Art Society Opens new Art Shed

President Ron Talbot at Crispe Street shed site

6 years ago the Art Society’s shed on Crispe St was burnt down. Now, after a lot of hard work by the members, it is again open for action. On Friday, 25 May, the Minister for Arts and Museums The Hon. Gerry McCarthy MLA will officially open the building at 6.00pm.
“This is a time for celebrating this  remarkable achievement” says the president, Ron Talbot. “We are asking guests to wear loud shirts to add to the happy occasion.”

There will be an exhibition of members’ work. Ron stated “The only thing we have left from the old shed is our street sign so we have left it in its disshevilled state to remind us of our past members who put it up. Apart from that it is ‘on with the new’. We are back in business.”

ARTSHED RAIZED AGAIN Exhibition  will be open to the public
from 10 – 5 on 26 and 27 May and 2 and 3 June.

Workshop and Opening…

Check out the CAAS Noticeboard for the latest posting.  Member, Carol Adams is running a colour workshop at the Over 50′s Club and you might like to participate.

Also, keep your evening, Friday 25 May free to attend the Opening of the Art Shed at Crispe Street.  It’s a big event for Art in Alice Springs.

 

Minister to open new headquarters and exhibition

The newly built headquarters of the Central Australian Art Society in Crispe Street (off Brown St), Alice Springs will be officially opened by the Minister for Arts and Museums The Hon. Gerry McCarthy MLA at 6.00pm on Friday May 25th, 2012.  The Minister will also open an exhibition of member’s work at the same time.  Art society members and the general public are welcome to attend.  Light refreshments and entertainment will be provided and people are encouraged to wear a loud shirt/top to the opening.

This is a significant occasion for the society given that the previous headquarter was destroyed by fire on the 15th August 2006 and it has taken an enormous effort on the part of the society and it’s members to rebuild on the same site.

The headquarters will also be open to the public from 10.00am till 5.00pm on Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th May and at the same time during the following weekend, 2nd – 3rd June.  Printing workshops will be held and people will be able to see the facility and the art exhibition.

If you are a member interested in participating in the art exhibition and did not receive the email with details regarding that exhibition, contact:

Dugald 0409174719, or Ron 89522454, or Art Shed 89520356

or for further enquiries phone Ron Talbot  or email talburge@westnet.com.au

Google Art Project

Normally we try to carry local information on our blog postings, but this new initiative is so awesome I wanted to share it with my friends in the art community.  You will need to have Google Chrome to view it but that is free to download (just ‘google it!’) and install. It is not very challenging (!) says me!  Once you have that installed you can go to the Google Art Project (http://www.googleartproject.com/) to view museums and works all over the world! And, yes, it includes Australia!  You can go on a 3D walk through some of the world’s top galleries and museums and you can look up a particular artist or work and enlarge it to even see the type of impasto or brush strokes they used.  It really is quite breathtaking.

Google expands its art projectProjected in the background, the mask that Israeli Museum curator Debby Hershman holds up is a Neolithic mask, one of oldest known masks in existence. It is part of the Israel Museum’s collection in the Google Art Project. (Gali Tibbon / AFP / Getty Images/ April 3, 2012)
By Michelle MaltaisApril 4, 2012, 7:05 a.m.
Have you tried to get close enough to paintings at the Getty Museum to investigate individual brush strokes? If you did, a stern security officer probably asked you to step away from the painting. Now, you can get up close and personal with works from the Getty and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art without tripping alarms or being admonished.
The two Los Angeles museums are among the 134 museums that recently joined the Google Art Project, bringing their collections to visitors through virtual tours. The site includes narrated videos, audio guides, viewing notes and maps, among other offerings.
The project launched last year with virtual tours and digitized artworks from 17 museums. This expansion includes museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., the Musée d’Orsay in France, the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico, Islamic Museum of Qatar, Israel Museum and the White House. Forty countries are now represented.
A specially-designed Street View trolley shot 360-degree images of the galleries at the Getty, enabling smooth navigation between rooms, akin to actually strolling through the museum.
Our friends on the Culture Monster blogreported that the site started with about 1,000 objects and now has over 150 collections with 30,000 artworks. Diana Skaar of the Google project told Culture Monster that 20 million users have visited the site and have set up 200,000 user “collections” of favorite images. Virtual gallery visitors can browse collections by artist, artwork, type of art, museum, country, city or collection and create personalized galleries of favorites from the participating museums around the world. There is a share function, but that’s for desktop use only.
And, 44 museums in the project each chose a work to be photographed in extreme detail with super high-resolution, or “gigapixel,” photo-capturing technology. These images comprise nearly 7 billion pixels, so you can get closer on these pieces than you ever could in person and see details, such as brushwork and patina, you wouldn’t otherwise be able to see unassisted.
There are plans to continue expanding participation, with the possibility of an experimental section to showcase how artists are using emerging technology in showcasing their work, according to the site.

We’re here for you!

