Canstruction

This weekend at the Detroit Institute of Art there will be a charity event showcasing sculpture made out of cans! Yesterday over 17,000 cans were transformed into 8 very cool Detroit-inspired canstructures. These will be on display starting today through Sunday! To learn more about the event, please visit the Canstruction web site.




Canstruction Detroit | Channel 7 | DIA | Canstruction

Graffiti Art

9th Annual Teen Graffiti Art Exhibit

Now through October 27, 2011 -- Malletts Creek Branch: Exhibits

The AADL Teen Graffiti Contest is an annual event held during Ann Arbor's summer Art Fairs. Teens gather in the staff parking lot of the Downtown AADL to try their hand at the art of graffiti.

Each young artist receives a four-by-four foot board and a variety of colors of spray paint. The end result of the contest is a display of a multitude of styles and levels of talent for the community to enjoy in this brilliant exhibit.

Art is all around! A current exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago has an exhibit about artists who have illustrate ABC's children's books!
ARTFUL ALPHABETS: FIVE PICTURE BOOK ARTISTS
June 11–November 6, 2011
Picture Book Gallery
Ryan Education Center
Illustrator Mordicai Gerstein sees sculptural letters formed out of creatures. Chris Raschka portrays a man and his cat in an alphabet adventure. Mary Thelen’s colorful pictures of shapes and lines illustrate a toe-tapping text, while Stacy Innerst explores the world of music from A to Z in paintings on board and tin. Hand-colored woodblock prints by Mary Azarian explore the garden theme and expand vocabulary with word and picture. All of these artists prove that are as many artful ways to illustrate the ABCs as there are ways to see the world.

de Kooning: a Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art

The exhibit includes selected paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints by Willem de Kooning (American, b. the Netherlands, 1904–1997). Among these are some of the artist’s most famous, landmark paintings—including Pink Angels (c. 1945),Excavation (1950), and the celebrated third Woman series (1950–53)—plus examples from all of his most important series, ranging from his figurative paintings of the early 1940s to the breakthrough black-and-white compositions of 1948–49, and from the urban abstractions of the mid-1950s to the artist’s return to figurations in the 1960s, and the large gestural abstractions of the following decade.

As a painter, de Kooning has been a huge influence on my own personal work since graduate school. His gestural brushwork, color sense, and the scale of his canvases are most impressive. To find get more information about this exhibit, click on the moma website listed below.

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/dekooning/

Google Doodle honors Gumby Creator Art Clokey's 90th birthday

Google on Wednesday celebrated the 90th birthday of Gumby creator Art Clokey with an interactive stop motion homepage doodle featuring well-known characters from the Gumby series.

The doodle, which went live on international Web sites yesterday, features a child's block with the letter "G" followed by five balls of colored clay for the remaining letters in the search giant's logo. Click on the balls of clay and Gumby characters will appear—The Blockheads, Prickle and Goo, Gumby himself, and Pokey. They pose for a moment before melting into a pile of clay and rolling back into a ball.

Click on www.google.com to watch the characters in action!

Go to gumbyworld.com for the latest on the iconic green toy and other characters.

Penny W. Stamps Speaker Series

Penny W. Stamps Speaker Series

Brought to you from the Michigan School Art & Design, the Penny Stamps Speaker Series brings respected emerging and established artists/designers from a broad spectrum of media to the School to conduct a public lecture and engage with students, faculty, and the larger University and Ann Arbor communities.

Unless otherwise noted, all programs take place on Thursdays at 5:10 pm at the historic Michigan Theater, located at 603 E. Liberty Street in downtown Ann Arbor, and are free of charge and open to the public.

I can not wait to see Nick Cave speak about his "soundsuits" on November 10th! More on him later.....

Excitng Art Exhibit at University of Michian Art Museum

http://www.umma.umich.edu/view/exhibitions/2011-mimpressions.php

Multiple Impressions: Contemporary Chinese Woodblock Prints

July 16–October 23, 2011

This exhibition presents works by forty-one leading printmakers from contemporary China to showcase the extraordinary innovations, in both technique and conception, which have transformed this long-established art form in recent years.


I just visited this exhibit..... AMAZING! It will only be at the UMMA for a few more weeks... so hurry!!!