My life in art

0 Arts & Entertainment The two-day festival takes place Aug. 20-21. Chloe Morales , Patch Staff Posted | Updated Reply From Art + Soul Oakland : Oakland’s iconic Art + Soul festival celebrates its “sweet 16” with another dynamic showcase of local talent honoring the city’s rich musical heritage and unparalleled cultural diversity. The two-day festival will be held Aug. 20-21, kicking off on Saturday with the return of the Blues & BBQ Blowout, featuring the third, annual Oaktown Throwdown BBQ Competition. Still smokin’ as it enters its third consecutive year, the premier contest is expected to draw up to 40 top pit masters from all over California, competing for cash prizes. On Sunday, Oakland super-group Tony Toni Toné will headline the festival, joined by Bay Area jazz/R&B singer Chanté Moore and rising R&B sensation Samaria. Famed blues guitarist Sonny Rhodes, gospel star Chrystal Rucker, local funk … [Read more...] about Art and Soul Oakland to Celebrate 16th Anniversary

Referring to Anne Lister as a force of nature is accurate, but it’s also just a starting point. Nature was certainly one of her passions: The 19th-century Englishwoman dressed in stylish black clothes that resembled men’s wear and spent hours walking through the countryside, visiting friends and supervising workers at Shibden Hall, the Halifax, West Yorkshire estate she inherited. Her forceful personality was also evident in the business world; some of her acres were rich in coal, and she relished scrapping with the coal titans of the 1830s as she tried to improve the estate’s fortunes. But her boldness was most evident in matters of love. Many of the 5 million-plus words in Lister’s voluminous diaries, some of which were in code, chronicled her relationships with a string of women she wooed, loved and bedded. Lister’s complicated courtship with the wealthy Ann Walker sits at the heart of “Gentleman Jack,” a historical drama series premiering Monday on HBO (in a coproduction with … [Read more...] about In ‘Gentleman Jack,’ Sally Wainwright Brings a Fascinating Life From Diary to Screen

Every morning the artists Alex and Allyson Grey take cold showers, meditate, read aloud to each other and then strap themselves into an inversion table that tips them upside down, using gravity to stretch their spines. The act of hanging this way was a suggestion from Albert Hofmann , the Swiss chemist who is considered the father of LSD, synthesizing the psychedelic drug in 1943. “It’s supposed to bring blood to the brain,” Alex Grey, 69, said, his soft voice crackling like a dimly lit fire. He and his wife, Allyson Grey, 71, are the founders and longtime directors of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors , a nonprofit organization that combines elements of a cultural institution and interfaith church in Wappinger, a town in the Hudson Valley. On June 3, they plan to open Entheon , a 12,000-square-foot exhibition space in a converted 19th-century carriage house on the chapel’s grounds that will be devoted to visionary art, which focuses on the artist’s psychedelic spiritual insights … [Read more...] about A Sanctuary for Psychedelic Art Opens in the Hudson Valley

0 Arts & Entertainment Artists are sought to paint two water tanks, create a sculpture for the Clearwater Beach fire station and create a mosaic at "The Mercado." D'Ann Lawrence White , Patch Staff Posted Reply CLEARWATER, FL — The Clearwater Public Art & Design Program has multiple public art opportunities for professional artists to design and create artwork on several installations in the city. The city is seeking a muralist to paint two water tanks; a mosaic artist for the Mercado, a new community space in the city's Downtown Gateway; and a sculptor to build an installation at the new city Fire Station 46 on Clearwater Beach. Countryside Water Tanks: A stipend of $30,000 is available for murals on two public water tanks at 2709 State Road 580 in Clearwater's Countryside neighborhood. The city is looking for an engaging mural or image to beautify the tanks, which are highly visible on a heavy commuter state … [Read more...] about Clearwater Calling For Artists For Multiple Public Art Projects

Before Abdel R. Salaam traveled to Ghana last fall, he didn’t have deep knowledge of its music and dance traditions. But the country held a special association for him dating back to when Chuck Davis celebrated it at DanceAfrica, the festival he founded. It was 1978, the festival’s second year, and Davis’s opening words were a call and response in the Twi language: “Ago! Ame!” Those words refer to the willingness to listen, to pay attention. It’s a memory that stuck with Salaam, now the festival’s artistic director who this week brings Ghana back to the DanceAfrica stage. After immersing himself in the country’s culture — and holding auditions for 21 companies in different regions — he landed on a title: “Golden Ghana: Adinkra, Ananse and Abusua.” Before its independence, in 1957, Ghana was known as the Gold Coast. But Salaam was thinking beyond that. He likens “Golden Ghana” to the idea of “living my life like it’s golden,” as Jill Scott sings. “You want to reach for not just … [Read more...] about Living the Golden Life: DanceAfrica Welcomes Ghana to Brooklyn

Emily Fisher Landau, a New Yorker who used a Lloyd’s insurance settlement from a spectacular jewel heist in her apartment to fund what would become one of America’s premier collections of contemporary art, died on March 27 in Palm Beach, Fla. She was 102. Her death was confirmed by her daughter, Candia Fisher. From 1991 to 2017, Ms. Landau opened her collection of 1,200 artworks to the public in the Fisher Landau Center for Art, a repurposed former factory in Long Island City, Queens. In 2010, she pledged almost 400 works, then worth between $50 million and $75 million, to the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she had long been a trustee. Ms. Landau’s trajectory into the art world began unexpectedly on a spring afternoon in 1969, while she was out at lunch. Armed burglars disguised as air conditioning repairmen broke into her apartment in the Imperial House building on the Upper East Side, bound the cook in a guest closet and opened a floor safe hidden inside another … [Read more...] about Emily Fisher Landau, Art Patron Who Had Her Own Museum, Dies at 102