DECEMBER ISSUE #8, 2012
IN THIS ISSUE
PART OF ANNE BURTT'S GLASS FLOWER
 
CARTOON BUFFOON
Esben
POETRY INSESSION 
Kathleen Spivack
AISA
Flora and Fauna
MAGICAL MYSTERY 
Mary Mikel Stump
GAGANATION CAMEO
Galen Cheney
SILVER AND GOLD
Margit Morawietz
IN THE NEWS 
Gaga Accolades
 
 
Welcome back loyal readers! 
 

Well, they are here or almost here! Happy Holidays to everyone!
My favorite holiday cookie remains Nestle's chocolate chip. I still remember my brother sneaking into the refrigerator to eat the unbaked cookie dough.
Of course mom was a saint, she just made more, all kinds, actually. Anyway, lately I have tried tweaking the original recipe a little for variety. I now use white chocolate and macadamia nuts, a favored recipe of  Greta Gundersen's. These cookies are sinful and extremely fattening. My husband can attest to that, having eaten 14 in a row and gone promptly to bed with a belly ache, unable to move. Thank God this time of year only rolls around once a year!
 
So, we are all busy with our lives and our shows and our families. GAGA wishes each and everyone of you a happy and safe holiday season and a very, very HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Eggnog and all!
 
Sylvia Benitez, Founder and President/GAGA
  
POETRY INSESSION 
Kathleen 
Spivack
About
 
I am a professional literary writer. The oldest daughter of writer Peter Drucker; writing, reading, teaching, coaching and mentoring have always been my life. My father was an emigre intellectual when I was growing up, and imbued me with his values and outlook.
 
Later, Robert Lowell became my teacher and longtime friend, and I was privileged also to witness a part of the writing journeys of Elizabeth BishopAnne SextonAdrienne RichStaney KunitzSylvia PlathJohn Gardner and other formative writers who shaped their time.
 
My mission has always been to write, to read, to teach. How could it not be?  Of course family life, personal life, children etc. presented themselves as well.  They reached to the core of the creative process. While teaching in Boston and throughout the US, I started working in the French University system. My writing changed, became deeper I think. Much of my writing has been published and presented: books, anthologies, magazines, or in readings and performance, as theatre pieces, sometimes with original musical scores.
 
 


 

MONET'S "PATH"

 

From A History of Yearning, Sows Ear 2010,

Monet's "Path" won the Sows Ear Chapbook contest, 

It went on to win Los Angeles, New England,

and London book Festivals-

 

(First Prize, poetry book./London) 

 


Monet's "Path"

 

You walk into the painting,

you walk down the path

through the bleached grass toward the village:

the cicadas are singing;

you are going someplace

 

ordinary.

Perhaps it is to the post office,

perhaps it is to get milk;

the dry grasses are hardly stirring:

a museum guard is at standstill, watching you.

 

You walk next to poplar trees,

you walk through sun and shade:

it is an ordinary errand

but the flowers shriek, brighter than daytime,

and the weeds murmur: "notice me."

 

The painter is so much a part of this

the crickets hardly bother to silence themselves.

Nothing stops singing:

grass celebrates its green-ness

and the moist ground, underfoot.

 

springs back, debonair, as

you part it with your eye-- it is almost

a feeling-- this green dapple of light and shade,

framed, dazzling, just when you entered it.

 

-Kathleen Spivack-

 

FLORA AND FAUNA 
 
is a GAGA collage of all member works. Each member has been asked to create up to three works on 12 x 12 x 2 cradled panels. The work, in any medium, will address the title's living theme. The art work will be hung at random as it comes into the gallery, creating an "exquisite quilt." This quilt represents the range of our members' talent and vision, exisiting as a unified installation.
 
We invite new and interested women artists to JOIN GAGA and participate in this call. For more information 
 
PLEASE GO TO OUR BLOG!
 
 
SILVER AND GOLD
a new column about GAGA CRAFT, featuring this month
 
The work of
MARGIT MORAWIETZ
 

Try thinking phrases like Byzantine and Celtic combine, Brigit's bronze and vintage coral, a troubadour's wandering-minstrel find, and you just might "get" Margit Morawietz' latest jewelry. 

Native to Germany, Margit, a writer, is a now-turned visual artist, presently working in the decorative arts. Her work is featured regularly in Southwest School of Arts' annual exhibitions.

 


     GAGANATIONVermont 
     Galen Cheney  

I am a restless artist, impatient to see what's coming next in my work.  I am always pushing, pushing, pushing the work forward, and I find myself, at times, running to catch up to it.  I am absorbing information and forming ideas all the time, and it is always a surprise to see the evolution of my work, the next iteration. Glimpsing that mystery compels me to keep going.  As much as it is about intellectual and visual ideas, it is about the subject and process of human creativity, something I find endlessly fascinating in my own life and in that of other artists.

 





 

 

CARTOON BUFFOON
 
    - "I don't theeenk so!"                      Esben-
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
OF NOTICE CHELLE DELANEY 
Photographic works 

 

Portal/ A SMITH GALLERY
Juried by Jeffrey Becom

November 30 to January 12, 2013

Reception: December 29, 2012  4 to 7PM

 

105 N Nugent Ave, Johnson City, Texas. 

Weekends: 12-6pm- Fri-Sat, and 12- 3pm- Sun

 

 

 

 

 

GAGAPRO
STEFANI 
JOB SPEARS


  
Image courtesy : Lesta Frank
 
Quick Links

GAGA 

      *
IN THE NEWS* *
 
Louise Craig
contributed work for our December news header.
 
