Speed of Life

Gregg Chadwick Siddhartha 8"x6" oil on linen 2005 This weekend is the 1st Anniversary of the Santa Monica Studios. We are holding a free reception which is open to the public. My studio- #15 will be open. I will be at Esalen this weekend leading a workshop on Creativity with Phil Cousineau - The Painted Word: A Conversation between Word & Image - Phil Cousineau & Gregg Chadwick at Esalen, Big Sur But don't worry, Evelyn Gonzalez Figueroa will be studio sitting to answer your questions. Many of the paintings on view in my studio will be part of my next solo exhibition- "Between Moment and Memory" which will be held at the Julie Nester Gallery in Park City, Utah during the Sundance Film Festival. The historic 22,000 square foot hangar at 3026 Airport Avenue at the Santa Monica Airport will be open on Saturday, December 3rd from 6 to 9 pm. More than 30 artists will open their studios for the event which continues on Sunday, December 4th from 1 to 5 p...

A scribe was asked, "What is pleasure?" He answered, "Parchment, papers, shiny ink, and a cleft reed pen." A card bearing this quotation sits in a glass case among precious manuscripts and instruments of writing at the McGill Library in Montreal. Magnificent Octopus reports on this fascinating exhibit: Scribes, Scholars & Conservators .

Barry McGee (detail of a mural currently in the LACMA garage) Mayor Villaraigosa, I want to thank you for the bold steps that you have taken to create a Los Angeles for the 21st Century. Your vision and ideals are inspiring. Not long ago you attended the opening of Sergio Arau and Yareli Arizmendi's film: "A Day Without a Mexican" . Your commitment to challenging (and humorous) art is evident. Last May - Sergio Arau, Yareli Arizmendi, and the film's cinematographer Alan Caudillo - attended the opening of my exhibition at the LACMA Art Rental and Sales Gallery. It was an evening of spirit, camaraderie and possibility. We pledged our support to you in the upcoming election and knew that if the time came for the art community to reach out for your help that you would listen. That time has come sooner than we thought. It has been reported that in a few days, on December 1st, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is slated to demolish its parking garage to make way for a ...

Eye Unidentified Artist 3/4" x 3/4" watercolor on ivory ca. 1900 Smithsonian American Art Museum Kriston Capps announces: "I'm excited to introduce Eye Level , the blog for the Smithsonian American Art Museum. It's one of just a few museums forging new ground with new media (and is host to the Smithsonian's first blog!). Today's the official launch and I hope you'll check in frequently. When the Smithsonian American Art Museum reopens its renovated historic main building in July 2006, it will be a showcase for American art that celebrates this nation's vision and creativity. SAAM's blog Eye Level is part of the museum's continuing effort to explore the stories central to the American experienceand to search for what connects Americans today. Using the museum's collection as a touchstone, the conversation at Eye Level will center on the ways in which the nation's art connects to its history and culture. The discussion will extend ...

Edwin W. Dickinson American, 1891 - 1978 The Cello Player, 1924 - 1926 oil on canvas 60" x 48 1/4" DeYoung Museum photo by Gregg Chadwick "Dickinson is not a name that carries instant recognition outside the circles of art historians and artists. He spanned (1891 - 1978) a period in American art history which jumped from academic Realism to Cubism and Abstract Expressionism and through all of these changes he retained his own style, pausing here and there to prove that he was thoroughly informed by all the new schools in the arts while continuing his mission as a representational artist. His studios were in New York and in Cape Cod and it is here that he observed and painted the world as he saw it. Some of his canvases took years to complete." -Grady Harp

by Gregg Chadwick Olmec Sculpture photo by Gregg Chadwick "In 1862 plantation workers in Huaypan, Veracruz, thought that they had found a large overturned iron kettle buried in the ground. Believing that it might hide a cache of gold, they dug -- and dug -- and dug, eventually revealing a colossal stone portrait head. This was the first Olmec sculpture to be discovered in Mexico. It would be nearly 70 years before a number of extraordinary objects of jade and stone were to be seen as stylistically related and of a culture which nobody had known. That culture was arbitrarily named "Olmec" for the peoples who, at the time of the Spanish conquest, had inhabited the region where the first head had been found." - Gillett G. Griffin, from the catalog eesay for "The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership" exhibited at The Art Museum, Princeton University in 1996. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco have a new building to house the de Young museum and a n...

Lee Mullican "Space" 40" x 50" oil on canvas 1951 Los Angeles County Museum of Art "Mullican, like many other artists of his generation, was consumed with the question of how spirituality could be effectively represented in art. He had been stationed with the Army in Guam when atomic bombs landed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and, with thousands of other American soldiers in the Pacific, he was sent to occupy Japan immediately after. Faced with the unprecedented potential for nuclear annihilation, and soon given the emerging truth about the Holocaust in Europe, matters of life's sanctity were pressing in the years following the war. Creativity itself held profound intrinsic value — and in a measure unmatched in American culture before. History had brought the world to the brink. Artists, many of them returned from the battlefields, reasonably surmised that a reconsideration of prehistory might provide a platform from which to start over." - Christopher Kn...