green design

CREON Gallery, NYC, with Contemporary Paintings of Mary Hrbacek

Mary Hrbacek’s solo exhibition, Peopled Forest of My Mind, curated by Elga Wimmer at the Creon Gallery in New York City in April, 2013, featured Hrbacek’s new, very small and very large, personified tree paintings. Inspired by her dense, dramatic charcoal drawing executed on stark white paper, Hrbacek cultivates eerie hybrid plant forms as they emerge through the drawing process, coaxing these unfathomable figural apparitions into coherent, energized, human-like entities embodying the organic origins of all natural systems. Her work reveals our primal link to nature in an increasingly high-tech, global existence.

Left: Mary Hrbacek, Woman Withheld (2011), 22 x 30″. Courtesy CREON Gallery.

The following conversation was conducted with Mary Hrbacek on the telephone, as well as via email, by Edward Rubin on April 23, 2013. artes fine arts magazineMore

‘Oh Canada’ at Mass MoCA: Contemporary Art Exhibit Breaks New Ground

www.artesmagazine.com — Gisele Amantea, Democracy (2012), flocking. On display in Hunter Hallway, Mass MoCA

The sprawling, dense, complex, exhilarating, confounding Oh Canada, which opened recently at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), will remain on view for the next ten months, is the visual equivalent of a polyglot menagerie evoking Noah’s Ark.

No, it has not rained in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts for forty days and forty nights. But curator Denise Markonish has so jammed the museum with every possible species of creativity, garnered through some 400 studio visits covering the length and breadth of Canada, that there is the need to release a dove to find dry land and return with an olive branch of productive critical discourse.

Her accessible, enjoyable, well written and daunting 38-page essay for the catalogue is crammed with a synthesis of an odyssey, with thorough archival and documentary research. It is fair to state that she is on the short list of notable, non-Canadian scholars/curators of contemporary Canadian art. artes fine arts magazineMore

New York City Architect, William Green, Takes a Critical look at Our ‘Built Environment’

urban architecture artes fine arts magazine — A mid-20th century architectural rendering for urban renewal

“E xcept man, nobody lies. A rosebush cannot lie. It has to produce roses; it cannot produce marigolds — it cannot deceive. It is not possible for it to be otherwise than it is. Except man the whole existence lives in truth. Truth is the religion of the whole existence — except man. And the moment a man also decides to become part of existence, truth becomes his religion.” –Indian Mystic, Osho

Architectural Forensics is a term to describe how it is that the ‘built environment’ perfectly expresses the intrinsic quality of any society’s sociological, economic, and political nature. In the search for truth, the parsing of concepts, deliberation of ideas, or the use rhetorical analysis to glean the essence of our reality pales in comparison to the truth at it is revealed by the world which we have wrought; and with this fact, there can be no mistake or equivocation. fine arts magazineMore

Scholar, Hannah Kusinitz, Examines Role of Textile in Cultural Anthropology

‘The richness of textile traditions link people the world over, for fabrics are a non-verbal language that tell us the cultural history of a people, their place in the world and even their beliefs.’ (Dhamija 2006:266).

Meaning is encoded in cultural objects in many different ways and is never static. Objects continuously travel in and out of categories of meaning, particularly when the objects themselves also travel physically. Trade goods are the focus of this research paper, which will examine the Dr. Thomas J. Hudak collection of textiles, purchased in Indonesia. The textiles in Dr. Hudak’s collection resemble the Indian textiles found at the center of enormous trade markets in the 1600s. Dr. Hudak’s stunning collection was on display at the Arizona State University Museum of Anthropology in 2010 as part of the exhibit, Trading Cloth and Culture. Examined through the four themes of Technique, Trade, Aesthetics, and Cultural Significance, the textiles in this collection present us with the opportunity to study the nature of objects that have traveled great distances. “Textiles are an important medium in cultural studies because of their universality and mobility. They circulate within specific cultural milieus and also serve as a vehicle for the transmission of ideas between cultures” (Guy 1998:7). From Dr. Hudak’s collection, we can see the ways in which objects are given meaning and how these meanings constantly shift and evolve.

Above: Weaver in Mahasarakham Province, Northeast Thailand. photo by H.Leedom Lefforts fine arts magazineMore

Photographer, Alex Maclean Documents Two Threatened Settings in Unlikely Parallel

At first glance, the only similarity between Vegas and Venice is that they both begin with the letter V. Look closer though, and you’ll see another parity—they’re both vanishing. Pilot, trained architect, and fine art aerial photographer, Alex Maclean, sees a disturbing beauty in these doppelgangers. Disturbing because of the environmental destruction these two iconic cities are experiencing, even though their impending demise is at the extreme ends of environmental catastrophe: drowning and desertification. But he beholds remarkable beauty there, too; because he brings to his task no preconceived ideas of what the lay of the land should be. From the sky, he surveys beauty wherever he finds it- even in the most unlikely settings. Fine Arts Magazine

