Jul 14th, 2020 • 8 minute read
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The Weekly Curation: Summer Sun!
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Mel’s back! We had some amazing guest curations the past few weeks with art advisor Emily McElwreath and instagram influencer Daisy Chaussée –– if you haven’t seen their curations, you should definitely check them out. Now, Mel Reese is back to discuss some Art in Res pieces that she feels explores the vibrancy of summer!
This week artist and curator Mel Reese brings together a collection of Art in Res pieces which emulate the height of summer. Summer means something different to all of us, from long summer vacations, long afternoons spent on the couch, or evenings wandering our suburban neighborhoods, heat rising from the cement. For some, there is vibrancy and energy, for others lethargy and inertia. But the one thing that’s universal is the heat.
As all fashion companies and TV advertisements tell us, summer is the perfect time to hit the refresh button. And what better way than to find new art and revamp your living space?
Scroll through the post to see Mel’s placement of each piece, as well as how the selected works come together in a thoughtful, coalescent collection. Make sure to also catch Mel’s helpful educational tips on curating your own collection!
Now let’s scroll onward –– happy browsing!
Colors of Summer
Barbara Kemp Cowlin’s work perfectly embodies the joy of summer. These colors are joyful, pure and simple. The heat of the vibrant orange is cooled by the soothing blue, surrounded by a meditative lilac, then reflected by the shimmering yellow. The shapes are reminiscent of a pool club shower or the edge of an enticing body of water, smooth lines that remind us of the architecture of our favorite summer places.
Barbara Kemp Cowlin was born in Georgia and has lived on the west coast, east coast and in-between, as well as in Germany and Australia. She has spent most of her adult life in the southwestern United States. She is an acrylic painter who creates images of architectural spaces, water and flowers. Her drive to capture light and shadow, reflections, movement, and all things ephemeral is evident in each series.
Cool Summer Shade
The colors of this piece by Jordan Holms are just FUN. There’s a glowing hot pink encompassed by lush green, giving us the feeling of hunkering down in a blanket across the lawn or in a park, reading our favorite book until we take an unexpected summer nap. The painting smells like fresh cut grass and it sounds like neighbor kids playing in the distance. We feel safe in the cool, rich colors, snuggled perfectly in the shade.
Jordan Holms is an interdisciplinary artist who works primarily in painting, sculpture, and textiles. Her work examines how space is materialized, organized, and made to mean. Holms lives and works in San Francisco, California.
Urban Summer
We all know the feeling of a long summer walk, nights spent exploring the suburbs and the edges of the city, time spent in parking lots and empty highways. In Mathew Tucker’s piece we see an almost mundane scene paired with pure NEON –– a glowing pink sky and vibrant brushstrokes –– speaking to the heart of a city summer and the magic of the summer. We can feel the heat emanating off the cement, encircling us, and burning the soles of our shoes. It’s heat we can’t escape and that summer feeling we know is so universal.
Mathew was born In Harpenden in Hertfordshire, on the fringes of London where he lived with his sister and parents until the age of two. He was then brought up and educated in Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Bahrain, St. Lucia and England as his family moved around due to the nature of his father's work. These formative years spent traveling have fueled Mathew’s interest in exploring his sense of place, a recurring theme in his work.
Beach of our Dreams
What would summer be without an iconic beach scene, paired with the ever-iconic blue & white striped beach towel thrown across an Adirondack chair? Isn’t that the image we’ve always dreamed of? In contrast to Tucker’s piece, Ella Yang’s summer feels relaxing, beautiful, and enticing. We can smell the salty air, taking long deep breaths, and dreaming of The Hamptons. Like a kitchen in a Nancy Meyers movie, this is how we think our lives should be, not necessarily how they are.
Ella Yang, a first-generation Korean-American and native New Yorker, is a mostly self-taught painter based in Brooklyn, New York. She takes great pleasure in traditional methods of oil painting, especially working "en plein air," i.e. on site with a portable easel.
Idyllic Front Porch
Henrion’s dappled work paired with her neon palette shows the mania and energy of summer. It’s an idyllic front porch, but it’s high energy, the vibrancy is not quite as soothing as Yang’s piece. It invites the feeling of running down to the beach, screaming in the waves, chasing crawdads, and exploring new sandy territory. We think of sitting in front of our home, whether it’s rural or urban, in the soothing shade of the porch after a long, exhausting day, chatting with friends, and breathing in fresh summer air. The quilted texture of the surface brings an additional layer of comfort to the work, the soft surface juxtaposed with the bright colors shows the unity of energy and calm like an evening after a long day at the beach, a perfect summer combination.