Craig recently was honored with a full feature article by Elda Silva in the Express News, San Antonio. 
SEE LINK
 
She received first place award for the SAGAG recycled glass challenge exhibition recently held at Gallery 281.
 
Margit
Morawietz 
will be exhibiting her work at the 4th Annual Bracelet Show "A Symbol of encircling Beauty" at Kathleen Sommers in San Antonio. Reception 6-9pm Dec 6th. Phone: 210-732-2207
 

Morawietz' design idea for a sliced diamond is published in the "Your Turn" column of the November issue of "Lapidary Journal/Jewelry Artist". 

  

Barbara Felix
showed her work at a wine tasting event held in the BIg Apple Room, Little Italy, San Antonio.
 **
Chelle Delaney
Two images by photographer Chelle Delaney were selected for the Portal photography exhibit at A Smith Gallery, Johnson City, Texas. 
 
Ms. Delaney is now offering editorial and web building consultation services for mac platforms. To see her work go to her recently finished, beautiful web site. 
  *   
Jennifer   *  *
Polnaszek*   *

 

has been invited to participate in the Artist of the Year competition at the Coppini Academy in December 2012.

 

Jennifer received Best in

Watercolor and the Brad Braune Watercolor Award at the Coppini Member 

exhibition in October.

 

She will be exhibiting work at the Coppini Academy's All Art, Great and Small through Dec 9th.

  

Elizabeth  

Williams *

had a solo show at the Soapbox Gallery, Brooklyn, NY.

 *
Anne Burtt
was awarded second prize in Amateur 3D division, "Inspire's on Fire" juried Art Competition, Inspire Community Fine Art Center.
 
Kari Roberts Sackmann's
recent Bihl Haus Exhibition
was reviewed in a beautiful article by Gabriel Delgado in NSIDE SA magazine. 

 

 

Dear Georgia

I always give my work for holiday presents. Lately, I have begun making tree ornaments. I am surprised that so many of my friends want them and they are asking me if I take orders. I guess I could sell them but then I do not know if I will have enough for my dearest ones.

 

My dilemma is, I could use the extra cash. So, how much should I sell them for if I decide to make them available to my friends?

 

Sparkles in NYC-

 

 

Dear Sparkles,

 

Are you daft?  I do not know your work! I have not seen your work! Go and shop around in the high-end decorator stores, museum shops, etc. Look at work and prices. See if your ornaments compare in quality and price them accordingly. 

Good luck! Maybe you should take a few examples along with you as you compare shop... who knows, the store you are visiting might be interested for next year.

And...

 

Don't be silly. Take your best baubles and wrap them for your loved ones. 

  

 Georgia

 

 


MAGICAL 
MYSTERY
with
MARY MIKEL STUMP
 

The numbers add up.. I think it's what they, who ever they are, say about significant scientific data. 'Cept in art, the data is a little more abstruse. One has to recognize and know the art language, or "hear" the openly bare, seemingly random statements that sometimes trickle out

 ( for instance, " I like to have other's work on the walls instead of my own,"

to fully appreciate a fellow art spirit's degree of developed sensitivity and maturity.

 

 

Walking into Mary Mikel's home is like stepping across the threshold into another time, an old world constructed in tones of sepia. We are visually thrust into a different existence that remembers and stands guard. Here in this receptacle for time's hidden passages, we find the presiding silent sentinels of our craft; the in-place art paradigms: repetition of form, collage, limited color palette, all. These are the guarding secrets of our unspoken visual language and here they bespeak a visual intelligence that is, quite possibly, huge.

 

 

I comfortably sit down in a striped wingback chair and listened to Mary Mikel talk about her life's passion, art. I am not sure one can break this down into just one category of the visual arts. For this regionally exhibiting artist is also the director of Texas State's Mitte Gallery. She is responsible for bringing state-of-the-art exhibitions to the university as well as serving the student population 

and their edification 

through this exposure. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We start talking about museums, a topic close to her heart. It soon becomes obvious that MM is very much aware of the compromises currently being made in, and by, our cultural institutions to engage and sustain new audiences.

 

In other words, the how and why museums are straying from time honored operating procedures and adopting new technologies, social media, and offering electronic interaction to augment the museum- goers' experience. It would seem this is a survival strategy as cultural institutions find themselves thrust into an erupting maelstrom, aptly (no social media pun intended) called "diminishing attendance numbers." Museums are fighting for relevancy, and in doing so are being forced to come down and out of their ivory tower.

 

 

It is an exciting time. New foundations are being laid and invented as even the top dogs are scrambling to be relevant in this millennium. Mary Mikel is very much hip to this potentially dying dino scenario and and is on top of the newest museum success strategies. She has implemented some of these into her own facility operations, ensuring state of the "art" delivery.

 

 

Driving this home, MM synched the interview with this plum, as she revealed her secret success weapon. She served it up, ladled on top of her already rich life's ice cream sunday. And well folks, the proof of the pudding's fudge is: MM is getting her masters from the Johns Hopkins University in Museum Studies.

 

An enviable position, I believe, as it positions her in the thick of the evolving contemporary museum mindset and their newest ways of thinking about audience and presentation. She is, by coming late to the academic game, presently now on the vanguard of a very new breaking story; what contemporary art and museums were just a minute ago.

 

sb-

  
Up next: 
Keeping women's health issues in the foreground
 a follow-up on the recent exhibiton at Bihl Haus by
 
KARI ROBERTS-SACKMANN 
 

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