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Some cool visual art images:

Agata Olek / Dumbo Arts Center: Art Under the Bridge Festival 2009 / 20090926.10D.54812.P1.C23.BW / SML

Image by See-ming Lee ??? SML
Agata Olek (Flickr). Photographed during my interview with her regarding her 100% Acrylic Art Guards public installation during the annual Art Under the Bridge Festival in 2009.

Her wonderfully inspiring portfolio is available at www.agataolek.com. She also has a blog at www.agataolek.com/blog

See also Agata Olek talks about her 100% Acrylic Art Guards (Flickr 720p HD video)

Agata Olek Biography. The SPLAT! of colors hits you in the face, often clashing so ostentatiously that it instantly tunes you into the presence of severely cheeky humor. A moment later the fatigue of labor creeps into your fingers as a coal miner’s work ethic becomes apparent. Hundreds of miles of crocheted, weaved, and often recycled materials are the fabric from which the wild and occasionally wearable structures of her fantasylands are born.

Olek was born Agata Oleksiak in Poland and graduated from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland with a degree in cultural studies. In New York, she rediscovered her ability to crochet and since then she has started her crocheted journey/madness.

Resume sniffers may be pleased to know Olek’s work has been presented in galleries from Brooklyn to Istanbul to Venice and Brazil, featured in "The New York Times", "Fiberarts Magazine", "The Village Voice", and "Washington Post" and drags a tail of dance performance sets and costumes too numerous to mention.

Olek received the Ruth Mellon Award for Sculpture, was selected for 2005 residency program at Sculpture Space, 2009 residency in Instituto Sacatar in Brazil, and is a winner of apex art gallery commercial competition. Olek was an artist in an independent collective exhibition, "Waterways," during the 49th Venice Biennale. She was also a featured artist in "Two Continents Beyond," at the 9th International Istanbul Biennale.

Olek herself however can be found in her Greenpoint studio with a bottle of spiced Polish vodka and a hand rolled cigarette aggressively re-weaving the world as she sees.

agataolek.com
agataolek.com/blog

13th annual D.U.M.B.O. Art Under the Bridge Festival® (Sept 25 to Sept 27, 2009)
www.dumboartfestival.org/press_release.html

The three-day multi-site neighborhood-wide event is a one-of-a-kind art happening: where serendipity meets the haphazard and where the unpredictable, spontaneous and downright weird thrive. The now teenage D.U.M.B.O. Art Under the Bridge Festival® presents touchable, accessible, and interactive art, on a scale that makes it the nation’s largest urban forum for experimental art.

Art Under the Bridge is an opportunity for young artists to use any medium imaginable to create temporary projects on-the-spot everywhere and anywhere, completely transforming the Dumbo section of Brooklyn, New York, into a vibrant platform for self-expression. In addition to the 80+ projects throughout the historical post-industrial waterfront span, visitors can tour local artists’ studios or check out the indoor video_dumbo, a non-stop program of cutting-edge video art from New York City and around the world.

The Dumbo Arts Center (DAC) has been the exclusive producer of the D.U.M.B.O Art Under the Bridge Festival® since 1997. DAC is a big impact, small non-profit, that in addition to its year-round gallery exhibitions, is committed to preserving Dumbo as a site in New York City where emerging visual artists can experiment in the public domain, while having unprecedented freedom and access to normally off-limit locations.

www.dumboartscenter.org
www.dumboartfestival.org
www.video_dumbo.org

Related SML
+ SML Fine Art (Flickr Group)
+ SML Flickr Collections: Events
+ SML Flickr Sets: Art
+ SML Flickr Sets: Dumbo Arts Center: Art Under the Bridge Festival 2009
+ SML Flickr Tags: Art
+ SML Pro Blog: Art

North Charleston Arts Festival

Image by North Charleston
Now in its 29th year, the North Charleston Arts Festival will take place April 29 through May 7, 2011. The nine day event is one of the most comprehensive arts festivals in the state, providing thousands of residents & visitors with a fabulous array of performances, exhibitions, and activities featuring national, regional, and local artists and performers.

Organized by the City of North Charleston Cultural Arts Department, the festival strives to maintain the spirit of a community celebration with the mission of presenting a broad, multidiscipline event schedule that provides a wide range of performing, visual, media, and literary arts events for people of all ages and backgrounds. Many of the offerings are free, and those that are ticketed are moderately priced. Recognized by the Southeast Tourism Society as a Top 20 Event, the North Charleston Arts Festival truly offers something for everyone.

San Francisco – SoMa: SFMoMA – Andy Warhol’s Self Portrait

Image by wallyg
Self-Portrait
1967
acrylic and silkscreen enamel on canvas, 72 1/8 in. x 72 1/8 in.
Andy Warhol, American (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1928 – 1987, New York City, New York)

Acquired 1992, Collection SFMOMA, Gift of Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson, © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 92.283

Warhol is known for creating silkscreen portraits of celebrities and consumer goods. His choice of subjects and his use of what was widely regarded as a commercial process raised questions about the cultural effects of mechanical reproduction and consumerism.

In this self-portrait Warhol further explored the boundaries between high art and mass culture. the band covering the left side of his face is both the result of an intentionally haphazard silkscreening technique and a parody of a painter’s gestural brushwork. Likewise, the time-honored genre of self-portraiture is itself challenged here. Whereas self-portraits have traditionally been considered a direct expression of an artist’s character, Warhol’s carefully cultivated public persona complicates this assumption.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) was opened in 1935 under director Grace L. McCann Morley as the San Francisco Museum of Art, the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art. For its first sixty years, the museum occupied upper floors of the War Memorial Veterans Building in the Civic Center. Under director Henry T. Hopkins, the museum added "Modern" to its title in 1975, and established an international reputation. In 1995 the museum moved to its current location, a large cubistic building designed by Mario Botta Architetto of Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum at 151 Third Street.