Born in 1932 in New York City, Marilyn Henrion is a graduate of Cooper Union. As a life-long New Yorker, Henrion's aesthetic vision has always been deeply rooted in the urban geometry of her surroundings, from the earlier geometric abstractions to the more recent mixed media works.
Summer Retreat
Retreat is the title of this piece and we feel that in our very bones. That’s what we all need right now. Badrichani’s work is so strikingly beautiful it walks a line between fine art and an aspirational magazine spread –– beautiful girls in their cool summer swimsuits. This embodies the ideal retreat, a glass of wine, and the perfect summer feel all night long. We want to grab our bathing suits and head to the water, lounging in the waves and sand with our very best friends.
Faustine Badrichani is a French artist based in New York. Her work focuses on the female body and is an artistic exploration of the feminine figure.
Calming Waters
This piece embodies every body of water, from a gentle river to a pristine lake to a calm ocean bay. The lazy, quiet waters beg us to dive in, disappearing into the depths, cool and rich. We want to wade into the gentle waves, slipping under the surface, entering the water slowly and floating away, the current always guiding us forward.
Robert Melzmuf’s lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and his work is painterly Colorfield Abstraction; painterly and gestural, but also light, spacious, and free.
Rejuvenating Greens
In the northern hemisphere, summer is a time for nature’s growth. The world is green and rich in a way we always seem to forget in the cold winter months. Trees never look so lush, leaves never quite as vibrant. We have to remind ourselves, even in the hottest days, we are surrounded by the healthy, rejuvenating power of green. Nature is all around us and it is blossoming. Turner’s painting is so lush. It seems to embody the purest form of nature, filled to the brim with vibrant color and life.
Angélica Turner is a Chilean painter based in San Francisco, California since 2018. She is also an Art Teacher, profession she has practiced both in Chile and in San Francisco. Her work addresses the different visual and psychological dimensions that derive from her experiences in forests.
Bringing it Together
On curating the collection:
I’m back! We had some amazing guest curations the past few weeks and I hope you’ve checked them out, but this week we are getting back to learning ‘how’ to look at art. I want to walk you through what I’ve considered when bringing this collection together. Whether you’re an experienced collector or totally new to the art world, it’s always fun to thoughtfully discuss what makes a great collection.
This week, inspired by the summer sun, I bring together a collection of art that explores heat, vibrancy, and spaces of summer.
Color:
Vibrancy is KEY this week! In the summer, the strong sun strikes colors and surfaces, illuminating everything to their fullest saturation. And the aesthetic of summer is the same –– from bright bathing suits to beach towels to big sunny umbrellas. Even New Yorkers can be seen, on occasion, out of their traditional black. In this curation, we see vibrancy in all forms from hot pinks, oranges, greens, and even blues.
Size and Scale:
I might sound like a broken record here, but the SIZE of a painting is so important to our deeper understanding and relationship with the subject matter and feel of the work. From the intimate scale of Mathew Tucker’s work or Marilyn Henrion’s New Orleans porch scene, we are brought closer to the work, leaning in to spot the delicate details. The pieces appear to be closing us in and making us feel more constrained by the physicality they are exploring. On the larger scale, works like Robert Melzmuf’s waves and the lush work of Angelica Turner ENGULF the viewer, embracing and soothing us as an observer.
Materials:
This week I want to specifically highlight Marilyn Henrion’s piece as we discuss materials. Henrion’s Magazine Street, New Orleans is a digitally manipulated photograph printed on hand-quilted cotton –– I know, that’s so cool! What I love about the hand-quilted quality of the work is that it brings a physicality to the photograph, challenging the traditional way we view photos. Quilted in a traditional circular pattern, we begin to read this pattern similar to how we read the swirling brushstrokes in Mathew Tucker’s hot pink sky –– as emanating heat waves! Not only does the physicality of the material bring literal physical depth to the piece, but a conceptual depth as well. As always, it is about the craft and the details!
With these new viewing tools in hand, happy collecting!
Curated by Mel ReeseZhuzh by Emily Berge
Virtual installations courtesy of ArtPlacer