Road to Rainbow Valley, digital 'watercolour'by Ardys Zoellner

Recently I have been reminded that our relatively ‘new’ blog can still be a confusing minefield for people.  At the risk of boring you all silly, I thought I would explain again how the blog works and how you can use it.  First, and foremost, it is designed with our members in mind and it is for that reason we migrated from our previous website format which included a blog, to primarily a blog format which includes website ‘pages’.  The blog was previously the most talked about, and popular, part of the website, but there was no provision for interaction.  The new blog format has the capacity for you to subscribe, but even if you are not a subscriber, you can leave a comment on a particular posting.  We felt the opportunity for members to interact was worth making the changes.

To subscribe to the blog you will need to select the ‘follow blog by email’ button on the right hand side of the Home page, and enter your email address.  You will be sent an email that you will need to ‘confirm’ if you wish to complete the process.  If this does not happen, please try again.  For some reason not understood by myself or the blog host, this occasionally takes a couple of tries.  If you are still not successful, or if you have any other problems with the blog, please contact myself and I will address the issues. (ardys@ozemail.com.au)

You are also invited to send us information which you would like put on the CAAS noticeboard page, or which may be appropriate to be a home page posting.  The criteria we try to follow are:  1.) to give Members priority 2.) to emphasise local information 3.) to share information we feel is of particular interest to our members.  The only other criteria to which we try to adhere is that of including a photo or photo of artwork, if you wish your information to appear on the home page of the blog.  Since we are a visual art organisation we feel that it is more visually stimulating to have pictorial content with the blog content.  If you are in doubt, please send the information to me and we can discuss it on a case by case basis.  You may write the information into paragraph form, or send me the details and I can write it up.

Please don’t be shy about contacting me if you would like publicity for something or if you are having a problem with some aspect of the blog or its pages.  We welcome your comments on the home page postings and look forward to hearing from you in future!

(By the way, if any of you has a photo of your work that you would be happy for me to use on a generic posting, such as this one, in exchange for your name as a credit, please email them to me.  I am often in need of such works and would rather use someone else’s than my own but am concerned about permission from artists)

You’re Invited!

Things at the Art Shed are progressing weekly, thanks to perseverance and hard work.  This week Steve Anderson and Ron Talbot hung the ‘trays’ that will hold the gallery lights for the exhibition area of the Shed.  Getting gallery lights will be a big achievement as it means CAAS can finally have its own exhibitions again.  We are planning a social evening next Friday 2 March to watch an art DVD on our lovely flat screen TV, so bring a plate or grab something at the supermarket after work and come along at 5.30 for a casual evening and to admire our shiny new shed!  We will be in touch with a reminder about this before next Friday.

Ron and 'v tall ladder'

Steve and 'scissor lift'

Your inner Artist

If you’ve been thinking about bringing your ‘inner artist’ out to play, have a think about joining one of the CAAS activities at the Art Shed.  Life Drawing for 2012 commences this week and there’s always room for one more ( lifedrawingCAAS@iinet.net.au ).

By Cameron Morgan from 'The Occasionals' group

The ‘Occasionals’ meet mid-week if you are interested in the Life Model experience but for a longer session, more conducive to painting or sculpting ( initial contact: lifedrawingCAAS@iinet.net.au )…And then there is the Beginner’s Watercolour Workshop, current session is full, but put your name on the list

(use this link www.paintinalice.wordpress.com/workshops/ )  for future sessions.

Beginners' Watercolour Workshop

We’d love to see you!!

Portrait Award NOW Open!

“Ziko – A generous and colourful Territorian”, by Peta Riley  Winner 2011 Portrait of a Senior Territorian Art Award

2012 PORTRAIT OF A SENIOR TERRITORIAN ART AWARD NOW OPEN

 The Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, The Honourable Jane Aagaard MLA, today announced the dates for the 2012 Portrait of a Senior Territorian Art Award and Exhibition.

 Mrs Aagaard said the exhibition would be on display in Parliament House from Friday 27 July 2012 to Wednesday 15 August 2012 with the Award winners being announced on Wednesday, 1 August 2012..

“I encourage Territory artists to celebrate our senior Territorians by entering a portrait in the Award. Many senior Territorians who have been subjects have told me of the immense pride they have felt at being recognised in this way.”

Mrs Aagaard said that artists entering the Award have the chance of winning the Government House Foundation Acquisition Award of $7,000.

“The Parliament also provides a $2,000 Second Prize and a $500 Third Prize, in addition to the $1,000 People’s Choice Prize for the artwork that receives the highest number of votes from the public during the exhibition.”

The 2011 winning artist was Mrs Peta Riley from Darwin for her portrait titled Ziko, and features Darwin man Ziko Illic.

Entry forms, including terms and conditions, are available at www.nt.gov.au/lant/parliament/parliament.shtml, or by contacting the Speaker’s Office on (08) 8901 4159 or emailing LA.speaker@nt.gov.au.