Niborama

Cruz Control! Look who’s coming to the East Village:

A sketch for a mural at 1st and 1st by Cruz, one of 13 artists collaborating with Cre8tive YouTH*ink and the Centre-fuge Public Art Project on Influx, In Flux, a multi-wall youth-development art project being staged during the New Museum’s Ideas City festival, the first weekend in May.

You can help young artists from Brooklyn and the Bronx work with professional mentors in this Art School Without Walls project by contributing to their IndieGogo campaign! Even a small amount can go a long way toward helping them provide materials and stipends for the kids!

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Birds Do It, Bees Do It: Taking Art-Making Animals Seriously

The perception of animals as art-makers has come a long way since the late ’50s, when Desmond Morris put Congo the painting chimp on British TV. 

Today animal artists are not viewed so much as novelties but as sophisticated creators with skills and senses that can enhance projects in ways humans never can. Anthropomorphism is out, and biological determinism is in.

It has become common for zoos and even aquariums to offer art supplies to a wide variety of species, part of efforts–known as Enrichment–to keep animals physically and mentally stimulated. Among residents of the National Zoo in Washington who have made art in such programs are a banded armadillo, a naked mole rat, hissing cockroaches, a leopard gecko, lions, grizzlies, the Elegant Crested Tinamou, a toucan, and Tian Tian, the giant panda.

Complementing these zoological initiatives are innovative projects in the mainstream art world. Two designers in MoMA’s “Applied Design” show draw on the olfactory skills of bees. Tomás Saraceno enlists spiders to build webs. Catherine Chalmers has been working with leafcutter ants in the Costa Rica rain forest. Read more.

Catherine Chalmers, Antworks in Progress – Pink Leaf, 2012, from “The Leafcutters” series, pigment print. Courtesy the Artist.

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Ticket to ride: Nick Cave’s horses in Grand Central Station via @creativetimenyc #Iheardny

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E is for: ‘Archangel E (Eating It),’ portrait of Monstah Black (detail) by Iona Rozeal Brown at Salon 94

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Surreal! #DuaneMichals at DCMoore

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Life’s a beach: Ashley Bickerton at Lehmann Maupin

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I know where the carved bird sings: Silas Kopf in ‘Against the Grain’ at Mad Museum

The Art that Made Peru Peru:

The fearsome forehead ornament with the feline head and octopus-shaped tentacles ending in catfish heads, now of view in the massive survey of Peruvian art at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, is silent in some ways and speaks volumes in others.

Crafted in gold, chrysocolla and shells, this sea god was made for a Mochica ruler some time between 100 and 800 A.D. Scholars believe it was buried at a site called La Mina in the Jequetepeque Valley, on Peru’s northern coast.

But they don’t know for sure. In 1988 La Mina was looted, and by the time archeologists learned the ornament existed, it had been smuggled to Spain. After being recovered by Scotland Yard in London, it was repatriated to Peru in 2006.

Grimacing from the catalogue’s cover, the golden god sends a fierce message about Peru’s ongoing commitment to reclaim its archeological heritage.

But it’s also there to make a larger statement about a national cultural identity.

Read more

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Deck the walls: @sofiamaldo In ‘Against the Grain’ at MAD Museum #wood #skateboard