Sharon L. Butler
SHARON L. BUTLER is an artist and Associate Professor at Eastern Connecticut State University. She blogs at Two Coats of Paint.
Lost In Space: Art Post-Studio
By Sharon L. ButlerRenaissance artists were members of professional guilds, maintained studios known as workshops, and staffed them with assistants to help complete monumental commissions. But that was an era in which princes and popes extolled artists as the aesthetic lifeblood of the city-state and supported them accordingly. In modern times, artists haven’t been able to count on such public largess.
Meeting Imi and Blinky at Dia: Beacon
By Sharon L. ButlerUp in Beacon, New York, during the early June heat wave, I stopped by Dia for some air conditioning and happened upon a two-gallery installation of 21 oddly-shaped 10-foot panels, each painted with a single, unmixed, straight out-of-the-tube color.
LOUISE BELCOURT
By Sharon L. ButlerFor years Louise Belcourt has divided her time between Williamsburg and a small Canadian town on the south side of the St. Lawrence river where she spent summers as a child. More than 12 years ago, she built a studio on a high cliff overlooking the river; the clear Canadian light, majestic water views, and looming, manicured hedges that surround her family’s nearby property have figured prominently in her work ever since.
Miami Beach: Swimming in Pigment
By Sharon L. ButlerTo feed Two Coats of Paint, my daily blog about painting, I comb the Internet for art reviews and commentary from all over the world. It’s an enriching process but not very tactile: online, the artwork, galleries and museums remain distant and two-dimensional.
Show and Tell: Contemporary Practice in Artists' Books
By Sharon L. ButlerThis month over 138 international publishers, booksellers, and antiquarian dealers will stock their bookshelves at Printed Matter’s annual fair for contemporary art books, art catalogs, artists’ books, art periodicals, and zines. In addition, the Art Library Society of New York is hosting a four-day conference to examine contemporary directions in artists’ books.
Neo-Maternalism: Contemporary Artists’ Approach to Motherhood
By Sharon L. ButlerEver since the Abstract Expressionists held forth at the Cedar Tavern in the 1950s, the unwritten rule has been that making art is a consuming obsession that leaves no time or space for worldly responsibilities like childrearing.
RESTORATION PROJECT Work of Art
By Sharon L. ButlerWhy were so many artists, art bloggers, and critics glued to the television Wednesdays at 10 p.m. this summer watching Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, an often embarrassingly lame television show whose producers clearly had no idea what it means to make art, let alone recognize a great artist?
Jilaine Jones: Sculpture
By Sharon L. ButlerIn a recent review of “How Soon Is Now?”—the 28th annual exhibition for the Bronx Museum’s Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) program for emerging artists —Roberta Smith laments the failure of the current crop of artists to embrace skill-building courses like painting and drawing, replacing the direct, tactile connection to materials with theory and artspeak.
