Sarah Baley Bois
7 May - 17 June 2009

Opening Reception
Thursday, 7 May 2009 6-8 pm

Collette Blanchard Gallery is pleased to present Sarah Baley's Bois, which will be on view from May 7th through June 17th, 2009.

Through a series of photographs, Baley explores sexuality and gender definitions while specifically highlighting a community called "Bois". Cinematic images of "Bois" dressed in fashions ranging from blue-collar to school boy aesthetic are juxtaposed with photographs of a changing industrial urban landscape in stages of decay and redevelopment.

Through lighting and subject placement, Baley makes the viewers aware that they are observing a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the "Bois" community. The artist places the "Bois" in the foreground of the frame, either gazing directly at the artist/viewers, as in Jasper and Little Prince, or in an intimate pose (e.g. embracing, kissing, in thought) or setting (e.g. bedroom), as in Left Wing, Bed Peace and Kiss. Baley also makes the "Bois" the main focus through the use of lighting; backgrounds blend into darkened masses while the "Bois" are well-lit at the foreground. Through these techniques, Baley brings sub-culture from the periphery to center stage.

For the artist, the urban landscape, reflected in the rapid development in Red Hook, Brooklyn, functions as a metaphor, or mirror, for a fluid, transforming definition of sexuality and gender at the heart of the "Bois" community. Many of the "Bois" are non-conformists that reject gender as a binary system of male or female. Through Baley's photographs, the artist portrays sexuality and gender as more fluid than a two-part system. According to the artist, "Sexuality is prismatic. It is the full spectrum of color...one of the few ways we can still express freedom."

Sarah Baley lives and works in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Baley received her B.F.A in photography at the Art Center College of Design in California. Recently, the Brooklyn Museum acquired Baley's Dug (2005) for their permanent collection. In August 2009, the work will be on display in the museum's American Identities Galleries.

For more information please contact Jocelyn London at 917.639.3912 or jocelyn@colletteblanchard.com.

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Here's another great sand art video from the cool artist I discovered recently. Check it out.

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It's sitting right there on YouTube for all to enjoy...MAXWELL'S NEW VIDEO PRETTY WINGS.

Check it out!

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Ernie Barnes, an African American figurative painter and former lineman for the San Diego Chargers and Denver Broncos, has died. He was 70.

Barnes died Monday at a hospital of complications from a rare blood disorder, his longtime assistant and friend Luz Rodriguez said. She would not elaborate on the disorder.

His famous "Sugar Shack" dance scene appeared on the cover of Marvin Gaye's "I Want You" in 1976 and the closing credits of the "Good Times" television show.

I was going to do a profile on him as I often do here, but due to copyright infringement concerns they asked that I don't do a profile so I will not. However, this artist is too important to ignore so I thought I'd at least mention is passing.

Rest in peace Mr. Barnes.

SF Chronicle

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Nicole Kidman Chanel

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net

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Galerie Orange welcomes, for the first time, emerging artist Jean-Robert Drouillard, who revisits classic wood sculpture creating a playful universe where paradox and contradiction are ubiquitous.

Jean-Robert Drouillard is one of the only sculptors of his generation working with wood using the practices of traditional craftsmen. His technical abilities unveil with vigor a unique and mythical world. He deliberately leaves his signature on the surface of the wood ; the marks and imprints he unavoidably inflicts onto the material and the pure colors applied on the surfaces gives the work life and disconcerting presence.

The self-portrait is at the heart of Drouillard’s sculptural creations. His renderings in sculpture mirror the use of the first person in litterature; his work is a reflection on both his personal state and today’s fixation with individuality.

In ACTUAL POETRY (C’est à moi que tu parles ?), he chooses an iconography that he qualifies as ‘boreal’. A grouping of imaginary characters, evoking both man and beast, emerges from the raw material. It looks as if a silent dialogue between Ovide and La Fontaine is about to begin. Both realistic and transformed, grotesque and dignified, the beings populating this deceptively naive universe use disguises, but also reveal the depth of their nature.

Jean-Robert Drouillard was born in 1970 in Chatam (Ontario) and spent most of his childhood in Gaspésie before moving to Quebec city. After studying litterature and litterary creation, Drouillard turned towards sculpture. He received his diploma from the École-Atelier de sculpture in Quebec city in 2000 and immediately started to make sculptures and objects in wood, metal and concrete. He works at the ateliers du Bloc 5, a work cooperative which he founded in 2002 in Limoilou with four other artists and crafstmen. He teaches sculpture at the Maison des métiers d’art de Québec since 2004.

Heures d'ouverture | Opening hours
Lundi au vendredi: 10h à 18h | Samedi et dimanche: 11h à 18h
Monday to Friday: 10 am – 6 pm | Saturday and Sunday: 11 am – 6 pm

galerie orange, 81 rue st-paul est montréal qc h2y 3r1 514.396.6670 www.galerieorange.com

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net

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My grandmother loved Maude and The Golden Girls. By default, I fell in love with The Golden Girls as well. An actress, animal advocate and legend has passed away.

