Construction Updates from Holder

Here's your update from Holder for the week ending today (March 12).

Current week - Activities/Issues:
New Gallery / Connector
• Framing connector walls/soffit
• Coordinating MEP overhead trim out
• Installing glass at the connector curtainwall
• Backfill sculpture garden walls
• Start layout/digging bio-retention pond

Existing Building Renovations
• Tape and finish walls and ceilings
• MEP rough-in hard ceilings
• MEP rough-in acoustical ceilings

Storage Bar
• Framing interior walls
• Hang interior walls
• Continue exterior brick façade

Next week - Activities/Issues:
New Gallery / Connector
• Complete curtain wall glass
• Continue framing walls and soffits
• Complete connector roof
• Start MEP wall rough-in

Existing Building Renovations
• Tape & finish walls and ceilings
• Start priming interior walls

Storage Bar
• Complete exterior CMU and brick walls.
• Finish MEP overhead rough-in.
• Continue framing interior walls

Storage bar exterior

Sculpture garden progress

Sculpture garden curtain wall

Art Around Athens (and Beyond)

The Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation (OCAF) annual thrift sale begins tonight (Friday, March 12), with a preview night from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is $5, and prices are double what they will be tomorrow (Saturday, March 13, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.), but you get first crack at all the good stuff folks have donated to benefit OCAF, an opportunity to bid in the silent auction and wine and appetizers. More than 10,000 items will be available, meaning this is no mere church yard sale, and the cause is a great one.

Also Saturday, from 9:30 a.m. to noon, Blue Tin Art Studio is teaching a class in encaustic painting with beeswax for $40 (that cost includes materials). "Learn how to melt and mix colors, create a variety of surface techniques and incorporate collage and more." You can find a registration form on Blue Tin's site here.

Saturday and Sunday (March 13 and 14), from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., the Carlton Art Group will hold a free open house at 65 Lexington Rd., in Carlton. Stone and wood sculpture, monoprints, Ukrainian eggs, hand-made furniture, fused glass, metal sculpture and jewelry constitute some of the media of the many works on display. A portion of proceeds will benefit Georgia for Haiti.



Finally, Sunday from noon to 5 p.m., renowned local artist Lou Kregel is having an open house and rummage sale at 95 Carter St., here in Athens. She lists an astonishing amount of stuff on the Facebook page she's created for the event, as well as directions, and her latest update suggests there will be cupcakes in addition.

Hello Wall

The Hello Wall from wasted spaces on Vimeo.

Flavorpill linked yesterday to this very cool art project that shows good use to be made of social media. Not that determining whether circles are larger or smaller or faster or slower moving is a huge decision, but it at least shows the potential for public interaction with art, which is something we're always trying to promote. It also, tangentially, makes us think about this early Willie Nelson song that made use of advanced technology in its own way.

GMOA in the News

The Athens Banner-Herald has a lovely article this morning on our upcoming "The Art of: Brew" that we hope will encourage some more folks to show up.

Hungry?

Dan Kenneally's been interpreting various sandwiches (breakfast, lunch, dessert) in these extremely simplified paintings that, nonetheless, convey the essence of each. He also, handily enough, has a section on his site in which he explains what he's on about in both "normal" and "art critic" versions.

Contemplating the Void

Taylor Green has been musing on the Guggenheim's exhibition "Contemplating the Void," in which the curators asked 200 contemporary artists to propose something to go in that big space in the middle of the museum. First he focused on environmentally themed responses, then on responses that had to do with torture, and there's more yet to come this week. The exhibition has its own Web site, too, so you can poke through interpretations of the space on your own, although they're a bit scattered. Make sure you have some time, in other words, and aren't easily frustrated by the weird, Flash-based navigation system or by artists' tendency to believe their work already clearly explained by a quick drawing. We find ourselves drawn to the more colorful options, like Ball Nogues Studio's proposal that appears to have something to do with a giant candy-making machine (above) or Fritz Haeg's idea to paint the ramps as a rainbow, but Green's analysis has been bringing out some interesting themes.

A Reminder

If you haven't yet RSVPed for The Art of: Brew, please remember that it's less than a week from today. The weather even seems to be warming up of late, just like last year, so with luck it'll be a lovely evening, with much appreciation of Terrapin's unique product and perhaps even some dancing. We'll have T-shirts for sale, and you can rehearse for St. Patrick's Day.

GMOA in the News

GMOA gets mentioned in passing in Kevan Williams's Flagpole column "Athens Rising," which is devoted to construction and development in and around Athens. If you'd like to see a gallery of all our construction photos, our Flickr page has a whole section of them, from week 1, when this shovel was about all there was to see:

To the most recent set, when not only is the new wing up, but the connector between old and new areas is starting to look like it's really part of a unified building, with glass and all.

