CAUGHT IN PAINT, Rita Blitt with the Parsons Dance Company

"When I am drawing and painting to music I am dancing."

Rita Blitt

Rita Blitt in her Studio, from her website http://www.ritablitt.com/

http://www.ritablitt.com/film-cip.html

Caught in Paint is a wonderful six minute video highlighting the visual arts collaboration between the artist, Rita Blitt and the Parsons Dance Company. As Blitt creates an improvisational dance with paint on to a piece of clear Mylar, the Parsons dancers mirror her fluid gestures and flowing lines with their bodies, extending her gestural marks beyond the two dimensional surface of the picture plane. Check out more of her work at http://www.ritablitt.com/ or catch her latest exhibition "Fear of War, Courage to Hope ... While Dancing" at the Gallery of Art and Design at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, MO on view until September 24, 2011.

Ju Ming is a Sculptor You Should Know

Ju Ming, Tai Chi, Single Whip (front view), 1998, bronze
St. Louis, MO

Chances are you have probably never heard of the artist Ju Ming; however, if you have visited Citygarden, the urban art park in downtown St. Louis, then you have definitely seen the monumental bronze Tai Chi, Single Whip (1998), a lithe, geometric figure dynamically set in a basic tai chi pose. The sculpture is one of many Ju Ming produced, in both wood and bronze, as part of his famous Taichi Series. Considered "one of the best selling sculptors on the art market" today by artnet.com, his work is represented by several European galleries (1).  Yet, in spite of his international reputation, Ju Ming is not a household name in the United States.

VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS OF ATOMIC ENERGY

After last week's post on Henry Moore, a friend sent me a link to the Hyde Park Historical Society website. Much to my surprise, I found myself looking at a grim bronze monument by the artist commemorating the birth of nuclear energy. The skull-like sculpture entitled Nuclear Energy 

(1964-1966) was commissioned by the University of Chicago to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of their successful atomic experiment. In 1942, physicist Enrico Fermi and his team built the first nuclear reactor and "initiated the first controlled release of nuclear energy (1)."  The work, which was installed on the campus in December of 1967, is a visual reminder of the positive and negative consequences of nuclear power.

A FRESH LOOK AT HENRY MOORE

Henry Moore, Two-Piece Reclining Figure No. 9, 1968

Henry Moore's Two-Piece Reclining Figure No. 9 (1968) kept me company on many Sunday afternoon visits to the Kansas City Sculpture Park along with the dynamic form of his standing female figure Large Interior Form (1981), which never ceased to amaze me no matter how many times I viewed it. I especially loved the way his monumental bronze sculptures, with their sensual curves, flirted simultaneously with abstraction and figuration. Although I have never viewed Moore's biomorphic forms as radical creations, Christopher Bedford's review of "Henry Moore" in Art in America has persuaded me to look at Moore's work with fresh eyes.