Category Archives: Arts & Literature

“Watercolor In March”: Artist Thomas W. Shaller Releases New Works (2020)

The grasses up north are as blue as jade, Our mulberries here curve green-threaded branches; And at last, you think of returning home”  Li Bai

Inside - Thomas W. Schaller
“Inside” – Thomas W. Shaller (March, 2020)

“A feat, this heart’s control
Moment to moment
To scale all love down
To a cupped hand’s size”
Edith Tiempo, Bonsai

Bonsai - Thomas W. Shaller (March 2020)
“Bonzai” – Thomas W. Shaller (March 2020)

Thomas W. Schaller is an award-winning artist, architect, and author based in Los Angeles. As a renowned architectural artist, he received a Graham Foundation Grant and was a two-time recipient of the Hugh Ferris Memorial Prize. He has authored three books; the best-selling, and AIA award winner, Architecture in Watercolor (VNR – McGraw Hill) The Art of Architectural Drawing (J.Wiley and Sons)and  Thomas W. Schaller, Architect of Light : Watercolor Paintings by a Master – a retrospective of his recent artwork released by North Light Books / F+W Media and now Penguin / Random House, NYC  in 2018.

“My work is a study in contrasts: light and dark, vertical and horizontal, warm and cool tones, the real and the imagined, as well as the past, present, and future. These elements and others are designed to collide and sometimes find resolution on the surface of the paper. And by so doing, I invite you to take part in my artistic process – not to determine the stories I am telling – but hopefully, to inspire you to tell stories of your own.”

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Museum Tours: View “The Garden Court – Frick Collection” In 5K Video

Enjoy this 360° video view of the Garden Court of The Frick Collection. Available through your phone with Google Cardboard or other viewer as a 360° VR video. Right click or control + click (on a Mac) to select loop and enjoy the soothing sounds of the fountain. Shot during the exhibition, Canova’s George Washington, on view at The Frick Collection from May 23, 2018 to September 23, 2018.

Health Lecture: “Sleep Medicine, Art & Literature” By Professor Meir Kryger

Sleep medicine, art and literature – ars longa, vita brevis. Organised by the Sleep Medicine Section 4 February 2020.

Professor Meir Kryger, Author and Professor, Yale School of Medicine – Sleep Disorders & Effective Treatments.

Lecture: Sleep in art: A 7000 year odyssey

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Fine ARTS: 4K Video Tour – The VAN GOGH MUSEUM “Modern Art In Paris”

Van Gogh Museum Tour in 4K. Have you always wanted to be alone in the Van Gogh Museum? Step into Vincent’s world and enjoy the private video tour. Episode 3: Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam

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Photography: Singer Kenny Rogers (1938- 2020) Had “Passion For Taking Western Landscapes”

“Kenny Rogers took portraits and western landscape photos like no other. He was passionate and fell in love with the warmth and beauty that captured all that he saw through a lens,” says Patty Wente IPHF CEO and President. 

Kenny Rogers Photographs - One Tree
“One Tree” – Kenny Rogers

International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum logoThe International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum mourns the passing of its first Lifetime Achievement Award Winner and 2017 inductee Kenny Rogers. Rogers was a dedicated and talented photographer for nearly four decades. His best-known images are portraits of well-known singers, actors, and dignitaries from around the globe.

Kenny Rogers Photographs
“The Thumb” – Kenny Rogers

In addition, he had an ongoing passion for photographing the American landscape. Rogers was skilled with his large format view camera, and loved to make prints in his darkroom. Regarding his photography, he said, “I am an impulsive obsessive. I impulsively get involved with something, and then I get obsessed with it. So that’s what happened with photography.”

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Fine Arts: 4K VIRTUAL TOUR VIDEO – VAN GOGH MUSEUM “Painter Of Peasant Life”

Van Gogh Museum Tour in 4K. Have you always wanted to be alone in the Van Gogh Museum? Step into Vincent’s world and enjoy the private video tour. Episode 2: Painter of peasant life – Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam

Smartphone Books: The New York Public Library’s Interactive “Insta Novels”

Insta Novels launched August 22, 2018 on the Library’s Instagram account (@nypl) with Part 1 of a newly digitized version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. The novel is illustrated by well-known designer Magoz (@magoz).

The New York Public Library Insta Novels The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka

First, go to the Library’s Instagram account (@nypl) and tap Part 1 of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in the Highlights section, right under the bio.

Rest your thumb on lower right part of the screen to hold the page, and lift your thumb to turn the page. (The lower right thumb holder is designed to double as a flip book: if you lift your thumb and let the pages flip, you’ll see an animation.)

As more stories are added, the NYPL Instagram account’s Highlights will turn into a digital bookshelf.

Book Interviews: “Out Of Darkness, Shining Light” Author Petina Gappah

BBC Radio 4 Books and AuthorsBBC Radio 4 speaks to Petina Gappah on her new book, “Out of Darkness, Shining Light”.

 

“This is how we carried out of Africa the poor broken body of Bwana Daudi, the Doctor, David Livingstone, so that he could be borne across the sea and buried in his own land.” 

Petina Gappah Author
Author Petina Gappah

So begins Petina Gappah’s powerful novel of exploration and adventure in nineteenth-century Africa—the captivating story of the loyal men and women who carried explorer and missionary Dr. Livingstone’s body, his papers and maps, fifteen hundred miles across the continent of Africa, so his remains could be returned home to England and his work preserved there.

Narrated by Halima, the doctor’s sharp-tongued cook, and Jacob Wainwright, a rigidly pious freed slave, this is a story that encompasses all of the hypocrisy of slavery and colonization—the hypocrisy at the core of the human heart—while celebrating resilience, loyalty, and love.

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Artist Profiles: Finnish-American Riitta Klint – “Dreamlike” Drips Of Paint With Pencil On Clay Panels

My paintings on clay panels begin with thin veils of paint that drip, pool and congeal, and like nature, move out of my control, beautifully mysterious. I work intuitively within these initial drips and pools, searching for structure. Each successive stroke of paint or pencil mark continues to build a dreamlike otherworldly place. The mood is one of nature untamed, enchanting and rife with hidden secrets.

Riitta Klint Dragonfly Dreams Triptych Acrylic and Pencil on Claybord

My paintings are my connection to the Earth, its nature and beautiful mysteries. Riitta Klint PaintingsThere is a sadness as I witness the loss of our last wild places. My paintings are an attempt to keep alive those places and offer my audience a sanctuary in which to reflect.

Riitta Klint is from Helsinki, Finland and currently lives in Fort Worth, Texas and maintains a studio in nearby Aledo. Between these two places is a lifetime spent traveling the world thanks to her father’s career with IBM. Living in her native Finland, as well as in Iran, Portugal, Indonesia, Germany, Mexico, and the United States, together with extensive travel in Asia and Europe has shaped her unique vision and palette. Her work offers the viewer a front seat to that journey, and a threshold to cross over into their own imagination.

Klint works primarily in acrylic and pencil on Claybord™, smooth kaolin clay covered panels that offer the ideal surface for her manipulation of color and medium.

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