Beatrice “Bea” Arthur (May 13, 1922 – April 25, 2009) was an American comedian, actress and singer. In a career spanning seven decades, Arthur achieved success as the title character, Maude Findlay, on the 1970s sitcom Maude, and as Dorothy Zbornak on the 1980s sitcom The Golden Girls. Arthur won an Emmy for both roles.

She was 86.

Spokesman Dan Watt said that Arthur died Saturday morning at her home in Los Angeles, her family by her side.

She is survived by her sons Matthew and Daniel and grandchildren Kyra and Violet, he said.

No funeral services are currently planned, Watt said, adding that the family asked that donations be made to either the Art Attack Foundation or PETA in lieu of flowers.

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ZWELETHU MTHETHWA

New Works

April 23 - May 23, 2009

Jack Shainman Gallery is pleased to present Zwelethu Mthethwa's fifth solo exhibition at the gallery featuring large format photographs from several new series including, Mozambique, Coal Miners, and Contemporary Gladiators.

Mthethwa, whose stunning portraits show black Africans as dignified and defiant, even under the duress of social and economic hardship, is a key figure in the South African photography movement that exploded onto the world stage following Apartheid's fall in 1994. Working in both urban and rural industrial areas, Mthethwa documents domestic life, labor, the environment, and landscape in South Africa and neighboring countries. His work challenges the conventions of both Western documentary work and African commercial studio photography, marking a transition away from presenting Africa and Africans as the visually exotic and diseased, employing a fresh approach distinguished by his use of scale, color, composition, and his collaboration with his subjects. Drawing from the history of portraiture and photojournalism, Mthethwa's works often comment on gender roles and raise consciousness around issues related to post-apartheid South African society and globalization.

ZWELETHU MTHETHWA (born in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, 1960) earned his BFA from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, a then white's only universityspecial ministerial consent. He earned his master's degree while on a Fulbright Scholarship to the Rochester Institute of Technology. Mthethwa has had over thirty-five international solo exhibitions and has been featured in numerous group shows, including the 2005 Venice Biennial, Snap Judgments at the International Center of Photography, New York, Africa Remix, the Gwangju Biennale, the 8th Havana Biennial, the Istanbul Biennale, and The Short Century: Independence and Liberation movements in Africa 1945-1994, curated by Okwui Enwezor. Most recently a solo exhibition of his work was on view at Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA, and it was included in a group exhibition as part of Prospect 1 in New Orleans, LA. A forthcoming and long-awaited monograph, Zwelethu Mthethwa, will be published by the Aperture Foundation in November 2009.

For further information and press photography please contact Jack Shainman Gallery at (212) 645-1701.

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My model discovery Miguel Vasquez recently walked in Brooklyn Fashion week, just booked a nice gig, is up for a booking with a major design house AND he has just entered the Sean John Jean model search contest. Please go to the site http://www.seanjohn.com/contest/ and vote for Miguel Vasquez (he's listed as MIGUEL). He's wearing a blue sweater with no shirt in his beautiful head shot done by yours truly.

Let's give this very nice and very handsome young man a chance to make his dreams come true.

For more on Miguel, here's the old post.

Ladies (and some gentlemen...) Introducing Miguel. He's an up and coming young model here in NYC. He's brand new on the scene and in need of representation. These images are from his first shoot EVER which we did about 5 weeks ago. Casting agents, modeling agencies and other with work for him contact me for more details.

Peep some basics about Miguel:

My name is Miguel vasquez.

My mother's from puerto rico and my father is from new york.

I model because I want to have a new opportunity and to just try something different and hopefully be successful at it. I see myself as a successful young family man doing something I love.

My favorite food is spanish food

My favorite magazine is sportscenter

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As you all know late last year I was one of several artists featured in a group show at Rush Arts gallery called White Lies: Black Noise. One of the other artists in the show was an incredibly talented and passionate artist named LaToya Ruby Frazier. She and I recently reconnected at the Studio Museum as we came out to support Kalup Linzy and his opening of his new show there.

LaToya is one of several artists selected for a group show of emerging artists that opened this week at The New Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. LaToya's work is provocative, thought provoking, passionate, intelligent and emotional. It really strikes a chord deep inside me because of my very close relationship with my Mother and my recently deceased grandmother.

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Bio
LaToya Ruby Frazier born in Pittsburgh PA in 1982 received her BFA in Photography and Graphic Design in 2004 at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. She received her MFA in Art Photography in the School of Visual Performing Arts in 2007 at Syracuse University.

With influences of documentary style photography and direct cinema Frazier utilizes photography and video to produce sociopolitical work within the emotional realm of the Black family experience blurring the lines between private and public space.

Frazier’s body of work entitled The Notion of Family: Family Work 2002-2007 is a collaborative development between her mother, grandmother and herself. Through black and white photographs and a documentary video series entitled, A Mother to Hold, Frazier’s honest and relentless approach intensely explores the complex relationship she has between both of her mothers.

A Mother to Hold has been screened at the 2006 Black Maria Film Festival in Jersey City, NJ, the Brooklyn Underground Film Festival, the Black International Film Festival and the Women of Color Film Festival in New York City where she received the Producers Choice Award.

