July 2021 Art News

Ironically, the most iconic portrait of the president was never completed.
The July 2021 Focus for Reframed is American Heat

In the original 1957 lyrics to the song “America” from the Broadway musical West Side Story, Puerto Rican immigrants dance across a rooftop in the stifling heat of smog-filled Manhattan. “Immigrant goes to America, many ‘hellos’ in America, nobody knows in America,” the women sing.

Do you have to be a starving artist to be successful? Absolutely not! Jay Parnell not only works at UPS, but he is also a narrative painter. Parnell started out as a portrait photographer and then took those skills and taught himself how to paint. Parnell is now one of the most successful painters in the Midwest, and his work is sought after by collectors across the country. How do you take the world we are now living in with movements such as Black Lives Matter or the political divisions across this country?

Italy’s Project ShareArt will collect data on the “attraction value” of particular artworks and enforce COVID-19 guidelines through a combination of artificial intelligence, big data applications, and cameras pointed at guests.
Chromotherapy brings together works in various media by nine artists: Ai Weiwei, John Chiara, Kota Ezawa, Angelo Filomeno, Andy Goldsworthy, Mike Henderson, Won Ju Lim, Meghann Riepenhoff, and David Simpson.
Originally trained as a painter in Japan and captured by the California Clay Movement of the early 1960s, Kaneko has for decades explored the interpenetration of form and space in his sculptures.
The artists’ work represents an authentic depiction of a region that is widely underrepresented and misrepresented. The eruption of social media in recent years is broadcasting their work to the world.
Retro Africa Gallery makes its U.S. debut with a group exhibition of new works by Nigerian-American artist and writer Victor Ehikhamenor, Congolese painter Chéri Samba and African-American artist Nate Lewis.
The exhibition presents the works of more than 120 women photographers from 20 different countries and highlights the advancements made by women behind the camera between the 1920s and the 1950s.

What do a baby rhino, soldiers on stilts and humans dragging a whale mean to Iranian artist Avish Khebrehzadeh? Watch as she draws the figures for her video, “Seven Silent Songs” and her grand, wall-sized drawing, “Tree of Life in Blue,” temporarily installed at the National Gallery of Art.