Praeterita

Landscape is both a physical space and an aesthetic construction. It is the land that surrounds us and upon which we live, and it is the organization of that exterior space within a genre of the visual arts. Any artist whose practice connects with land, earth, or terrain, is dealing from the beginning with that twin focus, looking both outwards to the world and then back into the interior world. The land outside, and the land within. In this group show at a recently opened space at Chicago’s Hubbard Street Lofts, three artists showed work inspired by the land beneath our feet, the inner reflection of the outer world, and the land seen from afar. Marzena Ziejka, A small landscape without vegetables , found dropcloth, monofilament, acrylic polymer Marzena Ziejka‘s work includes pieces that she made by scooping up soil and glueing it to large panels. They have an interesting tactility reminiscent of her large works in fibre, her customary medium, though I think they lack the visual c

The Barefoot Norwegian, by Connie Geissel As I have discussed in previous blog posts on the subject, for the last few years I have taught classes in setting up a blog, and in creating and crafting content for existing blogs. One of the participants in a workshop I ran earlier this year just emailed me to say that she's pressing on full steam ahead with her blog. It's called The Barefoot Norwegian (a great, great title), and here is the link to the blog: http://thebarefootnorwegian.blogspot.com/

Over on my studio blog , a post about a new series of etchings produced using acrylic resist methods:

Part 35 of an interview series in which I pose the same six questions to different artists. Today's interviewee is Aine Scannell , an artist and printmaker who lives in Scotland.  Shaman's Secret , trace monotype and pastel, 20" x 28" Philip Hartigan : What medium do you chiefly use, and why? Aine Scannell : Printmaking is the means or process I go through to create my art. I started out in ‘painting’ because I had the rather naïve idea that, that was what ‘artists’ did. I didn’t have any awareness of printmaking as a specialist discipline in my earlier years. In the beautiful city of Barcelona, Spain, I completed a Masters in European Fine Art (that’s what it was officially called) but on the course we were identified as being either on the painting or the print pathway.  It was over that time period that I began to realize that I loved the possibilities inherent within printmaking. I was just so excited by it and I could see that it was for me. Unfortun