragility of tissue paper require copious trial and error?
When I first used the tissue paper I didn’t know what do with it. I tried to mimic the water mark and couldn’t. I was pouring carefully, using a watercolor brush, trying to get it right. But it didn’t work. It just looked like a mess. So then I got a water balloon, and put a pin in it, and let it slowly drop on the tissue paper, simulating a drip that might come from a leaky faucet. That’s when I realized, oh my gosh: it’s not a steady stream. It’s a drip process that pushes the ink to the outer edges. At that moment, I also thought about middle school. I always knew I was going to be an artist, and I remember looking up at the dropped ceiling and often there’s a brown water stain on the tile. In my boredom as a child, I remember thinking, what’s happening up there?
I think about how brown paper in front of buildings that are getting renovated gets wet and leaves a stain. You see it also in dried up puddles. It’s just so beautiful to me. It reminds me of the macro and the microscopic.
But aren’t there unique conservation challenges with such delicate material?
When I started, I was feeling a little self-conscious about tissue paper. It’s fun to experiment in art school, but the point is you want to know how to make a living as an artist. You want your art to sell, and the ephemeral nature is part of my work.
Creating an installation, a temporary sculpture, or even a performance is one thing. But a collector wants to know, how long is this going to last? Now I actually enjoy that part of my art, that feeling that makes folks a little wary and uncomfortable. Well, it is in a gallery so it must be worth something, right? But if tissue paper is on an elementary school floor of an art room, you just sweep it up and put it in the trash can. So my question as an artist is: What fuels our desire to preserve or protect something?
You know, we buy flowers— beautiful bouquets for hundreds of dollars sometimes. They die. They’re dead actually and we enjoy that. It’s something that we invest in. We spend hundreds of dollars on a delicious night out of food. What we appreciate and why we appreciate something is interesting to me.
What work are you presenting at the By The People Festival ?
The great thing about festival is that they specifically sought artists that have interactive components to their art. And what’s great about tissue paper is I can work with anyone from under 1 year old to over 100 years old. I use the most simple materials so anybody can interact and join in. I’ve done collaborative tissue quilt-making a few times, once at the North Carolina Museum of Art. You sit down next to somebody and you start looking at bits of torn tissue paper, which is interesting because of all the colorful stains. You pick your favorite color and you start connecting the papers with just a simple glue stick— Elmer’s. My materials are not a surprise or a secret. You’re sitting; you’re building, piece by piece. And as you get bigger, you bump into your neighbor on the right, your neighbor on the left, your neighbor at the table in front of you. You are joining and talking because the action is pretty simple, like a quilting bee.
Your mind kind of shuts off and it’s almost like a form of mediation. Some people are very quiet and work very meticulously. Some people are sloppier and just talking. But once you get in the groove of things, you have permission for your mind to take off a while, doing this task that is repetitive. But it’s also about that unity, that togetherness, that strength and power of joining together as opposed to being one piece flying off by itself.
How do you feel about being labeled a female or African-American artist (or both), rather than simply “an artist” as say, Picasso or Warhol is?
First of all, I am like Picasso and Warhol. I have vision and a dream and an overwhelming desire to create. I love that question, mainly because my favorite thing to say to picky young artists is: okay, you don’t want to identify as female? You don’t want identify as Black? Well, I’m going to apply to those grants, and I’ll take them. You don’t have to take them. Get in line for the generic ones. You don’t have to identify as anything. I know that there are historical inaccuracies and inadequacies. I know that it’s not fair and that other people are getting opportunities in this closed inner circle.
But these grants for artists that are underprivileged, or underserved, or minorities— whatever you want to call it— this is an attempt to level the playing field; to offer opportunities to see new perspectives; to honor different cultures; to embrace that otherness. It doesn’t matter if you don’t say a thing. You will still have some sort of identity, and for me, I embrace the myriad of my otherness. Recently, I began to identify as a queer artist as well.
One of my mentors is the contemporary painter Beverly McIver, who is a professor of art, art history and visual studies at Duke University. When I was 14, I used to sit in her studio and clean her paint brushes. She was the very first Black, female artist and professor that I met in person. I want to be that motivating source for someone else who has a dream and a passion.
What role should artists take in times of political and cultural division?
Artists are always at the forefront of revolution. They are the ones that push the buttons that make us stop and say, this isn’t right. They spark dialogue. We aren’t held back by, what will my town think? Am I going to get fired? Is this okay? Your job as an artist is to utilize your freedom to speak your mind and inspire. And at the same time, be ready for backlash, or the people that you are going to anger.
For me, my place of peace is always back in the commonality of us all. We can all agree that this is a watermark, right? I dislike you and you dislike me, can we find some common ground? Can we agree that this piece of art is beautiful?
Halcyon’s “By the People Festival” takes place June 21 – 24, 2018, at five official sites and numerous satellite locations throughout Washington, D.C. A list of more than 100 art installations, performances and talks, and to register for a free four-day pass, can be found here.
Blink and you’ll miss some of the coolest art spaces in town. Leave the crowds at the new David Adjaye-designed National Museum of African American History and Culture and head to Morton Fine Art for under-the-radar African American artists like self-taught local, Nate Lewis. Or descend 20 feet to Dupont Circle station. Built in 1949, it was discontinued after streetcars went out of style, then reopened in 2016 as Dupont Underground. The 15,000 square-foot space is now a hub for alternative arts and culture and hosts talks by Pulitzer-prize-winning photojournalists and New York Times columnists. -EVE THOMAS
PORTSMOUTH, VA – The Portsmouth Art & Cultural Center, located in historic Olde Towne Portsmouth, Virginia kicks off their exhibition season offering two new exhibits during an opening reception on Friday, March 2 from 5:00-8:00 p.m. Portsmouth Here & Now II celebrates the creativity of those who work or live in the Portsmouth community. In Print pulls artists from across the United States to present an exhibition that explores the innovative ways that contemporary artists have expanded upon printmaking techniques to create original fine art prints and mixed media works for the display. The First Friday music series features Matt Thomas on acoustic & harp guitar.
In Print offers some of the longstanding and popular printmaking techniques; lithography, intaglio or etching, drypoint, woodcut or wood engraving, aquatint and soft-ground etching. Over the last century, newer techniques such as serigraphy or screen-printing, collograph, mono-printing and photo-etching along with combinations of all of the above have enriched the printing techniques that artists use today. New surfaces have also expanded how artists print and present their work. Featured are many examples of these processes presented by prominent artists and printmakers Charles Beneke, Rosemary Feit Covey, Staci Katsias, Clay McGlamory, Althea Murphy-Price, Amanda Outcalt-Hoyt, Nicole Pietrantoni, Jenny Robinson, Tanja Softić, and Dominica Webb. In Print continues through May 28, 2018.
A group exhibition of artwork by artists MAYA FREELON ASANTE, OSI AUDU, KESHA BRUCE, ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY, NATHANIEL DONNETT, VICTOR EKPUK, KATHERINE HATTAM, WILLIAM MACKINNON, JULIA FERNANDEZ-POL and VONN SUMNER
April 4th, 2013 – April 27th, 2013
EXHIBITION LOCATION Gallery B 7700 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite E (across from The Original Pancake House) Bethesda, MD 20814
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Morton Fine Art: curator's notes 