Sonya Clark
art
news: July
- August 2010
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Greetings!
Over the past few weeks I have been on a
Smithsonian Artists Research Fellowship. The Smithsonian curators
and staff at the African Art and Natural History Museums have been
incredibly generous. The space and access they provided for me to
delve into their collections as inspiration for my work has been
(and I say this in the true sense of the word) awesome. I even got
to be part pf a historic Smithsonian photograph (see below.)
In exhibition news, many of the shows I am in continue through this
summer. So as you are out and about, I hope you get the chance to
catch one or two of them before the fall begins.
My best,
Sonya
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Check out my
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OPENING SOON:
Exhibit: TRUE SELF: The Search for
Identity in Modern and Contemporary Art
Madison Museum of
Contemporary Art, Madison, Wisconsin
August 18, 2010 - July 10,
2011
"True Self explores the ways artists have understood and conveyed
the essence of the self--through facial expression, body language,
dress, and the particulars of setting--in a selection of paintings,
sculpture, prints, and photographs. Drawn from MMoCA's permanent
collection, the exhibition lists a broad range of artists,
including Thomas Hart Benton, Sonya Clark, Chuck Close, John
Coplans, K�the Kollwitz, Alfred Leslie, Diego Rivera, Cindy
Sherman, Hollis Sigler, Raphael Soyer, and Ida Wyman."
CLOSING SOON +
CONTINUING:
Exhibit: HAND + MADE
Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston,
Texas
through
July 25
"Hand+Made: The Performative Impulse
in Art and Craft is an exhibition curated by Valerie Cassel Oliver
that explores the innovative means by which artists continue to
expand the traditional boundaries of art and craft. Through the
integration of performance, the artists featured in this exhibition
have broadened the context of craft in contemporary art." Artist
in the exhibit include VCU Craft/Material Studies alumni Ryan Gothrup and Gabriel
Craig,
the collaborative group B Team, Conrad Bakker, Nick Cave, Cat Chow,
Sonya Clark, Theaster
Gates, Cynthia Giachetti, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Lauren Kalman,
Christy Matson, James Melchert, Yuka Otani, Sheila Pepe, Michael
Rea, Anne Wilson, Saya Woolfalk, and Bohyun
Yoon.
Exhibit: SOCIAL SKIN
Anderson Gallery, Richmond,
Virginia
through August 1
Social
Skin is the third in a biennial series of exhibitions undertaken by
students in the Museum Studies graduate program, VCU Department of
Art History. As the press release states: "Social
Skin explores the intricacies of both the body's physicality and
the ways in which the social self uses the physical body to craft
individuality.Wide-ranging in terms of culture, time period, and
subject matter, artworks and artifacts on loan from private and
public collections make up the exhibition. It features work by such
well-known contemporary artists as Kara Walker, Hank Willis Thomas,
Gillian Wearing, Nan Goldin, Douglas Gordon, Raymond Pettibon, and
Wendy Ewald, and by VCU faculty Sonya Clark, Susie Ganch, Sonali
Gulati, and Elizabeth King.The exhibition also includes historic
and ethnographic objects from VCU Special Collections, the
Valentine Richmond History Center, the Wilton House, and James
Madison University, as well as selections from the Anderson
Gallery's permanent collection."
Exhibit:
REFLECTING/COLLECTING: VMFA as MUSE
1708 Gallery Satellite
exhibition at the
Linden Row Inn,
Richmond,
VA
through
August
15
Reflecting
and Collecting isopening
in conjunction with the May 1 re-opening of the galleries of the
Virginia Museum of Fine Art. Each participating
artist was asked to select a piece from the VMFA collection and to
create a new work inspired by it. I made a piece in response to "A
Ride for Liberty- The Fugitive Slaves", 1862, Eastman Johnson
(American, 1824-1906) in The Paul Mellon Collection. Artists
included in the exhibit are David Choi, Aimee Joyaux, Michael
Lease, Amie Oliver (curator), Sally Bowring, Heidi Trepanier,
Andrew Kozilowski, Jeff Majer, Sonya Clark, and Kendra
Wadsworth.
Exhibit: NEW MATERIALITY - Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of
Craft
Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton,
Massachusetts
through February 6, 2011
The
artists in this exhibit curated by Fo Wilson "use new technologies
in tandem with traditional craft materials - clay, glass, wood,
fiber and metal - to forge new artist directions." The exhibiting
artists are Brian Boldon, Shaun Bullens, Lia Cook, Susan Working
and E.G. Crichton, Donald Fortescue and Lawrence LaBianca, Wendy
Maruyama, Christy Matson, Cat Mazza, Nathalie Miebach, Mike
Simonian and Maaike Evers (Mike and Maaike), Sonya Clark, Tim Tate, and Mark
Zirpel
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HUMAN SMITHSONIAN
SUNBURST
I was thrilled to be part of this first ever Smithsonian sunburst
made up of of thousands of staff, fellows, and the like at the
annual picnic during the Folklife Festival in DC. If you look
really closely you can see me waving just above the red
center.
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A little more about
me...
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I'm chair of the Department of Craft/Material
Studies at Virginia
Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Richmond,
Virginia. Prior to this I was a Baldwin Bascom Professor of
Creative Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I went to
Cranbrook Academy of Art for my MFA, the Art Institute of Chicago
for my BFA, and before that, Amherst College for a BA in
psychology. I have been able to pursue my studio practice because
of generous honors and opportunities such as a Pollock-Krasner
Award, a Rockefeller Foundation Residency in Italy, a Red Gate
Residency in China, and a Virginia Commission for the Arts
Fellowship. My work has been exhibited in over 200 venues in the
United Kingdom, Brazil, South Africa, Canada, Taiwan, Austria,
Australia, Ghana, France, Switzerland, and throughout the
USA.
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