It's easy to forget how far we've come when the updates posted week by week seem incremental, but there is one big, beautiful building taking shape, and you get to see what it looks like inside in person in less than a year.

New Photos Up

Not only have we added more photos to the "Soulful Celebration" set on Flickr, but we've just gotten up pictures from the farewell party for Deirdre Conneely, who just left us to move back up north and will be sorely missed, and the Collectors' last outing.

The History of Western Art in Music Video Form

70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.

Hat tip to Amy Miller, who suggested this great mix of fine art and indie rock for the blog. It's Spring Break for the students around here, but that doesn't mean we're slowing down a bit. Things have been very busy today, so blogging has been light.

Construction Updates from Holder

It's the end of the week and we don't want to make you wait until Tuesday (Monday is a furlough day for UGA employees, so expect no updates on this blog), so here's the construction update from Holder on Phase II for the week ending today, March 5.

Current week - Activities/Issues:
New Gallery / Connector
· Framing connector walls
· Hanging and finishing walls and ceilings in gallery
· Coordinating MEP overhead trim out
· Completed the overlook pop out roof
· Installing glass at the overlook and the connector curtainwall
· Framing soffits in connector
· Relaying brick and thru-wall flash at connector parapet walls

Existing Building Renovations
· Continue MEP overhead rough-in
· Hanging hard ceilings
· Prime and paint walls

Storage Bar
· Framing interior walls
· Started exterior brick façade
· Spray foam insulation in walls

Next week - Activities/Issues:
New Gallery / Connector
· Install curtain wall glass
· Start connector exterior brick and roofing
· Backfill sculpture garden walls
· Start layout/digging bio-retention pond

Existing Building Renovations
· Tape & finish walls and ceilings
· Install the 3rd floor punch windows

Storage Bar
· Continue exterior CMU and brick walls.
· Finish MEP overhead rough-in.
· Hanging drywall

East gallery elevation--overlook glass

2nd-floor gallery interior finishes

Connector exterior progress

International Leaders Find Some Time to Enjoy The Arts

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his wife, Svetlana, visited Paris earlier this week to discuss a possible major military deal between Russia and France. Medvedev spent the week with French president Nicolas Sarkozy, and the two found some time during their visit to put state issues aside and indulge in some of the many cultural pursuits Paris has to offer.

Medvedev and Sarkozy were given special access to the Louvre Museum, which is closed to the public on Tuesdays, for a look at one of the museum’s top exhibits this year.

The exhibition “Holy Russia,” a fitting one for the special guest, features 900 years of Russian art drawn from monasteries and museums around the country and showcases icons from the early years of Russian Orthodox Christianity to the masterpieces of Andrei Rublev in the 15th century up to canvases from the early reign of Peter the Great.

Svetlana Medvedev was joined by Russian Culture Minister François Mitterrand and his Russian counterpart, Alexander Avdeev, on a tour of an exhibition of oil paintings and watercolors by young Russian artists that reflect a romantic view of Russia, with Impressionist-inspired views of the Volga River Valley.

Paris welcomed the Russian visitors with flair. Medvedev arrived at the French capital by helicopter and golden-helmeted guards on horseback led his limousine across the Alexandre III Bridge, named for the second-to-last czar of Russia.

UGA alums

This morning's Art Daily brought news of an exhibition in New York by talented UGA alum of the Lamar Dodd School of Art Ian Ingram, who has continued working on the large-scale self-portrait drawings he has been doing since the age of 16 and did while in school here. We remember going to a reception of his work in the large gallery just down the hall from our current offices. The exhibition is at Barry Friedman Gallery and is accompanied by a catalogue. Congrats, Ian!

Art Around Athens (and Beyond)

The Railroad Arts District blog has already rounded up a good bit of what's going on this weekend in the arts, including an opening of work by the kids at Chase Street Elementary that will be going on display at White Tiger and the opening of Trace Gallery, which is pretty exciting!



Out in Watkinsville, at the Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation, there's an opening reception tonight (Friday, March 5) from 6 to 9 p.m. for the exhibition "Cattywampus," which features the printmaking art of UGA faculty and graduate students Andy Burkitt, Helen Farmer, Melissa Harshman, An Pham, Jon Swindler and Grace Zuniga. The exhibition runs through March 26, and while you're there, you can check out the exhibition for Youth Art Month drawn from Oconee County schools (also up through March 26).

This week's Flagpole lists the following event, about which we know no more than appears here, but it sounds interesting: Mar. 6: Call for location 9 a.m. 706-255-8528, mechanted757@gmail.com. Rose Creeks Clean-Up (Antioch Church Road): Artist Melissa Steele will document the clean-up of Rose Creek and Little Rose Creek as part of her art exhibit "Me'chanted." Breakfast and shuttle from Antioch Church provided. RSVP if you want your biscuits and coffee.