Frazier received the 2007 Geraldine Dodge Fellowship Award as the 2006 College Art Association Professional development recipient. She is a member of En Foco. Her works have been exhibited In Syracuse, NY at Light Work, Community Folk Art Center and Everson Art Museum; at Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center in Auburn NY, the Longwood Art Gallery in New York City and can be viewed on Aperture’s 2006 portfolio picks.

Frazier has worked as a photo editor for Newsweek and is currently the Associate Curator for the Civic Square Art Gallery in the Visual Arts Department of the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.

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Artist Statement: THE NOTION OF FAMILY: FAMILY WORK 2002-2009

My position and role as daughter, photographer, and filmmaker transcends the objective practice in classic documentary, which has continuously undermined the Black family experience by avoiding our emotional and psychological realm.

The collaboration between my family and myself blurs the line between self-portraiture and social document. Utilizing photography and video to navigate dynamics of the roles we play complicates the usual classifications of functional and dysfunctional families.

My work has a deep concern for the mother/ daughter relationship. Relentlessly documenting encounters with my mother and grandmother enables me to break unspoken intergenerational cycles. Their silent familial gaze in the photographs juxtaposed with our voices reveals the tension between how we relate.

The role of the male figure; father, brother, lover and son resides in the visual tensions of a dying old man; Gramps, an innocent adolescent; JC and a soldier; my brother Sergeant Brandon Frazier. They indicate the absence of men in the household.

Grandma Ruby played the role of mother to me and JC, and caretaker to her father, Gramps. Being home consisted of routine checks on Gramps who screamed for help to be picked up off the floor or carried to the bathroom. If we were not tending to Gramps we sat in separate rooms. Family secrets, hidden history and constant silence defined our coexistence.

Mom is co-author, artist and subject. Our relationship only exists through a process of making images together. I see beauty in all her imperfections and abuse. Her drug addiction is secondary to our psychological connection. When we are capturing one another we meditate on our difference and sameness.

Holiday visits home rupture the silent familial gaze in our experimental documentary series "A Mother to Hold." Through the first person point of view, the camera becomes a magnet attracting and repelling; the viewer has the access to experience and acknowledge our relationship without judgment.

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OMG this woman SANGS HER toosh off! She is simply one of the GREATEST VOICES OF ALL TIME!!!! This Cole Porter song is AMAZING as well. I've always loved this version since What's Up Doc is one of my favorite movies of all time! It's hysterical and my little sister and I used to laugh our heads off as kids. Today I searched for and found NOT only Barbara's version on iTunes, but I also found incredible versions of the song by Louie Armstrong another VOICE FOR THE AGES and cool version by Carmen McCrae and Sammy Davis Junior.

All of this lead me to realize just how talented, classy and sophisticated entertainers used to be. I know I know times change and I love change, but damn...these folks had CLASS (something lacking nowadays), style, charisma and a WORK ETHIC!

Enjoy this video and if you ever get a chance see the movie too. Make sure to check out the other versions of the song. I hear Ella Fitzgerald does a great rendition as well.

Lyrics

"YOU'RE THE TOP"
Cole Porter

At words poetic, I'm so pathetic
That I always have found it best,
Instead of getting it off my chest,
To let 'em rest unexpressed,
I hate parading my serenading
As I'll probably miss a bar,
But if this ditty is not so pretty
At least it'll tell you
How great you are.

You're the top!
You're the Coliseum.
You're the top!
You're the Louvre Museum.
You're a melody from a symphony by Strauss
You're a Bendel bonnet,
A Shakespeare's sonnet,
You're Mickey Mouse.
You're the Nile,
You're the Tower of Pisa,
You're the smile on the Mona Lisa
I'm a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop,
But if, baby, I'm the bottom you're the top!

You're the top!
You're Mahatma Gandhi.
You're the top!
You are Napoleon Brandy.
You're the purple light
Of a summer night in Spain,
You're the National Gallery
You're Garbo's salary,
You're cellophane.
You are sublime,
You're turkey dinner,
You're the time, the time of the Derby winner
I'm a toy balloon that is fated soon to pop
But if, baby, I'm the bottom,
You're the top!

You're the top!
You're a Waldorf salad.
You're the top!
You're a Berlin Ballad
You're the nimble tread
Of the feet of Fred Astaire,
You are an O'Neill drama,
You're Whistler's mama!
You're camembert.

You're a rose,
You're Inferno's Dante,
You're the nose
On the great Durante.
I'm a lazy lout,
who is just about to stop

But if, baby, I'm the bottom,
She's the one for me,
and I've got him
'cause if, baby, I'm the bottom,

You're the top!

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I LOVE fashion videos. Check out this great video featuring actress Keira Knightley

Keira Knightley Coco Mademoiselle

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Hey Popsters in the first of many upcoming releases, previews and world premieres coming this summer check out the BRAND NEW VIDEO from The Black Eyed Peas "Boom Boom Pow" from their CD The E.N.D. Courtesy of Fly Life and Dip Dive! You know we don't do a lot of hip hop here, but this video is Urban Pop creativity if I ever saw it. Peep it and enjoy ya day. Oh yeah and make sure you tell ya friends to check out the blog.