Song of the day

Shammy and Famous Ruis Family- "I'm Just A Little Girl" 

Another Look at Margaret Kilgallen

I love this little film of artist Margaret Kilgallen. (Art21)
Her Wikipedia entry says: "Kilgallen was an avid reader and thinker, looking to Appalachian music, signage, letterpress printing, freight train vandal art, and religious and decorative arts to inform her work. Her work demonstrates her respect for and engagement with craftsmanship and the stories of everyday peoples' lives. She was especially interested in "the evidence of the maker's hand."

She explained- "I like things that are handmade and I like to see people's hand in the world, anywhere in the world; it doesn't matter to me where it is. And in my own work, I do everything by hand. I don't project or use anything mechanical, because even though I do spend a lot of time trying to perfect my line work and my hand, my hand will always be imperfect because it's human. And I think it's the part that's interesting, that even if I'm doing really big letters and I spend a lot of time going over the line and over the line and trying to make it straight, I'll never be able to make it straight. From a distance it might look straight, but when you get close up, you can always see the line waver. And I think that's where the beauty is." Quote from Wikipedia 

She died at 33 years of age in 2001 of breast cancer, 3 weeks after giving birth to her daughter Asha. 

Llyn Foulkes at the Hammer Museum

Llyn Foulkes will play his Machine at 7:30 pm tonight at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. I wish I could go to this. His retrospective, which opened this month, will be at the Hammer through May 19th, 2013. (10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA)

 

Here is a clip of him on the Machine-
Llyn Foulkes at dOCUMENTA 2012 from Kent Fine Art on Vimeo.

Watch film clips of Llyn Foulkes working on his amazing piece The Lost Frontier (1997-2005, collection Hammer Museum).
 

Half Moon Banjo Ukulele

Unusual banjo uke from University of Leipzig - Museum of Musical Instruments 
(Thanks twitter, @ShelleyRickey and @UkeHunt)

Celebrating Renoir's Large Bathers on his birthday

Here's my favorite Renoir painting, The Large Bathers 1884-1887 (Philadelphia Museum of Art). I actually like the combination of styles in this painting better than his works that have his trademark, brushy-style throughout.
It has great form and beauty. The smooth skin of the figures, contrasted with less-defined impressions of nature, makes sense to me. Shown below it is one of the sketches that he did in preparation for the painting. You can see how he changed the position of the girl with the braid in the final work.
Happy Birthday, Renoir!

Let's Get Drunk Again- performed by The Hokum Scorchers

The Hokum Scorchers at my "Dreamgirls and Ukes" gallery show.

(Photo taken by Mark Lowrie 2009 at Thinkspace Gallery in Los Angeles)



"Let's Get Drunk Again" (song by Bo Chatmon 1938). This is a 1990 tape recording- Hokum Scorchers. Lou plays National guitar, Amy Crehore (me) on washboard w/cups.

The Art of Amy Crehore

My portrait of Jessica Watson - The Art of Doing

Jessica Watson by Amy Crehore 2013, oil on linen, 8" x 10"

 

I created this portrait of the amazing Jessica Watson for Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield's blog dedicated to their brand new book The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It So Well. There are many wonderful interviews in this book, including one with friend Mark Frauenfelder of Boing Boing .

At the age of 16, Jessica Watson became the youngest person to sail solo around the world.

The interview with her in the book is quite fascinating.

The authors share some of it today on their blog, have a look: 

LINK .

You can buy the book on amazon here.

 

 

The Art of Amy Crehore