Saturday evening, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Morton Theatre in downtown Athens, there will be an opening reception for "Refusés," a salon of works not included in the Lyndon House Arts Center's 35th Juried exhibition. The exhibition runs through April 19.



Finally, Sunday afternoon, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., is an opening reception for an exhibition of Claire Clements' paintings at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia. Claire's process, cut paintings, involves cutting mixed media painting on paper, and the Athens Banner-Herald ran a great story on her this past week.

Spring 2010 Newsletter

As always, tech-savvy Friends and patrons can get the GMOA newsletter here before printing is completed and physical copies are mailed. The Spring 2010 newsletter should arrive in your mailboxes relatively soon, but in the meantime, here's the digital version, which has great photos, some information on new acquisitions, construction updates and more, including a Save the Date on the back cover for Elegant Salute XII!

In-Room Entertainment

Should you happen to be staying at one of the four locations of the Standard Hotel (New York, Hollywood, L.A. and Miami), the New York Times' culture blog The Moment/T Magazine has a post up about a new option on the TVs in their rooms. The arts organization Creative Time has selected an array of art videos that will be available for your viewing pleasure, including Marilyn Minter's "Green Pink Caviar," which supplied the image above and (intentionally or un-) kind of can't help but remind us of this Internet phenomenon. Video art is one of the easiest media to get out and about in the world, and we think this idea is marvelous.

Athens' Next Top Model?

The all-knowing Brenda Wade, our receptionist and mistress of information, passed along that the newest issue of Blvd. magazine features one of our own former interns, Meg Winthrop, on the cover. To browse through the rest of the issue, click here. Now, we certainly don't go out of our way to find good-looking interns, but they keep finding us! Meg also contributed a couple of entries to one of our upcoming catalogues, on drawings from the permanent collection, so she's far more than just a pretty face.

Willson Center/GMOA Lecture Photos

Our wonderful interns took some photos at the lecture yesterday afternoon, and while slideshows aren't quite as exciting as pictures of people dressed up fancy (to some of us), we think it's wonderful to see the crowd that turned out for Nina Hellerstein's talk on Jean Charlot's murals.

The Pinacothèque Stirs Up Parisian Culture

Marc Restellini, from the Independent

Though still quite young, Marc Restellini’s Parisian exhibition hall, the Pinacothèque, has upset many of the French cultural establishments. Founded in 2007, the Pinacothèque is a privately run, unsubsidized exhibition space whose art shows have attracted more visitors in the last 12 months than the other Parisian exhibition halls.

Many well-known cultural institutions—the Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, and the Centre Pompidou to name a few—are less than happy with the Pinacothèque and its director. Restellini has put on a number of high-profile exhibitions with subjects including Roy Lichtenstein, Man Ray and the Chinese warriors of Xi’an (a show the Louvre is supposed to have been bidding for).

Entrance to the Pinacothèque costs about the same as other exhibition halls and yet Restellini has been able to earn a profit on every show except his first. This creates an uncomfortable comparison for the state institutions that need large public subsidies and private sponsors.

Restellini himself is another source of complaint. He is an art historian but has never taken the official French examination for museum curators. His exhibition methods are also under scrutiny. The paintings are individually illuminated and are hung (when possible) at the angle that the painter would have seen while he was creating it.

Restellini has also made significant effort to improve upon the information panels that accompany works of art in the gallery. He says,“What people want is intelligent information on the history of the artist and the work, something not too complex, but not oversimplified.”

Ultimately Restellini’s goal is not to, as he puts it, “spend hundreds of millions of euros on a building with marble and columns,” but to “show paintings and help people to understand them.”

Currently on view at the Pinacothèque until July 18 is the largest ever exhibition of Edvard Munch paintings from private collections.

For more information, check out this article in the Independent.

Art Around Athens

At 6 p.m. today, Dr. Scott Richardson, associate dean of curriculum at the MCG/UGA Initiative Medical School, will speak on the benefits and relationship of art and medicine, as well as advances in medical school education, in Gallery 307 of the Lamar Dodd School of Art, in conjunction with the exhibition of work by scientific and medical illustration students on display there (through March 8).



Then, from 7 to 8 p.m. at Ciné, Michael Lachowski presents the first 6x6 event, focusing on fashion. Lachowski selected six new media-arts productions, each no longer than six minutes, to be screened, the format that all six of these events (there are five more upcoming, for which entries are still being accepted; next up is "Play" on April 7, with Didi Dunphy as curator) will follow.