Richard Tuttle

Hello and Happy Thursday!

 

Hope you are well in Florida and that the rain has stopped down there- it just started here this morning. Yuk.  It has made an utter mess of my hair.  I read a quote once, but I don’t remember who said it, but it was this: “Embrace messy hair”.  And frankly, if I could just manage that, my life would be a lot easier.  If I could just accept that I am never, ever going to have perfectly smooth, tidy hair, and embrace the wild, 1980’s bad home perm looking mess that is my natural hair, I would stress a lot less.  I’m going to work on that.  I’m going to fail, but I’m going to work on that.

 

Anyway, this weeks’ artist is Richard Tuttle.  He was a “minimalist” and did a lot of work starting in the late 60s but I’m pretty sure he’s still alive.  I like him because he worked with a lot of different thing – textiles and mosaics, and murals and silkscreens…it seems like he’s the kind of guy that just likes to experiment with stuff and be playful – but thoughtful – in his approach to art, and I’ve always been a fan of that – and he worked on some things that were gigantic, and some things that were tiny – so he changed it up all the time.  There are also a decent number of pictures of him working, which I like – I like to see an artist in the process of making art, getting dirty and with their hands in it.  That’s my favorite part of the art, not the part when it’s hanging in some airless gallery with stark white walls and people are drinking wine and making obnoxious and irrelevant comments about it.

 

So, here’s one of my favorite Tuttle works, mostly because of the mountain in the bottom right corner – I love the ladder to the clouds with all my heart.

Have a fabulous week, and know that I love you and think that you’re awesome.

Hugs and Kisses,

Auntie Paula

Xoxoxoxo

 

Norman Bluhm

Good morning and happy September 18^th!  Tomorrow is my second most favorite holiday of the whole year (Halloween, of course, is the first)…Sept 19^th is Talk Like A Pirate Day!  Yayyyyy!

 

SO, I give you some awesome pirate jokes to make you smile:

 

For this weeks’ artist, I’ve chosen Norman Bluhm, in particular, my favorite piece of his, “Untitled Drawing #3”.  And that name is one of my favorite things about Norman Bluhm.  He could have been all Mr. Smarty-pants and called this “Giant Nosed Man with a Yellow Moustache”, but that would have taken all the fun out of it – instead, he’s totally leaving it up to you to look at this piece and see what  you see.  I’m a fan of that.

Norman was born in the 1920s in the US and served in WWII as a young man.  He wasn’t a super famous artist because he didn’t work very hard at being commercially successful, but a lot of art people think his stuff was pretty important.  He also refused to be part of the Pop Art movement (remember Andy Warhol?).  I think his work is beautiful and interesting, and I look at this piece and I see sunshine-y colored horses dancing in happy pink clouds and swirly lines and it makes my heart joyful.

 

Hope that you are doing well this week – know that I love you and think that you’re awesome.

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula

xoxoxoxo

 

Ad Reinheart

Hello and Happy Wednesday as always!

 

How are you this week?  Things in NJ are excellent.  Did I tell you about my hummingbirds?  We put a feeder out in the backyard and filled it with the fancy store-bought red stuff that they’re supposed to love, and we had no hummingbirds.  And then I made some sugar water with red food coloring in it (which is about a million times cheaper than the store bought fancy stuff) and as soon as we put it out, we had visitors!  I LOVE them.  They are just the cutest little things – I adore how they hover, and how their wings turn into a blur because they’re moving so fast!  In the next week or so we’ll probably stop seeing them because they’ll go south for the winter.  Maybe they’ll come visit you in Florida!

This weeks’ artist is Adolph “Ad” Frederick Reinhardt.  He lived in the early 1900s and was only 53 when he died in the 1960s. He’s probably most famous for painting these big black squares…which I hate (they’re actually bunches of shades of almost black, but really, it’s a big black square).  I don’t get it.  He had this whole philosophy about them, but from my perspective, although the thought pattern is interesting, anyone can paint a big black square. There’s nothing artistically interesting about it (art people everywhere are feeling a chill creep down their spines as I write that statement, but I don’t care.  I’m allowed to hate it.). 

 

However, he did some really fun abstract paintings that I like a lot.  They’re probably also supposed to be really deep and profound, but I just like to look at them and try to see things.  I’m pretty sure there’s an upside-down clown face in the first one, and I see two happy people hugging in the second.

 

Know that I love you both and think that you’re awesome.

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula

xoxoxoxo 

 

Susan Rothenberg - Untitled (a big horse)

Happy Thursday to my favoritest small humans!

 

How’s things?  I hear that the Labor Day feast prepared by Shannon was an amazing success – especially the 4 desserts!  Much jealous!  I wish your uncle Patrick and I could have been there to share the day with you all.

 

Things here are just fine – September is one of my favorite months; the air is getting cooler, but isn’t yet cold.  I do dislike that it’s so dark in the mornings now, though.  When we get up to take our morning walk, it’s pretty black outside.  Boo!

 

We’re starting to get ready for Halloween this year, which is also our 10^th wedding anniversary – your uncle has been kind enough to agree to let me have a photographer over to take funny pictures.  I’m having a fabulous time planning that – will send pics once I have them!

 

This weeks artist is Susan Rothenberg.  She’s a modern artist, born in 1945, so she’s just a handful of years older than Gram-E and Gramp-E.  Her work gets compared to Georgia O’Keeffe a lot… I see some similarities, I think Susan’s work stands on it’s own – and Susan paints living animals where Georgia tended to focus on flowers and skulls (that’s not totally true, but her more famous work certainly focused on them, anyway).

 

I particularly like Susans’ horses – some of which were absolutely gigantic paintings - and the raven painting below, which is just barely a bird at all, but so clearly one at the same time – I love how the edges are kind of soft and blurry, and the paintings are very simple (the artsy folk would say “minimalist”), but because they’re simple they really draw your eye into them.

 

Hope you like them, too!  In any case, have a wonderful week and know that I love you and think that you’re awesome.

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula

XOXOXO