Covid - 19 Mosaic Art Project Gallery

(c) Wesley A. Morgan

All of the featured pieces in this blog are part of a series of works created from March through July, 2020 in the Covid - 19 Mosaic Art Project, They use chips cut from commercial packaging (e.g. cereal boxes), reclaimed cardboard (e.g. from local Aldi's) affixed with Elmer's glue. 

   

Virus

There is a virus among us.

Place sensible distance between.

Listen well – do not fuss;

The likes of this, has never been seen.

Shelter in Place,

You are not alone.

Be in your own space,

Just stay at home.

Equipment requests denied;

Personal protection;

They said the president lied.

In spite of this spread of infection!

It’s up to all of you;

Follow the rules;

Whatever you do;

Don’t act like fools.

These are tricky times;

Cover your face;

Avoid grocery lines;

So much at stake.

Wash your hands;

Carefully disinfect;

Objects and surfaces can

Be safer if you inspect.

Little things are big.

Big things become small.

You couldn’t give a fig,

Like it doesn’t matter at all.

Flatten the curve.

Research, data, science...

Collect some nerve.

Get into compliance.

Do as you must;

One nation, one world;

In God we Trust;

As a pandemic is unfurled.

Pray for peace.

Lord, how long will it last?

With faith, love, and hope believe

This too shall pass.

After the fact, you want to say you tried.

Look back, make no mistake,

People suffered, people died.

So much sadness left in the wake.

This time is a very good one,

If we but know what to do.

You’re under the gun,

We are thinking of you.

All for one and one for all;

Stop. Put everything on hold.

Use caution, avoid the fall;

Blessings to young and to old.

Laumeier: Follies 2020

Memory Box by Mark Dion at Laumeier Sculpture Park

Laumeier Sculpture Park is proud to present Mark Dion: Follies. Mark Dion has fashioned a world-wide reputation as an innovative sculptor and installation artist whose points of departure include the intersections of the historical and the contemporary, as well as the man-made and natural worlds from February 15 through May 24, 2020. Mark Dion: Follies presents many of the artist’s architectural works, ranging from hunting blinds and storage sheds to mobile carts and shacks. These structures serve as fictitious bases for the enjoyment of nature and the study of natural specimens by scientists, botanists and naturalists. Visitors will experience sculptural installations such as Hunting Blind (The Glutton) and Hunting Blind (The Dandy Rococo), Dion’s elaborate takes on the outdoor protective structures used by hunters, as well as The Memory Box, a shed filled with dozens of keepsake objects stored in individual containers that suggest the ways that inanimate objects are associated with treasured memories. 

Laumeier's exhibition Mark Dion: Follies is here from  Storm King Art Center, a 500-acre outdoor museum located in New York’s Hudson Valley where Mark Dion: Follies exhibition was featured this past year.

 

Mark Dion was born in 1961 in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He initially studied in 1981-2 at the Hartford Art School of the University of Hartford in Connecticut, which awarded him a BFA (1986) and honorary doctorate in 2002. From 1983 to 1984 he attended the School of Visual Arts in New York and then the prestigious Whitney Museum of American Art's Independent Study Program (1984-1985). He is an Honorary Fellow of Falmouth University in the UK (2014), and has an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (Ph.D.) from The Wagner Free Institute of Science in Philadelphia (2015).

The Mark Dion Follies was held over until September due to Covid - 19.

Man with a Hoe

The Man with the Hoe by Edwin Markham (1852-1940)

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes.
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this —
More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed —
More filled with signs and portents for the soul —
More fraught with menace to the universe.
What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time's tragedy is in the aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned, and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Powers that made the world.
A protest that is also a prophecy.
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream,
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands
How will the Future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings —
With those who shaped him to the thing he is —
When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world.
After the silence of the centuries?

Inspired by the painting L'homme à la houe 

by Jean-François Millet. 

This poem is in the public domain.

Sowing the Seeds of Modern Art

Jean-François Millet: Sowing the Seeds of Modern Art places Millet’s paintings, drawings and pastels in the context of a large number of 19th- and early 20th-century international avant-garde artists, who were inspired by the French painter. Jean-François Millet: Sowing the Seeds of Modern Art is the result of collaboration between the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Van Gogh Museum. (Opened in February and due to Covic - 19 it was held over until September 7,2020)

Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) is widely considered as one of the most important Barbizon School painters. He influenced many generations of artists. The exhibition Jean-François Millet: Sowing the Seeds of Modern Art illustrates just how progressive the work of Millet was in his own time and how important he became to modern artists after him, such as Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Winslow Homer and Salvador Dalí. This is the first exhibition to explicitly focus on the international impact of the modernity of Millet’s work.

Jean-François Millet took a poetic and emphatic approach to painting, in which he chose everyday themes from peasant life, particularly the relationship between man and nature. Never before had peasant scenes been depicted in such a monumental way and with such deference. Instead of focusing on industrialization and urbanization as hallmarks of modern times, Millet concentrated on the hardships of peasant life. His deep understanding of this social class and his radical painting technique went against the norm.

Later artists appreciated not only his peasant themes, but also his nudes and landscapes – works that are nowadays less well-known. These artists also admired Millet’s anti-academic approach, inventive technique and use of materials. Into the 20th century, Millet’s renown extended from Europe to America and Russia, and he inspired artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Winslow Homer, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Edvard Munch and Salvador Dalí. Notably, Millet was an artistic hero of Vincent van Gogh. In the final year of his life, Vincent van Gogh even painted a striking series of 20 ‘copies’ of works by Millet.

Sower by Millet circa 1856-66 and Sower by Vincent van Gogh 1888 and (at podium) Saint Louis Art Museum curator of modern and contemporary art Simon Kelly. 

The exhibit has 100+ works on loan from Musee d'Orsay/Paris, Yamanashi/Japan, Getty/LA, Museum of Fine Arts/Boston...Pittsburgh, Buffalo, New York and more. Amazing collection on view at this show. Bravo.