A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints

I am most likely the last person to see this movie and seeing it last night moved me. The story was so familiar to me, as if it were a story about my neighborhood, friends and the strain of transforming yourself from a kid to an adult. What grabbed me most was the feeling of being trapped in what is most...

Tim Burton at MOMA

The Museum of Modern Art, NYC presents a retrospective of artist and film maker Tim Burton. The program is a celebration of the gifted and often bizarre and controversial director of such movies as “Sweeney Todd”, “The Nightmare Before Christmas”, “Ed Wood” and “The Corpse Bride”. The...

Alexander Calder at SAM

The Seattle Art Museum showcases American artist Alexander Calder, 1898 – 1976.    “Alexander Calder:  A Balancing Act”, includes over 40 pieces from the 1920s to 1970s. “From miniature maquettes, works on paper and jewelry to monumental sculptures and one of the artist’s largest...

Small Paintings by Bill Sharp

There are a number of painters who paint on small canvases and yet the work is flowing and loose as if the artist was working on a surface that was at least a hundred times the size. One of many artists who’s work I like is Bill Sharp who is able to create architectural structure and atmosphere with...

Alice Neel at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

As part of its program called “The American Season”, MFAH presents “Painted Truths”, devoted to the colorful and intense work of artist Alice Neel, 1900 – 1984. She is “best known for her psychologically acute portraits. Intimate, casual, direct and personal, satirical at times, they chronicle...