Ya La'ford: Natasha Bowdoin (mentor) / Carlos Cruz-Diez (exhibit)

Has another week already past? Well again a very productive week. I got a set of my second set of 3 immunization shots. Also, I turned in my first paper - it was about my experience of critiques. Thursday, I painted with Sallie (fun times learning new texture tricks) and I also attended a lecture about the Masterpieces from the National Gallery. Thursday - everything in Houston got shut down b/c it was too cold for everyone at 35 degrees - they even let out school on Friday and Victor got to stay home with me. We just studied at a coffee shop and I painted - I will post soon..I even started working on Sanjay Patel's Painting.

Time for the best news of the week and the month - I have a mentor! NATASHA BOWDOIN She is an incredible artist and a wonderful person. I am so excited to learn from her and pleased that she has chosen to take me on in this journey. http://natashabowdoin.com/2009/2009-1.html

I went to a gallery that was exhibiting Control Gallery - http://ctrlgallery.com/cms/

The detail is almost unbelievable, if you are in Houston, this is something your eyes should see. I will post pics so you can see her stuff. A little info about her: Natasha Bowdoin was born 1981 in West Kennebunk, Maine. She lives and works in Houston, TX. Bowdoin recently completed a two-year CORE residency at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Recent and upcoming exhibitions include "Art on Paper 2010", Weatherspoon Museum of Art, North Carolina; "The Daisy Argument", Visual Art Center, UT Austin; "Girls Just Want to Have Funds" (organized by the Rema Hort Mann Foundation), PPOW Gallery, NYC, "A Torrent of Words: Contemporary Art and Language", Kohler Arts Center, Wisconsin; Pulse Art Fair, solo project with CTRL gallery, Miami, FL; "Toil and Trouble", CTRL gallery, Houston and the "2011 Portland Museum of Art Biennial, Portland, Maine. She was recently awarded a residency at teh Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE. Bowdoin is represented by CTRL gallery, Houston and Extraspazio Gallery, Rome. She studied painting at the Slade School of Art in London (2002), received her BA and Post Baccalaureate degrees from Brandeis University (2003/2005) and her MFA from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia/Rome (2007).

Front of Natasha's Gallery Exhibit - Control

Entrance

Natasha

Remarkable close-up!

More ...

Breathtaking!

Close-up

Also, I was able to go to a Members Preview Party at MFAH for Carlos Cruz-Diez and then a talk Conversing with color. I got a pic with him - he is a great guy. For more than five decades, Carlos Cruz-Diez (born 1923) has experimented intensively with the origins and optics of color. His wide-ranging body of work includes unconventional color structures, light environments, street interventions, architectural integration projects, and experimental works that engage the response of the human eye while insisting on the participatory nature of color. The MFAH and the Cruz-Diez Foundation, Houston, present the first

large-scale retrospective of this pioneering Franco-Venezuelan artist.Carlos Cruz-Diez: Color in Space and Time features more than 150 works created from the 1940s to today, including paintings, silk-screen prints, and innovative chromatic structures; room-size chromatic environments, architectural models, and videos; and a virtual re-creation of the artist´s studio. The exhibition introduces international audiences to Cruz-Diez´s extensive production and places his theoretical and artistic contributions to 20th-century Modernism in a broader context than they have traditionally been seen.

The starting point for Cruz-Diez´s chromatic investigations is the unstable nature of color. His work combines color theory, science, kinetics, mechanical engineering, and the painter´s craft, and it defies easy categorization. In order to realize his artistic vision, particularly with regard to the innovative Physichromies series, the artist adapted or invented his own tools and machines.