In our grand tradition of only bringing you news at the last possible second, we’d like to draw your attention to the second annual New England Art Awards, voting for which ends tomorrow (Sunday).  Lots and lots and Providence artists and galleries got nominated for the awards, which are organized by Phoenix art critic Greg Cook, and this year’s ballot is a lot less unwieldy than last year’s, so you may want to check it out.

While, more than anything, the ballot just made me gloomy about all the shows I wanted to see but didn’t (ie. the ACT UP retrospective at Harvard), a couple of ones I actually saw made the cut.  Michael Bizon’s instillation at 5 Traverse was great, as was Joe Deal’s landscape photography at the RISD Museum.  Shepard Fairey also got two indirect nominations, sort of:  one for the Boston Police Department’s showy arrest, and another for the anonymous artist that spraypainted dollar signs at the AS220 Mercantile Block.  (On a more community-minded note, Lydia Stein’s giant mural on a Smith Hill home was nominated in that same category.)  And Maya Allison from 5 Traverse got a well-deserved nomination in the “local curator of local art” category.

Winners will be announced on February 8 at the New England Art Awards Ball, which will take place at an Irish bar in Somerville.  Er…

[image via One Photo Every Day]

Attention starving artists — the deadline for submissions is January 15th for a juried show at the Providence Art Club.

The Providence Art Club invites New England artists to submit recent, original works to the 12th Annual Fidelity Investments “Extreme Scale” All Media Juried Art Exhibition. Deadline is January 15.

More than $1,700 in cash prizes will be awarded by a panel of community jurors including Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council and Rhode Island Senate Majority Leader Dan Connors. U.S. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) will be the honorary chair for the show.  In addition to three cash prizes, Fidelity will purchase one work for its permanent collection. Submissions will be exhibited at the Providence Art Club from February 28 to March 19.

For more more information, call the Providence Art Club at 401.331.1114.

Okay. . . politicians and art. . . there’s a natural combination. But the Art Club will run things properly I’m sure, and there’s actual money!

Admission to the musem is free all day Christmas eve. This gallery has couches and chairs in it so you can take a load off. People often nap here. And there is a gift shop.

Thursday, 10am to 5pm, RISD Museum, 224 Benefit Street, 454.6500

From Damian Ewens:

This Thursday night, Firehouse13 founder and burgeoning fashion designer Nick Bauta, collaborates with Mike Rinaldi and Joan Wyand for a first time show of Nick’s wild new pieces.

Think sexy industrial leather dominatrix, meets lace infusion with Olneyville punk knitting.

Music by DJs Dave Allyn and Damian Ewens, aka Unkle Thirsty and Lively Experiment.
Dub dub dub, 8pm, $5, Thursday, preceded by a holiday art sale.

The 105th Annual Little Pictures Show & Sale continues at the Providence Art Club. (Read the history of the club — the founding artists and collectors sound like the 1880 version of AS220, with a little Trinity mug club mixed in.)

The galleries will be home to an array of diverse multi-media works, all for $250 or less.
The Club’s newly renovated spaces will feature pieces by more than 100 of its artist members. Blending together a collection of timeless landscapes and still lifes with intricate glass works and mixed media assemblages, this medley of mediums and styles are sure to satisfy every art aficionado. Purchases can be picked up immediately, an ideal opportunity to give the gift of art to someone special for the holidays.
Deacon Taylor House at the Providence Art Club will also host open artist studios on Saturday and Sunday, December 12th and 13th, from 10am to 4pm.

Providence Art Club, 11 Thomas Street, sale through December 24, 331.1114

Can it be ten years already? The kind people at What Cheer Antiques and Vintage (go Daltrys!) are celebrating ten years in business and they’re passing the savings on to you. All weekend take 25% off everything in the store! Head over to Wayland Square and shop, shop, shop! Remember what I said last week about America’s grotesque culture of consumerism? Forget all that. It’s time to goose the economy and what better place to start? Besides, this is recycling at its best. Jewelry, old maps, things, stuff and ephemera. Crates and crates of records (vinyl and clay) and there will be music all day, with food, drink and even dancing. Yes, dancing, why not?

And don’t miss the beautiful original drawings, prints and paintings by Jennifer Daltry.

Noon to 6pm, Saturday and Sunday, What Cheer Antiques & Vintage, 7 South Angell Street, 401.861.4244

This post is a bit on the early side, but if Black Friday got you down, and you’re wondering how you can make your own holiday shopping meaningful and cool, check out the Monohasset Mills Holiday Sale this Saturday from 2pm to 6pm.

From Damian Ewens, surfer/artist/educator/DJ and recently poppa:

Monohasset Mill is Providence’s most active artist space with over 60 working artists living in 40 converted mill spaces. The Mill is home to photographers and fashion designers, ceramacists, jewelers and DJ’s, graphic designers, RISD profesors, art educators and more.

With residents that include the founders and owners of hyper-creative ventures such as The Steelyard, Woolly Fair, Queen of Hearts, and Firehouse13 this is an Open Studios not to be missed.

Even the folks who were living in the Mall, actually live at Monohasset.

The CREATure, a vast lighting installation in the courtyard of the Mill, will be lit at 4:30pm.
If you’re looking to collect some of Providence’s finest local art, head to Monohasset Mill on December 5th.

While not yet as well-known as Craftland or the Foundry sale, this is more of the village holiday shopping experience than any other as you walk around the studio/residences, meeting the artists themselves as you browse unique artwork at amazing prices. Parking and directions here.