Above: Alex Maclean, Las Vegas, Housing subdivision built out in the desert, from his solo exhibition, ‘Vegas-Venice’More

New York & Connecticut Architectural Firms Exhibit Green Building Solutions

Contemporary art is the art of our times. Although time can seem linear, exacting and in some ways predictable, life today can nevertheless feel chaotic and filled with contradictory agendas. Health issues, economic woes, war and global warming seem to headline the news constantly. Artists, sensitive to their surroundings, perceive these sudden shifts as critical matter deserving of attention and often attempt to address them before their importance fades. Occasionally, the realities of today’s world are skillfully combined with the sensitivity of the artistic perspective. Connecticut’s, Sacred Heart University, Gallery of Contemporary Art, addresses this union of aesthetics and technology in its current exhibition, The Art of Sustainable Architecture, in meaningful and dramatic ways.

“Sustainability is a topic of our time,” Sophia Gevas, SHU’s gallery director, says with conviction. “We can no longer ignore the environmental challenges our world is facing. These problems are real and there are real solutions that are both beautiful and quantifiably which can make a difference in our quality of life.”

above: Exterior Facade & Courtyard of the General Theological Seminary, NYC
Architect: Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners. Photo Credit: Fed Charles
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Green Architecture Company Works with UNICEF to Build African Schools

Grain Storage Huts in Nigeria. photo courtesy Patricia Thrane

“It takes a village to raise a child,” is the oft quoted ancient African proverb when discussing education and building community. Partners for Architecture, an architecture firm in Stamford, CT, that bases its mission on this core value, flew into action when approached by UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund) in October 2008 to create one master plan for eighty schools to be built across the borders of four civil-war ravaged African countries: Republique de Guinea, Côte D’Ivoire, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. The LAB4LAB (Learning Along Borders for Living Across Boundaries) project objective is to ease conflict by creating safe places of community education and social activity to stimulate development and interdependence between the countries. A goal easier said than done, Partners for Architecture’s role was to translate this utopian concept into a real, physical solution within six weeks time.More

High Tech Lighting Solutions for High Rise Living

Randall Whitehead Lighting — Custom adjustable picture lights by Phoenix Day Company subtly offer additional illumination for the paintings by Marianne Kolb. The box beams visually float down from the ceiling to allow indirect light for the room

As more people select high-rise living in cities across the country, they are facing the tremendous challenge of how to get lighting where they want it, when the construction is primarily concrete. Often they are given a few junction boxes from which to draw power for their lighting needs. Sometimes they don’t even have that.

For example, the dining room in this luxurious 52nd story condominium at the Millennium Tower in San Francisco had little for the lighting designer, Randall Whitehead and interior designer, Michael Merrill to work with. Even though they had ten foot ceilings there wasn’t even a junction box in the ceiling for a power source.

The two designers worked together to come up with a solution that provided both ambient light and accent light for the space. They decided on the concept of fabricating of a series of box beams. The only power source they had to work with was a power feed for motor controlled blinds located in the upper corner of one wall near the ceiling line. A soffit was created along the wall to allow power to be run seamlessly from one beam to the next. The new soffit also helped balance the boxed-in HVAC ducting on the opposite wall.More

Randall Whitehead’s High-Tech Lighting Solutions Transform a Traditional Home

whitehead ext_trad — Exterior: Traditional homes reap benefits from energy conscious. Here, exterior lanterns use two 8 watt CCFL by Litetronics, providing 45 watts of light, lasting 25,000 hrs. Resembling standard household bulbs, they dim with a standard incandescent dimmer.

Our California-based lighting expert explains a remodeling project in dramatic before/after images that is both earth friendly and cost effective

People are constantly being hit over the head with green design. In these hard economic times homeowners are not moving into the next bigger house but are instead staying put and investing their hard-earned…if somewhat deflated…equity into upgrading their present residences. Energy efficient lighting plays a big role, especially here in California where Title 24 requires the use of high efficacy lighting in kitchens, bathrooms and outdoor areas.

Design magazines looking to remain current offer up contemporary architectural layouts and stark, eye-catching interiors. While it’s true that futuristic design and green design seem to go hand-in-hand, it’s not for everyone. How does the owner of a more traditionally styled house make use of today’s earth friendly lighting and interior design techniques? Can progressive lighting design be applied to non-cutting edge spaces to enhance the sense of warmth and comfort that these cozy interiors inspire? Absolutely!More

Bartlett Arboretum Features Art Inspired by Nature

A Reflection on the Kathy Hirshon Exhibit, ‘Spirited Trees’

At The Bartlett Arboretum, Stamford, Connecticut

October, 2009- January 1, 2010
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Unlike the other seasons, autumn takes its time in arriving. Almost overnight, spring seems to pop into bloom after the yellow crocus peeks out from under the frost. Summer rushes in, never allowing enough time to fully embrace its warmth and extra long days. Inevitably, winter arrives, as it always must, with a biting wind, and then lingers much too long.