Quotes: Mark Rothko

"I'm not an abstractionist.  I'm not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else.  I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on."
-Mark Rothko

Lines & Shapes

The image above is of some of the books made by Lines & Shapes.  Lines & Shapes is primarily a book publishing artist collective curated by artists/designers Lena Corwin and Maria Vettese.  I first came across Lena Corwin on, once again, Design*Sponge, where I liked her work enough to start clicking on a bunch of links, which eventually led me to the Lines & Shapes website.  I really love all the artists featured in the books they produce, and had so much fun & felt so inspired browsing through them online this morning that I felt compelled to write a post so that you all could have fun & be inspired too! I feel like there is a trend in certain realms of contemporary art right now that mixes and merges design with fine art and diy products that results in a very homegrown minimalist, graphic, and sweet art.  Much of this art is about life and about incorporating art into functional objects and daily living, and includes the realms of home, garden, and kitchen.  I. love. it.

Spotlight: Alice Neel

Hello and Happy Tuesday! It is intermittently sunny and quite chilly here in Baltimore, and I am enjoying the energy that I get from this sort of weather.  For today's Spotlight, I thought I'd go with the painter Alice Neel.  Alice Neel's paintings are super-fun.  Born in 1900 near Philadelphia, she doesn't fit in any one painting category and her style is all her own.  According to her website, she "Was one of the great American painters of the twentieth century" and was also "A pioneer among women artists."  I would agree with both statements.  Neel primarily painted figures, but she also painted landscapes and still life.

How to describe her style?  I am struggling to put it into words.  Her paintings are loose, direct, full of expression and emotion.  They are not particular about traditional elements like proportion, or likeness; yet they are still proportionate and almost certainly look very much like the people they portray.  Neel was never shy about outlines or color application- notice the darker line surrounding most shapes that acts like a pencil drawing, or the way you can obviously tell where one color ends and one begins and how that color was applied.  These things are what make her paintings so great, though- they are straightforward and honest, colorful and fun, full of emotion and integrity.  I love that it seems like she didn't really care what other people thought, or about how you're "supposed" to paint, and instead just painted what she saw how she like to paint it.  I also enjoy how she used the white of the canvas, always letting a little bit show through, giving her paintings a slightly unfinished feel that further emphasized the loose, direct quality of them.  Easily one of my all-time favorites!  To learn more about Alice Neel, visit aliceneel.com.

Quotes: William Dobell

"A sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful attempt to put on to canvas what is in front of him, but one who tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing."
- William Dobell

I honestly have no idea who this artist is, but I was searching around for a quote today and found this on a website devoted to quotes by famous artists and loved it.  I hope you love it too! I'm off to try and create "a living thing".  ~Sarah

Spotlight: Robert and Shana Parkeharrison

Today's Spotlight is on my favorite husband-and-wife photography duo, Robert and Shana Parkeharrison.  I have been absolutely entranced with their photographs since high school, when I was studying photography, and I continue to be entranced to this day.  Their other-worldly, mysterious, aged-looking photographs are stunning.  They came to speak at MICA while I was there (sadly, I cannot remember or find out exactly when they came and I cannot find my notes from the lecture....irresponsible sounding, isn't it?), and I was SO EXCITED to hear them speak.  Their photographs are elaborate, requiring extensive props and effects.  Robert poses in most of them, as the lone figure in a post-apocalyptic looking world, where he always appear to be attempting to reinvent the wheel, or reinvent flying, or just invent anything.

They are ghostly, romantic, sad, and beautiful.  I learned along the way that they were ecologically driven, aimed at issues of global warming and other environmental problems that we face, but have to say that I was perfectly happy with them before I knew anything about them.  I almost prefer to contemplate what they might mean, all the unspoken, poetic thoughts and feelings that seem to surround them, than to pigeonhole them as "environmental" works.  They are that and so much more.  To check out Robert and Shanna Parkeharrison's new works and locate galleries and museums you can find their work in, go to www.parkeharrison.com.

