A Week in Images (Quarantine Learning Report #1)

Since the beginning of quarantine, I have been attending a bunch of terrific online lectures from all across the country. In just the past month or so I’ve had the pleasure of hearing live talks by a list of artists that includes Theaster Gates, Edmund de Waal, Peter Pincus, Syd Carpenter, Ghada Amer, Kathy Butterly, LaToya Ruby Frazier, and Glenn Ligon (with Hilton Als) to name just a few. I also watch a lot of presentations from galleries and museums. Some cover artists I already know, while others introduce me to someone new. I almost always leave better informed and inspired. After the talks I typically follow up with my own deeper research on whatever the subject. Online learning definitely has been one positive of the pandemic. I’m hooked. I am usually able to work in my own studio while I watch. It’s the best!

Here are a few of my favorite images by the artists I’ve learned from and about in this past week’s sessions.

Nobuo Sekine, Phase-Mother Earth, 1968/2012
Earth and cement
Cylinder and hole each: 106 1/4” x 86 5/8 (diameter) in
The Rachofsky Collection
Lydia Clark, Bicho, 1962
Gilded metal with hinges
90.2 x 53.3 x 54.6 cm
The Adlopho Lerner Collection of Brazilian Constructive Art at
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Kathy Butterly, PInk Remedy, 2020
Clay, glaze
6 3/8” x 7” x 6 1/2 in
Shoshana Wayne Gallery
C. Daniel Dawson, Backscape #1, 1967
Gelatin Silver Print
Image: 6” x 9 in
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Latoya Ruby Frazier, Mom Making an Image of Me, from the series The Notion of Family, 2008
Gelatin silver print
16” x 20 in
Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston
Adger Cowans, Malcolm Speaks, c. 1960-65
Gelatin silver print
Image: 6 15/16” x 9 3/8 in
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your body is a battleground), 1989
Photographic silkscreen on vinyl
112” x 112 in
The Broad
Glenn Ligon, Double America 2, 2014
Neon and paint
8 “ x 145 inches
The Broad
From 1983-1986 Niki de Saint Phalle wrote and illustrated this book, AIDS: You Can’t Catch it Holding Hands. Written in the form of a letter to her son, with information about AIDS.
Niki de Saint Phalle, Daddy, 1972
Film still
Museo Guggenheim Bilbao

That’s just one week! I’ll try to catch up in future weeks, by sharing images from past lectures as well as new ones from the week itself. I take so many notes that sharing some of them with readers, will help me better organize and keep track of what I’ve seen. I have twelve months of notebooks full of information from amazing online learning. I hope you, my readers, will find something to enjoy in it. Questions welcomed, of course.

One thought on “A Week in Images (Quarantine Learning Report #1)

  1. Oh what a rich set of visual ideas you’re working through. I wonder if the last image “Daddy” by Niki de Saint Phalle is a Sylvia Plath reference? She has a scathing

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