The Blackout
11.07.09 8pm-12am
West Side Arts Gallery
645 Westminster Street

The Blackout is a showcase of up-and-coming talents and brands poised to make a difference in their local communities and the world. A handful of graphic artists, fashion labels, musicians, DJs, aficionados and media outlets will gather for this very special night to celebrate in Providence, Rhode Island for the sake of human creativity and to help raise funds for philanthropic community projects overseen by West Side Arts.

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Lisa Perez’s current exhibit, still even now, at the 5 Traverse Gallery is a meditative study in being and nothingness. The exhibit consists of small sculptural installations made of paper and wood. Her designs are poetic. They simplify the physical world without belittling it. Her best pieces are simultaneously microscopic and macroscopic. Organic grids and delicate squares cast shadows onto the gallery walls. These shadows define the physicality of each piece and in doing so aestheticize them. Yes, defined and aestheticized by shadows, which is to say defined and aestheticized by death and/or nothingness. Death is indeed the mother of all beauty, and thus the exhibit poses Heidegger’s famous question (paraphrased by Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In the Aeroplane over the Sea”): Why is there something rather than nothing? How strange it is.

Perez responds to the question with an elegant boldness. Her perspective is multifarious, but she does not reduce the physical world to chicken-shit relativism. Her answer is this — there is neither nothing nor something (triple negative?). There is everything and it happens all at once, from every angle, from every standpoint. (More after jump.)

5 Traverse Gallery, exhibit runs through November 22, 5 Traverse Street

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Not to turn this blog into the Matthew Lawrence Press Release Clearinghouse, but just so you know a show I curated is opening tomorrow at Craftland (235 Westminster St).  It’s called World of Queercraft and it features eight artists who have stitched and sewn and crocheted and painted all kinds of flags and karaoke and teapots and naked wrestling and rainbows and Barbra Streisand.  So come on down between 5 and 9 tomorrow to see work by Liz Collins, Michael DiPietro, Steven Frost, Monica Panzarino, Christopher Schulz, Anna Shapiro, Jason Tranchida and Matt Underwood.

There are lots of words and punctuation marks in the official title of the new exhibition “Pixilerations [v.6]: The Great Disruption” (part of FirstWorks festival which runs through November 15) like a technical handbook for the new normal. Yeah, so nobody is ever going to say all that, but it all looks pretty cool. The exhibition of films, videos and digital art kicks off tonight with simultaneous openings at 5 Traverse Gallery and the Kofler Gallery downtown (The Providence Journal says 6pm to 9pm, the Pixilerations site says it ends at 8pm). The robot jellyfish at Traverse has piqued my interest so I think I’ll check that out. (Correction — and thank you commenter — pictured here is The Empire an animated work Colin Williams, RISD MFA candidate.)

Openings start 6pm, Thursday, 5 Traverse Gallery at 5 Traverse Street/Kofler Gallery at 169 Weybosset Street

Only a few hours left today, and then tomorrow is the final day of the excellent exhibitions at 5 Traverse Gallery. Artist David Barnes (this work is oil on aluminum) takes images familiar to us from the world news and renders them unfamiliar and gloomy with livid, acidy tones.  In the next room is Cypheromantic, an installation by Michael Bizon who used found objects from the Olneyville area, including a wall of sound (picture after the jump) he constructed using speakers from an abandoned school. Talk about the shock of the familiar. (The show was reviewed here when it opened.)

Come meet David Barnes on Sunday between 2pm and 4pm.

Sunday last day of show, noon to 6pm, 5 Traverse Street more »

[Postponed to September 19. Good call. Ed.]

The Steel Yard continues to impress and amaze with all the arts, culture, production and fun they bring into the world — like that really cool girlfriend or boyfriend who was always full of surprises, and that you regret, to this day, that you didn’t spend more time with or appreciate more.

For the latest delight, check out a competition that is truly beyond compare this Saturday (rain date September 19th) as artists compete to create sculpture out of the same trove of objects and materials.

Here’s the skinny from the Steel Yard site:

Teams of artists and fabricators compete in our 2nd annual head-to-head sculpture competition.  Enjoy grilled goodies and stick around for the Iron Chef sculpture auction.  Also for sale will be ceramic goods made by Steel Yard ceramic artists.

$20 adults, $10 kids 10 and under, Saturday, Sept. 19, 1pm to 5pm, 27 Sims Avenue

All the news that’s fit to paint

Tsunamis kill people in Bali. Car bombs kill people in Iraq. The Internet is killing newspapers. The major news networks report on these killings with state of the art sensationalism and hi-tech dehumanization. Rhode Island artist David Barnes paints this process and the result is benignly seductive.

Starting this Friday, Barnes’ work will be on display at the 5 Traverse Gallery. The exhibit runs until September 13 and you don’t want to miss it. To paraphrase NBC, this is Must See Art. The exhibition is a collection of watercolors and oil paintings based on video stills from the nightly news. In his three large oil paintings, Barnes depicts street scenes from the world’s most televised locations, places where the major TV networks can always bank on environmental and political catastrophe. Unlike the major networks, Barnes treats the subject matter with the utmost sensitivity and sensuality. He achieves this by rendering his victims and onlookers in serene blues and grays that I dare liken to Picasso’s blue guitar. His colors are poetic, whether depicting a mass of body bags in an Indonesian marketplace or the dusky hues of evening prayer in downtown Jerusalem. (more after jump)

Opening reception 6pm to 8pm, Friday, 5 Traverse Street

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