Baker's Dozen

A piece by Valerio Vidali on Baker's Dozen

I'm totally in love with the website Baker's Dozen at the moment.  Baker's Dozen is a project by freelance illustrator and designer Amy Borrell of Melbourne, Australia.  Baker's Dozen sells the work of different "illustrators/designers/makers" (as Amy calls them) from around the world in limited editions of thirteen.  I first came across Baker's Dozen on my favorite design website, Design*Sponge, when Amy was a guest blogger there.  Amy has her own blogs as well:  All the Mountains and Tummy-Ache.  I like Amy's work, and I like all the work on Baker's Dozen- whimsical, sweet, simple, creative and fun is exactly what I've been gravitating towards lately.  Make sure to visit the site(s) and check it out for yourself!

Art History 101: Wassily Kandinsky and "Concerning the Spiritual in Art"

Welcome to the first-ever "Art History 101" post.  In these posts, I will talk about a theory or concept in Art History, breaking it down into it's most simple and need-to-know concepts.  I hope they will be like mini-art history lessons, simplified.
I decided to do the first "Art History 101" post on Wassily Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art, not only because it is an important piece of writing in Art History but because the Guggenheim Museum in New York just recently mounted a retrospective of his work. (Check out the New York Times Review)

Kandinsky wrote Concerning the Spiritual in Art in 1977.  The book has two sections: "About General Aesthetic" and "About Painting".  Kandinsky is certainly an "odd duck"- to look at his paintings is often to wonder what exactly he was trying to do.  They seem quite simple, with lines and shapes in various colors, often with heavy use of the primary colors (red, yellow, blue).  They also seem mildly erratic, completely abstract, and lacking in solid form.  Kandinsky attempted to answer the "What is he doing?" question with Concerning the Spiritual in Art, and ended up writing a classic piece on painting theory.
To put it quite simply, Kandinsky was painting music (or attempting to).  He wanted to dissolve the distinctions between music and painting, and was attempting to do so through the use of color and line.  He felt that music was the only art form that truly expressed the soul, and wanted to achieve this in painting.
In "About General Aesthetic", Kandinsky discusses the matter of the "spiritual" in art.  He talks about the forms that the progress of the spirit takes, notably the pyramid and the triangle.  He felt that those that painted abstract images were truly expressing the "spiritual" in art, the "inner", while those whose painted realistically "sought the 'inner' by way of the 'outer'".  He wrote of the work of the painter Henri Matisse, "He paints 'pictures,' and in these 'pictures' endeavours to reproduce the divine.  To attain this end he requires as a starting point nothing but the object to be painted...and then the methods that belong to painting alone, colour and form."  Kandinsky felt that the move towards abstraction in art was a move towards higher levels of spiritual development, or the "non-material".

It is at this point in the book that Kandinsky begins to talk about music, writing "With few exceptions music has been for some centuries the art which has devoted itself not to the reproduction of natural phenomena, but rather to the expression of the artist's soul, in musical sound."  While music "needs no definite form for its expression", painting "is almost exclusively concerned with the reproduction of natural forms and phenomena", and that it was time for painting to move beyond it's current methods and "use her powers to a truly artistic end".
The second half of the book, "About Painting", is more practical than the first, concerning itself primarily with how color and form interact and work in paintings.  He also talks a little about theory in this portion of the book, and I find interesting and helpful one passage in particular on the role of the spectator in viewing paintings:
"The spectator is too ready to look for a meaning in a picture- i.e., some outward connection between its various parts.  Our materialistic age has produced a type of spectator or 'connoisseur,' who is not content to put himself opposite a picture and let it say its own message.  Instead of allowing the inner value of the picture to work, he worries himself in looking for 'closeness to nature,' or 'temperament,' or 'handling,' or 'tonality,' or 'perspective,' or what not.  His eye does not probe the outer expression to arrive at the inner meaning.  In a conversation with an interesting person, we endeavour to get at his fundamental ideas and feelings.  We do not bother about the words he uses, nor the spelling of those words, nor the breath necessary for speaking them, nor the movements of his tongue and lips, nor the psychological working on our brain, nor the physical sound in our ear, nor the physiological effect on our nerves.  We realize that these things, though interesting and important, are not the main things of the moment, but that the meaning and idea is what concerns us.  We should have the same feeling when confronted with a work of art."

Kandinsky was truly a visionary in his understanding of the direction of the movement of art and the issues confronting the artist and the viewer.  Whether he was successful in transcending these issues in his paintings is a whole other issue entirely, but regardless Concerning the Spiritual in Art is an important book which is worth revisiting again and again.  I had not read it in several years when I went to review it for this post, and found it more relevant and important to me now than it was before.  I will end this "lesson" on Kandinsky's theories with one final quote from the last section in the book on "Art and Artists":
"The work of art is born of the artist in a mysterious and secret way.  From him it gains life and being.  Nor is its existence casual and inconsequent, but it has a definite and purposeful strength, alike in its material and spiritual life."

This post quotes from and is all about the book: Concerning the Spiritual in Art by Wassily Kandinsky, Translated with an introduction by M.T.H. Sadler, c. 1977 by Dover Publications, Inc. Mineola, NY

Quote: Wassily Kandinsky

"To let the eye stray over a palette, splashed with many colours, produces a dual result.  In the first place one receives a purely physical impression, one of pleasure and contentment at the varied and beautiful colours.  The eye is either warmed or else soothed and cooled.  But these physical sensations can only be of short duration.  They are merely superficial and leave no lasting impression, for the soul is unaffected.  But although the effect of the colours is forgotten when the eye is turned away, the superficial impression of varied colour may be the starting point of a whole chain of related sensations."
-Wassily Kandinksy in Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1977

Spotlight: Kara Walker

So I feel badly about the fact that I have been slacking a little bit, and didn't post on Monday or Tuesday.  I also haven't written any other posts besides the (ideally) daily "Spotlight" and "Quotes".  But I intend to fix both of these issues, and get down to business...if only I didn't have to work so much, and could just concentrate on writing this blog!  But I digress...
Today's Spotlight is on the contemporary artist Kara Walker, whose work I enjoy very much.  I have always been interested in race relations and the issues surrounding racism in our country, and these are topic with which Kara Walker contends in her pieces.  I saw a large retrospective of her work at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 2007, and was enamored with her simple black-and-white cutouts pasted on the walls.  They were at once theatre and funny, as well as serious and thorny.

Walker primarily creates cut paper silhouettes, as well as drawings, films, and collages.  They offer questions without answers, and place the blame for racism on everyone.  A review of the 2007 show by Ariella Budick on Newsday.com says about Walker, "Her work is neither anti-black or anti-white; it is broadly misanthropic.  Both groups, as far as she is concerned, have forgone their claims to nobility or integrity.  Walker scoffs at the notion of progress.  To her, the distortions in self-image wrought by slavery's power relations have been completely internalized by both groups, which remain helpless in the face of history."
Her work has come under fire in the past, mainly from the black community, who feel she misrepresents black people, catering towards wealthy white buyers and perpetuating racial stereotypes.  On the contrary, as Budick also points out in her review, Walker's work challenges all races and members of our global community to realize, through embarrassment, the ways we rely on as much as detest racism; and furthermore, how history has led us to this point.

You can see Kara Walker's work in person at galleries all over the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Quotes: The Definition of "Art"

From Dictionary.com, the first definition of the noun "Art"(and my favorite definition of "Art" to date):
"The quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance."

Marcel Duchamp's readymade, Fountain- a much debated piece of art

How do you define "Art"?  I feel this is a question everyone everywhere is always asking.  Art school teachers love to ask their art students this question.  Non-artists love to stand in front of a piece they find perplexing  or outside the realm of "traditional" art with which they're more familiar and ask, "What exactly makes this art?"  Books have been written on the topic.  Every person you ask will likely have a different answer.  The secret is, they are probably all right- especially under the terms of the above (awesome) definition from Dictionary.com.  I'm not sure there is a right or wrong answer, a right or wrong definition of Art.  Everyone wants their answer to be right, and to convince others that they're right (I have been guilty of this, I will admit).  Every age and every era comes up with a new definition, which often becomes a movement or style that then becomes a chapter in Art History textbooks.  Rather than compete, I think we should try to enjoy the learning and appreciation that can come from hearing others' thoughts on what defines "Art"...even if they're wrong...(just kidding!)  ~Sarah

Spotlight: Fairfield Porter

As promised, Spotlight is back!  Today I want to focus on Fairfield Porter, an artist I mentioned in the Spotlight on Herman Maril.  I have been trying to marshal my thoughts on Porter since yesterday, trying to figure out what it is about his work that I love so much and what exactly I want to convey about him to you.  For whatever reason, Porter's work can be difficult to talk about.  Porter was a realist painter in the 50's through the 70's, a period of time that is often called the "Age of Abstraction"- hence the title of the book on him that I own, "Fairfield Porter: Realist Painter in an Age of Abstraction".  He is well known in so-called "art circles", but I would bet that a random survey of people off the street would yield little recognition.  I had never even heard of him until my freshman year of college, when Timothy App (whose name, along with other influential teachers, will probably pop up often in this blog) introduced him to my Painting 1 class.  And, even in these so-called "art circles" I mentioned, I do not feel that Porter often gets his due for being the fantastic painter that, in my opinion, he was.  He is altogether eclipsed by the shadows of other, more recognizable, Abstract Expressionist painters from the "Age of Abstraction"- Willem DeKooning, Brice Marden, and Roy Lichtenstein to name a few.  Some might say this eclipse happens so easily because Porter went against the tide of the times in painting realist scenes and scenarios.

So why did he do this?  In an interview with Paul Cummings included in "Fairfield Porter: Realist Painter in an Age of Abstraction", Cummings says to Porter, "You've painted a number of interiors and landscapes." and Porter replies, "What I think now is that it doesn't matter much what you do.  What matters is the painting.  And since a reference to reality is the easiest thing, you just take what's there."  Porter's paintings, while being of said "interiors and landscapes", are nonetheless abstractions.  The definition of "abstract" as it applies to Fine Art implies an emphasis on geometric line, shape, and colors.  Often this results in an image that is not recognizably painted from the world around us; yet if the image that results looks comparatively like our world  it ceases being called abstract and becomes realistic.  Yet many painters regard the line between abstraction and realism to be one drawn unnecessarily, the two are one and the same and to be able to paint a scene and make it look convincingly like "reality" you have to be able to see the abstract in what you are painting from: you have to be able to look at a chair and not see our human concept of a "chair", but simply a brown square shape next to a brown rectangular shape next to a blue shape next to....and so on.  Even the most "realistic" paintings are inescapably altered from "reality" by the act of the artist rendering the scene with his mind's eye and his hand in various materials.  His vision is always embedded in the work, and part of what creates interest in seeing a painting of, for example, a landscape in Maine versus just driving to Maine and seeing the landscape in person is the way the artist has interpreted the landscape with his paint.  The two experiences are entirely different.

Porter's paintings are beautiful, bright, emotional, and personal "interiors and landscapes" that are thoroughly abstract and look effortlessly painted.  I think these qualities are what draws me to them.  I enjoy entering Porter's world through them- many were painted during summers in Maine with his family- and I love being able to, through one eye, see a realistic rendering of whatever he chose to paint, while through the other eye simply seeing the paint- the colors, shapes, and lines it makes.  Porter did not want people to view his paintings looking for an idea or a concept, but to simply see them for what they are- paintings.  Paint on canvas.  John Ashbery, who knew Porter personally, wrote in his essay on Porter "Respect for Things as They are" (again in my "Fairfield Porter: Realist Painter in an Age of Abstraction" book) that Porter's paintings, "...Are intellectual in the classic American tradition...because they have no ideas in them, that is, no ideas that can be separated from the rest.  They are idea, or consciousness, or light, or whatever.  Ideas surround them, but do not and cannot extrude themselves into the being of the art, just as the wilderness surrounds Steven's jar in Tennessee: an artifact, yet paradoxically more natural than the 'slovenly' wilderness that approaches it, and from which it takes 'dominion.'"  I wanted to include this quote in part because Ashbery references the Wallace Stevens poem I quoted just earlier this week, but mainly because I think it sums up the key allure of Porter's work beautifully:  that his work is not this idea or that idea expressed through painting, but simply is painting- and beautiful, enjoyable painting at that.

The book I have referenced and quoted from throughout this Spotlight is titled, "Fairfield Porter: Realist Painter in an Age of Abstraction" with Essays by John Ashbery and Kenworth Moffett.  It was produced by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts in 1982.

Spotlight...will return tomorrow!

It has been a busy two days, but Spotlight will return tomorrow, starting with Fairfield Porter.  There are other posts in the works too, so stay tuned! ~Sarah

Quotes: Robert Quinn

"Our greatest joy no matter what our role comes from creating.  In that process people become aware that they are able to do things they once thought were impossible.  They have empowered themselves, which in turn empowers those with whom they interact."
-Robert Quinn

Quotes: Karl Andre

"We climb a mountain because it's there.  We make a work of art because it isn't." -Karl Andre

Spotlight: Herman Maril

Herman Maril is an artist who came to my attention recently.  The Walters Art Museum here in Baltimore did a show of his work titled, "Herman Maril: An American Modernist".  Since I work at the Walters, I had many occasions to see the show, and even teach it and help pass out evaluation forms to visitors.  I was surprised I had not heard of Maril's work before.  Born and raised in Baltimore, he attended MICA and taught at the University of Maryland.  He also spent summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and his work is influenced by those two places.  His paintings are simplified down to color and shape, two elements that Maril considered extremely important.  In an interview by Carl Schoettler for the Evening Sun in 1983, Maril said, "My preoccupation in painting has always been space...Huge open areas of space.  I like to think of the concept of space.  I like to deal with big open spaces.  And color.  Color and space is painting."

I too feel that painting consists of color and space, and so I appreciate Maril's work and approach to painting.  His work has elements of Cubism, Fauvism, and Modernism to it- i.e. breaking down surface planes and objects into basic shapes and multiple view points, bright unnatural colors, and color field painting.  His beach scenes and delicate interiors also remind me personally of the artist Fairfield Porter, and my own childhood growing up on the beach.  You can see Maril's work in person at the University of Maryland, the Provincetown Art Museum, and other select locations.

Quotes: Shakespeare

"Say that upon the altar of her beauty
You sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart.
Write till your ink be dry, and with your tears
Moist it again, and frame some feeling line
That may discover such integrity:
For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews,
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
Make tigers tame and huge leviathans
Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands."

-Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 3, Sc. 2

Quotes: Wallace Stevens

"Quotes" will be another daily feature on Art Caravan.  They may be directly related to art, or they may be a poem or song or some other thing that is indirectly related to art but inspiring nonetheless.  For example, today's quote is a poem from the poet Wallace Stevens. This poem was shared with my Painting 1 class freshman year of college by our teacher, the Baltimore-based painter Timothy App.  From what I remember Timothy telling us, Wallace Stevens himself was an artist as well, and many of his poems relate to the process of art-making.  I am sure his poems mean many things to many different people, but I too saw the way Stevens' poems related to painting and art-making, and find his writing very beautiful!  Please feel free to comment on what any quote I post up here means to you!- I would love to know if you think this poem relates to painting and art-making, and if you think it does, how so?

Anecdote of the Jar:

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around it, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

-Wallace Stevens

Spotlight: Martin Puryear

Welcome to the first artist “Spotlight” here on Art Caravan.  Spotlight will be a daily feature, meant to be a short introduction to various artists I think are worth looking at!  Some may be famous artists that you may have already heard of, and others may be up-and-coming artists whose work I am excited about.  Through Spotlight, I hope to compile a great list of artists that can be perused at anytime, calling notice to artists that I love and respect as well as great artists throughout the history of art.

Today’s Spotlight is on the American artist Martin Puryear.  All of the mediums I work in are 2-D, and I have always had a hard time making/appreciating/liking 3-D work.  So for me to love the work of a sculptor is a big deal, and I love the work of Martin Puryear.  Born in D.C. in 1941, Martin Puryear has won many, many awards for his work and recently had a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  This is where I first encountered him- I was in New York during the show in November 2007 for Thanksgiving and got to visit the MoMA.  I was absolutely enamored from the beginning with his monolithic, yet delicate, finely carved and constructed pieces.

They are like familiar enigmas- they seem to remind you of something, and yet you’re not sure what.  Some of them seem almost like eggs, like something could burst out of them at any moment.  They are poetic in their minimalism and quiet presence, and beautiful in material: wood of all different colors, wire, tar, stone, and so on.  While some of his pieces are round and heavy-looking, others are spindly and light.  They come in various sizes, and some are literally larger-than-life.  His work is embedded with themes ranging from colonization and cultural exchange to form and function.  His work is organic and mechanical, African and American, poetic and beautiful.  If you live here in Baltimore and would like to experience one of his pieces, you can trip on over to the Baltimore Museum of Art, where one of his larger works rests in the middle of an open marble court in the museum.   My two favorite things about Puryear’s work are the quiet presence they have about them, their vague familiarity, and also the craftsmanship he brings to them- each piece is nearly perfectly constructed, which is easy for anyone who has ever worked with wood or any other hard sculptural material to appreciate!

Welcome to The Art Caravan!

Hi & welcome!  This is the blog I am calling "The Art Caravan".  I am Sarah Elek, and I recently graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD.  I have happily chosen to continue living, working, and art-making in Baltimore.  By day I schlep coffee at the best cafe in the world, On the Hill, by weekend I teach the ArtKids PreK class at the Walters Art Musem (as well as various other fun-filled art activites at the Walters), and by night I make my art and write my blogs here on the inter-web.  I also do a lot of reading, cooking, gardening, yoga-ing, and various fun things with my friends & family.  


So now that you know all about me, I'm sure the next two big questions on your mind are: what is this blog about and why is Sarah taking time out of her busy, broke, post-graduate life to write it for me & the world?
Here are the answers to the what & the why in no particular sensical order:


To put it one way, this blog is an attempt to use my degree in Art History and practice writing.  To put it another way, I love to make art, read about art, look at art, write about art, you name it- so much so that I got a degree in it!- and now I want to share what I know with all of you.  I am passionate about art and passionate about teaching other people about art, hopefully inspiring them to be passionate about art too!  


Too often, I hear people (I am being vague here, I know, but I'm not calling out anyone in particular, so just trust me: there are people, many of them) lamenting about art: they don't get it, they find it boring, they think a five year old could have done it, they think their kid is too young or they're too old to learn about it, or they just generally think art is something that is only accesible for some elitist, snobby group of "art people" that they're not a part of and don't want to be a part of.  Not only do they not "get" it, this lack of understanding leads them to question the meaning and point of art, and often leads them away from the topic entirely.  


Do no be offended if this description of "people" does not refer to you:  I am aware that many, many people do love art, that they make it or look at it and love it, teach it and devote themselves or parts of their lives to it in many ways.  But I don't want the general population to be divided in any way over art: the beauty of art is that it is accesible to everyone: everyone.  Art is and should be a link between people, cultures, and attitudes, and should never be a divisor.  Art can be anything and everything: it can be beautiful or ugly, it can make something that is beautiful ugly and something that is "ugly" beautiful.  To truly look at art, and understand it (or not- art is not always about understanding), you have to first let go, open up, and try to enjoy it.  But second, you have to learn new ways of perceiving and judging.  Art can not always be approached the way one might approach math, or science, or a movie.  It is closer in approach to literature or dance, but even from here it diverges.  Art is trying to teach us all something bigger and greater about the human experience, its beauty and is problems, and there is almost always something we can learn or appreciate in any work of art, if we can let go of lines and distinctions- abstract, realistic, good, bad- and just look with our eyes, our minds, and our hearts (corny sounding, I know, but really I believe this is true and important).  


So, very long story short, The Art Caravan will be my attempt to share and teach these things to anyone who wants to learn them.  If you are already steeped in the traditions of art, maybe you will learn a new way of seeing something you've seen before, or maybe you'll discover a new artist you like, or anything along those lines.  If you are new to art or have felt stumped by art in the past, hopefully you will learn to love, appreciate, and have fun with art.  These are my intentions for this blog- to impart some of the knowledge I have, be it good or mediocre or even bad knowledge- to you & the world.  Most importantly, though, I'd like to impart to you my passion for art.  


To do this, I will be posting on all sorts of different things.  These things are, but are not limited to, the following:
-"Spotlights" on different artists
-Quotes 
-Art projects for the young and old
-"Reviews" of different shows that go on display in Baltimore ("Review" is a loose term- I will likely just inform and offer my opinion/thoughts/etc.)
-Art History 101 "Lessons"


I will post Mondays thru Fridays, and hopefully I will post at least a quote and a spotlight every day.  I want to encourage anyone and everyone who reads this blog to comment on the posts they read with their thoughts, opinions, constructive criticism, and any other tidbits or connections they would like to share.  A running dialogue on art, and the joys & frustrations of making & viewing art, is another intention I have for this blog that can only be achieved with your help! 


~Sarah