Rumble Arts Center's name is taken from a specific attribute of elephants the contact rumble. Used like Morse code, the elephant's system of echoing the ground with their feet sends out low frequency signals that reach other elephants miles away. It's become a metaphor for the way Director Brooke Wolfe hopes word about Rumble Arts travels, glowing out from their North Avenue epicenter to other friendly, like-minded listeners across the city.

Rumble's task as an all-ages, donation-based multicultural neighborhood arts center has expressed itself, in its first year and a half, by hosting dozens of classes, ranging from drawing to martial arts, pop 'n' lock to puppetry, yoga to DJing. The lean and nimble paid staff is composed solely of Wolfe Edwin Perry, who serves as co-director,and Bree Johnson, Rumble's  administrative assistant.

A Painter and spoken word artist herself, Wolfe was born and raised in the same Humboldt Park neighborhood as the Arts Center. After varying majors four times at a total of five different undergraduate art schools she left Chicago for Oakland, accepting the fact that her revelation to multiple teaching methods and styles was a good enough education in and of itself. After moving back from her transformative stay out west, Wolfe took inspiration from the arts program called Art Esteem she had worked with in California, and used it to guide her development of Rumble itself.

Labels: Brooke Wolfe, Elephants, Humboldt Park, Rumble, Rumble Arts Center

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Chicago artist Gladys Nilsson has been keeping active this winter, not only putting together a presentation of her 44 years as a painter, but also finding the time to help the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts select the best art in west Michigan.

They tried to select a show that would give that voice that there are a lot of things going on, Nilsson said.

Nilsson said she found it during sifting entries of those artists in the area that are not headed together in one direction. Rather, they are working alone and coming up with traditional and nontraditional uses of medium.

Nilsson is interested in considering what other people are doing and in Kalamazoo, the area definitely offers a lot of vibrant and energetic paintings, as well as some nice quiet passages too. There is room for everything, Nilsson said. Nilsson is a veteran juror, having lent her input in 1998 for a small format show.

Nilsson said the Kalamazoo art culture was very sturdy then and according to all of the slides that  she has gone over, it's is still very strong,

Nilsson reacts auspiciously, to any given set of stuff, but it has to reach out and grasp her, no matter what it is. If it doesn't do that it gets passed by, Nilsson said. She thinks about broad approval factor. When something talks to you, it doesn't make any difference whether it's the use of color, use of shape or an image you find that truly makes you vibrate.

Labels: Art work, Famous paintings, Gladys Nilsson, Kalmazoo Institude of Arts

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Artist Jess Abell holds a blueprint for the artwork she hopes to create on the southeast corner of Worden's Market at 451 N. Higgins Ave. The task will fill the empty wall with a blend of sheet metal cut-outs for exterior and auto paints from beneath the building's awning to the edge of the sidewalk. Abell estimates the project will take a week and looks ahead to warmer weather so she can begin.

Abell brought the issue of application costs before the City Council last summer when she realized the cost for the application was double what she would spend creating the art. It priced people out of being able to do these sorts of things, she said.

Abell's project is tentatively situated on the southeast corner of Worden's Market and will be reviewed by the Public Art Committee April 14. If it meets the qualifications, she can begin painting. Abell said the design is rather simple. Nothing that will mix up controversy, in an e-mail, Abell described the concept as a clean, graphic arts-styled design, influenced by contemporary art, styles and street art.

The wall painting will be three-dimensional, with bird sculptures hanging from the canopy of Worden's Market and apparent to emerge from the wall. Viewers cannot see the entire mural as they loom, but Abell said it will unfold as they get closer.

Labels: Bird Sculptures, Murals in Missoula, Painting Styles

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Creative career of Matisse spanned six decades, but curators of the museum show "Henri Matisse Radical Invention" have focused on the years from 1913 to 1917 when he created what he termed his "most important pictures."

"It's an incredible moment when Matisse, the master of color, tones down the color and pays attention to form," said Stephanie D'Alessandro, curator at the Art Institute of Chicago.

"Radical Invention" will make only two stops Now through June 20 at the Art Institute of Chicago, and July 18 to October 11 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

The pared-down exhibition is smaller than blockbusters of the recent past. But its 117 paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures plucked from museums and private collections across the globe excited early crowds in Chicago.

The exhibition's centerpiece is the Art Institute's own monumental "Bathers by a River" that Matisse once said was his most important painting and one that he revised repeatedly.

Labels: cubism paintings, Matisses moment, museum show, paintings

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The Upper West Side of Manhattan was once again residence to a thrilling and unique art exhibition last week. 25CPW, a provisional art gallery occupying an unoccupied retail space on Central Park West hosted a painting show for an exclusive group within the Metropolitan Museum of Art: the guards. It turns out that a number of people defending the masterpieces on the other side of Central Park also like to generate, and from what they saw on Thursday night, when they attended the aperture; they are pretty damned good at it. 

The Thursday night aperture also incorporated the launch of Sw! pe Magazine: Guards' Matter, and fine art journal that accompanied the display.

Exhibition included paintings, drawings, photographs and other pieces. The styles were diverse but were put on show intelligently, preventing contrasting styles from crowding each other and parting each artist adequate space for his work to stand out. Nelson Diaz, an artist who attended the how with me - both by the works on display and the energy in the 25CPW space.

Labels: Metropolitan Museum of Art

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