08 | Ellsworth Kelly | Kindred Aesthetics

Ellsworth Kelly was born in Newburgh, NY in 1923. Kelly was an American painter, sculptor, and print-maker associated with hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and minimalism. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing line, color and form. Art critic for the Gaurdian, Adrian Searle writes, “Like many great colourists, Kelly was as interested in black and white as the harmonies and dissonance of high-keyed hues, in meeting points, edges and limits as much as spread and optical radiance and saturation of the colour field. Often, the canvases and panels were shaped like sections of ellipses, arcs, diagonals and curves. There were wedges and odd rhomboids that looked as though they were obeying an impossible perspective. Your eye could follow a curve and be sent off on some unexpected parabola before being halted with a jolt. His art was full of energy and stillness and unexpected meetings. How human the abstract is.

All this gave his art a wonderfully understated eccentricity, even though it was always reigned in by a feeling for rightness, which is a quality more easily sensed than explained. Throughout his career Kelly drew, with a lovely sparse line and feel for a shape’s placement on the empty sheet of paper. A great foil to his paintings, these outline drawings of lily leaves, lemons, vines, fig and briar felt like they had grown as nature does, without any contrivance. In all his art there is no apparent struggle, just a feeling of arrival.”

I recently visited the San Francisco MOCA where I saw some gorgeous Ellsworth Kelly wall panels and paintings. I was struck by their clean gesture and simplicity of form. It reminded me of a film to share with you. The Shaker practice and aesthetics have had a profound influence on generations of artists. This short documentary of Kelly and photographer Jack Shear discusses their visits to the Mount Lebanon, New York Shaker village - and on their views of the architecture and design as well as their personal collection of furniture and artistic responses. It is available on demand on Amazon or Vimeo.

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/shakervillage

https://www.sfmoma.org/artist/Ellsworth_Kelly/?sa=1

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/dec/28/ellsworth-kelly-abstract-artist

07 | Friday links

• Check out the posthumously published journal by Anne Truitt. Her work and writing have been a touchstone for many.

Lily Stockman Gavlak Los Angeles Covey, 2016 Oil on linen 62 x 50 inches

• Conversations about art with Heidi Zuckerman is an amazing podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/conversations-about-art/id1493074491 Three recent favorites are #6o with Alia Ali #77 | With Lily Stockman (painting above) and #91 with Teresita Fernandez

Bonnie Lynch: Small Shell Vessel Saggar Fired Clay 8” x 13” x 11” 2022 Photo: Penina Meisels

• Click on the images for links to artists Bonnie Lynch and Linda Lynch who will be showing in the studio from October - December 2022

Linda Lynch Prow Drawing, II (from Ryder), Pastel pigment on cotton paper, 22 1/4 x 30 inches, 2021

Santa Fe Modern: Contemporary Design in the High Desert
by Helen Thompson, photographs by Casey Dunn
The Monacelli Press, November 2021

Hardcover | 8 x 10 inches | 240 pages | English | ISBN: 9781580935616 | $50.00

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION:

Santa Fe Modern reveals the high desert landscape as an ideal setting for bold, abstracted forms of modernist houses. Wide swaths of glass, deep-set portals, long porches, and courtyards allow vistas, color, and light to become integral parts of the very being of a house, emboldening a way to experience a personal connection to the desert landscape. The architects featured draw from the New Mexican architectural heritage–they use ancient materials such as adobe in combination with steel and glass, and they apply this language to the proportions and demands exacted by today’s world. The houses they have designed are confident examples of architecture that is particular to the New Mexico landscape and climate, and yet simultaneously evoke the rigorous expressions of modernism. The vigor and the allure of modern art and architecture hearten each other in a way that is visible and exciting, and this book demonstrates the synergistic relationship between art, architecture, and the land.

Helen Thompson is a nationally known writer on interior design and architecture. Formerly a food writer and editor for Texas Monthly, she [...] is also the author of Marfa Modern and Texas Made, Texas Modern [...] as well as The Big Texas Steakhouse Cookbook, and The Mansion on Turtle Creek Cookbook. She lives in Santa Fe. Casey Dunn is an Austin-based architectural and landscape photographer [...] He is the photographer for Marfa Modern, Texas Made, Texas Modern, and Oasis.

Bonnie and Linda Lynch’s houses are featured in Santa Fe Modern

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-10-21/santa-fe-modern-book-new-mexico-city-has-best-modern-architecture

06 | artist profile: Anne Truitt

Anne Truitt Prospect 1991 Acrylic on Canvas

Anne Truitt (1921-2004) was a seminal minimalist sculptor and painter who immerged in the 1950’s and 60’s. She was a prolific writer - publishing four journals that chronicled her life and studio practice. Her insights on the “tight rope walk” between a creative discipline and family life were honest and inspiring. Her descriptions of process, doubt, teaching, books, traveling and studio practice was a breath of fresh air. She is most well known for the monumental sculpture but the paintings and drawings are equally gorgeous and compelling.

Anne Truitt - Sculpture courtesy of http://www.annetruitt.org/

There are several books that have been published about her sculptures, paintings and drawings listed on her website.

In addition, here is a link to an article in the New Yorker about her books.

05 | on the shelf

I’ve been an avid reader from the time I learned to read. I still love walking the stacks in library, finding new and interesting books by association or proximity. Like looking up words in a dictionary and getting side tracked by the illustrations and other random words. We will offer a small selection of books in the studio, as well online.

You can also find an expanded selection of tools and books here.

https://kit.co/lightspace

04 | desert rain

It’s been an intense monsoon season in Tucson. The desert is incredibly lush and humid. All kinds of butterflies are coming through - feasting on the flowering of the second spring. Here are a few inspiring things to start your week.

Tucson Botanical Garden | One of the oldest gardens in the Southwest, the collection features an amazing variety of desert plants. They open at 7:30 am - which is an amazing way to start the day.

https://tucsonbotanical.org

Reading | I am reading up on the healing properties and care of crystals and semi precious gemstones. It is so cool to be in a city and state that has incredible natural resources, and tons of rock shops to explore. I am looking forward to adding specimens as I discover them. Please feel free to contact me if you are looking for a particular family of stones. The new stone age by Carol Woolton is an easy place to start.

https://www.instagram.com/carolwoolton/?hl=en

Listening | Dave Brubeck never fails to disappoint.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmDDOFXSgAs