Walter Inglis Anderson was an American painter, writer, naturalist and bicycle enthusiast.

Artist Bio:

Walter Inglis Anderson was born in 1903 in New Orleans to George Walter Anderson, a grain merchant, and Annette McConnell Anderson, an artist. His mother’s love of art, music, and literature strongly influenced Walter (called “Bob” by his friends and family) and his two brothers, Peter and Mac. Anderson was educated at a private boarding school, then attended the Parsons Institute of Design in New York and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where his drawings earned him a scholarship for study abroad. He traveled throughout Europe and was particularly impressed with the cave art he saw at Les Eyzies in France. His wide-ranging interests included extensive reading of poetry, history, natural science and art history. He pursued man’s search for meaning in books of folklore, mythology, philosophy, and epics of voyage and discovery.

Anderson returned to Ocean Springs and married a Radcliffe graduate, Agnes (Sissy) Grinstead, started a family, and went to work creating molds and decorating earthenware at Shearwater Pottery, founded by his brother Peter. Anderson felt that an artist should create affordable work that brought pleasure to others, and in return, the artist should be able to pursue his artistic passions. In the 1930s, he worked on regional Works Progress Administration mural projects and began to view his role in art as a muralist.

It was in the late 1930s that Anderson first succumbed to mental illness. He was diagnosed with severe depression and spent three years in and out of hospitals. Following his hospitalizations, Anderson joined his wife and small children at her father’s antebellum home in Gautier, Mississippi. The pastoral tranquillity of the “Oldfields” plantation provided an ideal setting for recuperation. During this period, he rendered thousands of disciplined and compelling works of art which reflected his training, intellect, and extraordinary grasp of the history of art.

In 1947, with the understanding of his family, Anderson left his wife and children and embarked on a private and very solitary existence. He lived alone in a cottage on the Shearwater compound, and increased his visits to Horn Island, one of a group of barrier islands along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He would row the 12 miles in a small skiff, carrying minimal necessities and his art supplies. Anderson spent long periods of time on this uninhabited island over the last 18 years of his life. There he lived primitively, working in the open and sleeping under his boat, sometimes for weeks at a time.

He endured extreme weather conditions, from blistering summers to hurricane winds and freezing winters. He painted and drew a multitude of species of island vegetation, animals, birds, and insects, penetrating the wild thickets on hands and knees and lying in lagoons in his search to record his beloved island paradise. Anderson’s obsession to “realize” his subjects through his art, to be one with the natural world instead of an intruder, created works that are intense and evocative.

Omitted from mainstream histories of American painting, Anderson’s work has not received sufficient critical attention, perhaps because he chose to live in a small Southern town, patiently acquiring what he called “definite knowledge” of local forms. Fiercely independent in spirit, indifferent to his own “career,” Anderson did nothing to cultivate fame or critical attention and sometimes seemed to flee them. When the Brooklyn Museum invited him to an exhibition of his linoleum block prints in 1948, he chose instead to travel to China, where he hoped to gaze upon unknown landscapes and examine Tibetan murals (the China trip ended, deep inland, when his passport and other belongings were stolen and Anderson returned, partly on foot, to his point of departure in Hong Kong.)

Among Anderson’s most vivid writings are logbooks recording his travels by bicycle to New York (1942), New Orleans (1943), Texas (1945), China (1949), Costa Rica (1951) and Florida (1960); an account of his life among the pelican colonies of North Key, in the Chandeleurs; and about 90 journals of his trips to Horn Island, off the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, in which he combines close observation of the natural world with reflection on art and nature. Another noteworthy log describes a walking tour to a colony of sand hill cranes north of Gautier, Mississippi in January 1944.

Walter Anderson died at the age of 62 in a New Orleans hospital of lung cancer. Much of the work survived only by chance; it was discovered in drifts, like autumn leaves, throughout his cottage after his death. Those found treasures present the viewer today with a fascinating opportunity to share Anderson’s vision.

In 2005 Hurricane Katrina damaged or destroyed much of Walter Anderson’s work which was housed in the concrete vault on the Anderson’s property in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. A group of professors and students from Mississippi State University (and others) volunteered their time and facilities to help save and preserve Anderson’s work.

See four more works by Anderson at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Form and Fantasy: The Block Prints of Walter Anderson features full-color and black-and-white reproductions of over 250 of the artist’s prints.

Bio taken from the Walter Anderson Museum of Art and Wikipedia.

“Hummingbirds”

“Blue Crabs” – 1960

“Frogs, Bugs Flowers” – 1960

“Thistle”

According to Randy Kennedy of the NY Times:

Cy Twombly, whose spare, childlike scribbles and poetic engagement with antiquity left him stubbornly out of step with the movements of postwar American art even as he became one of the era’s most important painters, died on Tuesday in Rome. He was 83.

His death was announced by the Gagosian Gallery, which represents his work. Mr. Twombly had battled cancer for several years.

In a career that slyly subverted Abstract Expressionism, toyed briefly with Minimalism, seemed barely to acknowledge Pop art and anticipated some of the concerns of Conceptualism, Mr. Twombly was a divisive artist almost from the start. The curator Kirk Varnedoe, on the occasion of a 1994 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, wrote that his work was “influential among artists, discomfiting to many critics and truculently difficult not just for a broad public, but for sophisticated initiates of postwar art as well.”

The critic Robert Hughes called him “the Third Man, a shadowy figure, beside that vivid duumvirate of his friends Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.”

Mr. Twombly’s decision to settle permanently in southern Italy in 1957 as the art world shifted decisively in the other direction, from Europe to New York, was only the most symbolic of his idiosyncrasies. He avoided publicity throughout his life and mostly ignored his critics, who questioned constantly whether his work deserved a place at the forefront of 20th century abstraction, though he lived long enough to see it arrive there. It didn’t help that his paintings, because of their surface complexity and whirlwinds of tiny detail — scratches, erasures, drips, penciled fragments of Italian and classical verse amid scrawled phalluses and buttocks — lost much of their power in reproduction…

Read the full article here

Check out a slideshow essay about Twombly’s work here

See more of Twombly’s work here (paintings) and here (sculpture)

“Solon I” – 1952

“Untitled” – 1954

“Untitled” – 1970

“Ferragosto I” – 1961

“Ides of March” – 1962

“School of Athens” – 1962

“Hero and Leander (To Christopher Marlowe)” – 1985

“Lepanto” – 2001

See more of Twombly’s work here (paintings) and here (sculpture)

Tidelands asked illustrator Ami Kutata to create a video for their new single “Holy Grail”. Four months later, Kutata had completed the video, based on more than 1,000 pages of her watercolor work.

Kutata isn’t fluent in English, so Mie Araki, one half of Tidelands, translated the lyrics to “Holy Grail” for her. This created slightly different meanings which combined with Kutata’s own storyline to make for something entirely new altogether.

“She was really attached to the line in the song, ‘Over-dignified is just another way to compensate for what you’ve lost’, which became her main inspiration for the story and the images of a traveler, the queen and the dwarf town,” says Araki.

“Holy Grail” is the first single from Tidelands upcoming self-released debut If…, out July 26.

I Wayan Sudarsana Yansen is a contemporary Indonesian artist who’s abstract paintings celebrate colour, life, energy and spirit in an organic way. Bursting, flowing, decomposing and re-emerging the forms appear in a constant state of transition. The visual language he creates on the canvas is both beautiful and mysterious with each piece he weaving a small story about the natural course of things. (source)

Yansen lives and works in Ungasan, Bali, Indonesia.

See more of Yansen’s work here

*all works are oil on canvas

“New York.Broadway”

“_______________________AMOR”

“Tree of Life 2097″

See more of Palito’s work on Flickr

According to Honor Fraser Gallery (LA), home of Annie Lapin’s latest solo exhibition entitled The Pure Space Animate, which opens May 21 and runs through July 9:

In a new group of paintings on canvas, Lapin’s luscious, high-energy compositions co-mingle painterly conventions of representation with an obliterating gestural abstraction. Lapin refers to specters of realism that haunt the abstraction in these richly layered paintings. In The Pure Space Animate, there is less occasion for the multi-figure groups and enigmatic narratives of previous works, with further prominence shifted to the intensive formal activity. The coherent scenic space and figural focal points which remain are yet more densely encircled and perforated by painterly forces that counteract their legibility, leaving the viewing experience characteristically unstable.

One seeks and temporarily sees indications of illusionistic space – a horizon line, a column, the shadow of a tree – only to find that it behaves instead the next moment as a collection of sinuous ribbons of paint bound to the surface. And it is this contrasting visual interpretation, this unresolved chord, that Lapin seeks to strike in the interest of a phenomenological experience of works as “constantly emerging” for the viewer. Essential to the expressiveness in Lapin’s paintings is the articulation of space. The artist has developed a palette of elemental forces extracted from a lineage of painting and visual culture of her own devising. These sets of formal relationships – such as a lilting perspective or a characteristic distribution of masses across the picture plane – are isolated from their sources and given new life as structuring forces for Lapin’s paralinguistic figures and spaces. In particular, a number of the works in The Pure Space Animate submit compositional conventions from sensuous Rococo landscapes to the gravitational pull of the pure relations of abstract painting…

See more of Lapin’s work here and here

Watch a video about Lapin and her work here

“The History or Hysterical Memory” 2010, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 40 x 60 inches

“Bi-cyclic and Tri-cyclic Romantics” 2009, Casein, acrylic, and egg tempera on panel, 48 x 72 inches

“Private Outdoor Facial Coronation” 2009, Casein and oil on panel, 33 x 47 inches

“Perverts” 2009. Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches

Click the link below for our calendar events April 8, 2011 through April 15, 2011.

Calendar link for events

Highlights:

• ReThink Topeka Exhibition and Art Walk
Downtown Topeka (Map of below locations)
Saturday, April 9, 1-6pm

From the organizers (ReThink Topeka):
Venues and Activities

• Break Room (911 S. Kansas Ave.): film, music and youth art. Food for sale by the Break Room. Youth/Adult activity: make a city collage with provided materials.

• Blue Planet Café (110 S.E. 8th Ave.): Artwork by regional artists, live music, readings and food provided by the Blue Planet Café.
Youth/Adult activity: Linda Carson will do storytelling at 2, 4 and 5
p.m. You can make wings to flutter around for the rest of the day. Supplies will also be available to make your own button for $1. Merchandise will be headquartered at Blue Planet, with ReThink
Topeka shirts, chapbooks and Frisbees for sale.

• Jayhawk Tower (700 Southwest Jackson St.): Artwork by regional artists, live music, readings and food provided by the Brickyard Barn Inn. The Jayhawk Theatre will be conducting tours of the theater at 1, 3, and 5. Youth/Adult activity: cookie decorating.

• NexLynx (123 SW 6th Ave.): Artwork by regional artists will be on display. Youth/Adult activity: poetry workshop. Chapbooks featuring regional authors will be on sale at this location. Door prize and food provided by NexLynx.

• Supersonic Music (117 S.E. 6th Ave.): Local musicians will perform out front. Youth/Adult activity: chalking

• Topeka Community Cycle Project (TCCP) (423 S. Kansas Ave.): Local craft and art group, the Craftavists have partnered with the TCCP to upcycle bike parts and materials in order to create handmade bicycle inspired art, which will be on display and for sale at this location.

Music, chalk drawing and other activities will line the sidewalks
during the event.

View full full event list here.

American Infamy 3 by Roger Shimomura

• Shadows of Minidoka
• 31st Annual Lawrence Art Auction
Lawrence Arts Center (940 New Hampshire Street in Lawrence, KS)
Saturday, April 9, 5:30-10pm

From the organizers:
Doors open at 5:30. Live Auction begins at 7:30

Art from over 150 artists on view now in the galleries.

2011 Featured Artist: Roger Shimomura.

Major sponsors: The EyeDoctors Optometrists Dr. Harvat, Dr. Brown, and Dr. Hamilton.

Artwork generously donated by artists represents a diverse spectrum of forms and mediums, including paintings, sculpture, photography, ceramics, jewelry and prints. The art auction committee is working hard at ensuring this event is teeming with quality art and that the event is truly a great experience for all involved. You can expect fresh changes to many aspects of this event. Ben Ahlvers, Exhibitions Director along with the Art Auction Committee are enthusiastic to bring this annual event to the community.

The Lawrence Arts Center is a non-profit arts agency that has served the Lawrence community for 35 years. The Exhibitions Program strives to provide the highest quality in local, national, regional, national and international visual art. Between the two gallery spaces, the program hosts 15-18 exhibits per year. This annual event serves as the gallery programs primary source of funding. Now, more than ever the arts need you to become an active participant.

Tickets may be purchased by phone (785-843-2787) or at the Lawrence Arts Center with credit card, check, cash. $40 in advance (ends 4pm April 9), $50 at door.

• Adult Swim Carnival
Street Closure – between Mass. St. and New Hampshire St. (17 East 8th Street in Lawrence, KS)
Thursday, April 14, 6-11pm

From the Organizers:
Adult Swim is about to jollificate all over Lawrence. The Ragbag of Jollification features Bands! Prizes! Games such as Convict Escape! Flunko! and Balloonicorn Blowout! And it’s FREE! FREE! FREE!

Go to adultswimpresents.com to find out more.

Performance by Pusha-T featuring Rick Geez, and music by Nick Arcade.

• Shadows of Minidoka
• 31st Annual Lawrence Art Auction
Lawrence Arts Center (940 New Hampshire Street in Lawrence, KS)
Saturday, April 9, 5:30-10pm

From the organizers:
Doors open at 5:30. Live Auction begins at 7:30

Art from over 150 artists on view now in the galleries.

2011 Featured Artist: Roger Shimomura.

Major sponsors: The EyeDoctors Optometrists Dr. Harvat, Dr. Brown, and Dr. Hamilton.

Artwork generously donated by artists represents a diverse spectrum of forms and mediums, including paintings, sculpture, photography, ceramics, jewelry and prints. The art auction committee is working hard at ensuring this event is teeming with quality art and that the event is truly a great experience for all involved. You can expect fresh changes to many aspects of this event. Ben Ahlvers, Exhibitions Director along with the Art Auction Committee are enthusiastic to bring this annual event to the community.

The Lawrence Arts Center is a non-profit arts agency that has served the Lawrence community for 35 years. The Exhibitions Program strives to provide the highest quality in local, national, regional, national and international visual art. Between the two gallery spaces, the program hosts 15-18 exhibits per year. This annual event serves as the gallery programs primary source of funding. Now, more than ever the arts need you to become an active participant.

Tickets may be purchased by phone (785-843-2787) or at the Lawrence Arts Center with credit card, check, cash. $40 in advance (ends 4pm April 9), $50 at door.

• ReThink Topeka Exhibition and Art Walk
Downtown Topeka (Map of below locations)
Saturday, April 9, 1-6pm

From the organizers (ReThink Topeka):
Venues and Activities

• Break Room (911 S. Kansas Ave.): film, music and youth art. Food for sale by the Break Room. Youth/Adult activity: make a city collage with provided materials.

• Blue Planet Café (110 S.E. 8th Ave.): Artwork by regional artists, live music, readings and food provided by the Blue Planet Café.
Youth/Adult activity: Linda Carson will do storytelling at 2, 4 and 5
p.m. You can make wings to flutter around for the rest of the day. Supplies will also be available to make your own button for $1. Merchandise will be headquartered at Blue Planet, with ReThink
Topeka shirts, chapbooks and Frisbees for sale.

• Jayhawk Tower (700 Southwest Jackson St.): Artwork by regional artists, live music, readings and food provided by the Brickyard Barn Inn. The Jayhawk Theatre will be conducting tours of the theater at 1, 3, and 5. Youth/Adult activity: cookie decorating.

• NexLynx (123 SW 6th Ave.): Artwork by regional artists will be on display. Youth/Adult activity: poetry workshop. Chapbooks featuring regional authors will be on sale at this location. Door prize and food provided by NexLynx.

• Supersonic Music (117 S.E. 6th Ave.): Local musicians will perform out front. Youth/Adult activity: chalking

• Topeka Community Cycle Project (TCCP) (423 S. Kansas Ave.): Local craft and art group, the Craftavists have partnered with the TCCP to upcycle bike parts and materials in order to create handmade bicycle inspired art, which will be on display and for sale at this location.

Music, chalk drawing and other activities will line the sidewalks
during the event.

View full full event list here.

Click the link below for our calendar events April 1, 2011 through April 8, 2011.

Calendar link for events

Highlights:

• Jest for Wolfbats: All Fools Day Parade
Escapist Skateshop (405 Southwest Blvd in Kansas City, MO)
Friday, April 1, 7:30-10:30pm

From the organizers:
A Wolfbat War Vessel will be launched down the street from Inkubator Press, 115 W. 18th St, after the defeat of two alien pinatas. Once the defeat occurs, the war vessel will battle its way through First Friday streets and end at Escapist Skateshop /Gallery, where a grand finale battle with 4 more alien pinatas will take place. SEDLEC OSSUARY, fireworks, fire and more! Pinatas filled with free gear and goodies! All masks and pinata sculptures are collaborations with KCAI and Wichita State Univ art students. Prints will be on display by Dennis McNett and WolfBat Studio.

Flag of Japan (Jake) by Tex Jernigan

• Flag of Japan Portraits
Blue Gallery (118 Southwest Blvd in Kansas City, MO)
Friday, April 1, 6-9pm

From the organizers:
Star Base Projects “Flag of Japan Portraits” featured is a one night only, interactive event allowing First Friday attendees to be featured in “Flag of Japan Portraits”. Digital versions of portraits taken that evening will be available at www.StarBaseProjects.com, recommended donation to participate. Poster prints of previous “Flag of Japan Portraits” will be available for purchase $25 each.
All proceeds from this event will go to the American Red Cross for Japan relief.

Veggie Sushi Rolls, created and photographed by Aly Young

• Lawrence Raw Foods Potluck
South Park Gazebo (1141 Massachusetts St. in Lawrence, KS)
Friday, April 1, 6-7:30pm

From the organizers:
This is the first of what will be a monthly potluck on the first Fridays of each month. Everyone welcome! Please bring an organic, vegan, raw dish to share and a plate/bowl/utensils/personal beverage. If you have no idea what to bring– fresh fruit, salad or a veggie tray would be something easy and tasty! Another idea is to search for “raw, vegan recipes” online. There is an abundance of online resources for raw recipes. Come share great living food with great people!

Desperate Pee by Jin Shan

• Spring Student Night: 2011: A Space Odyssey
Spencer Museum of Art (1301 Mississippi Street in Lawrence, KS)
Thursday, April 7, 5:30-7:30pm

From the organizers:
The Spencer Student Advisory Board is hosting its annual spring student night. This year’s theme, “2011:A Space Odyssey,” celebrates the Spencer Museum of Art’s current artist-in-residence, Jin Shan, and his exhibition “It Came From the Sky.” It is going to be a Space BLAST!!!

A moonbounce (pending), KJHK DJ, and Costume contest with prizes: Dress up in a space-suit or as your favorite sci-fi character! Free food from local businesses, photobooth, KU DDR Club, and Out-of-this-world activities. The SSAB would like to thank KU Student Senate, Coca-Cola, and the SMA for their generous support.