This Week @ BINDERS - July 20-26

ART CLASSES • WORKSHOPS • EXHIBITS

Monday, July 20:
Guided Open Studio with Kay Powell
10:30am-2pm • Every Monday
Fee: $15/session. No sign up needed. Please pay the instructor.

Guided Open Studio with Kay Powell
6:30-8:30pm - see details above.

Tuesday, July 21:
Painting - Design and Technique with Charles Y. Walls
1-4pm, Tuesdays, July 21-August 25 • Fee: $140 per 6 session series • Open to all levels. • Sign up now!

Painting - Design and Technique with Charles Y. Walls
6-8:30pm - see details above.

Wednesday, July 22:
Express Yourself with Allison Smith
1:30-4:30pm, Wednesdays, July 22-August 12 • Fee: $120 per 4
session series. • Sign up now!

Painting Without Frustration with Frank Bannock
6-8:30pm, Wednesdays, July 22-August 26 • Fee: $160 per 6 session series. • Sign up now!

Thursday, July 23:
Visual Liberation with Pastels with Ryan Doss
6-8:30pm • Every Thursday • Fee: $25/session • Sign up now!

Friday, July 24:
Paint & Sketch Models - Depicting the Human Figure • Charlotte store only
9am-8pm • Every Friday until August 14 during our extended summer Friday hours

Saturday, July 25:
Chinese Brush Art with Gail Racy
11am-2pm • 8 sessions, Saturdays July 11-August 29 • Fee: $150

KIDS ROCK THIS WORLD!
Weekend Workshop with Miss Em
11am-3pm, Saturday, July 25 and Saturday, August 1 • $60 per day or $100 for both days • Supplies included.
Sign up now for Sat. July 25, Sat. Aug. 1 or for both days

Sunday, July 26:
No event planned. Regular store hours.

See all upcoming Art Classes and Workshops at BINDERS

Please note: Classes on this schedule are in our Atlanta store unless otherwise indicated. For more information please contact: Kristina Breneman at 404.237.6331 ext. 203.

EXHIBITIONS AT THE LIMELIGHT GALLERY

Open to the public during store hours

Showing Through July 31:
Dunwoody Fine Art Association: An exhibition of work by DFAA members. The art is for sale! The public is invited to a Reception on Sunday, July 19, 2-4 PM

Visit the BINDERS website at www.bindersart.com!

Receiving, and Giving Back, the Gift of Art

“Giving the gift of art is just as wonderful as receiving it.”

That’s what artist Barry Sons says after mentoring a 9-year-old boy and his father who first visited Atlanta from Alabama last spring. Barry was at his gallery-studio at Tula, setting up a new painting, when the father and son just happened to come by.

The father asked Barry to explain to the boy what he was doing, and Barry was happy to demonstrate some of his skills. He treated the boy to an intense course in painting, including the principles of aerial perspective, and color harmony. Barry even had the boy apply paint to the beach scene he was working on.

After about an hour, the father and son thanked Barry and left. Barry went back to his painting, feeling good about the lesson.

But that’s only the beginning of this heart-warming narrative.

Barry Sons picks up the story, starting with a flashback:

“I am a child of the Alchafalaya Basin in south Louisiana, America’s largest swamp wilderness. Having been raised as a fur trapper’s son, the beauty of these coastal waters, the ever-changing lights, sounds and smells still resonate in my memory as if they were yesterday. This is where I learned about art.

“One steamy summer when I was ten years old an itinerant painter came to town and I watched him paint a picture of our neighbor’s shrimp boat. I was amazed at how he could make that dirty old boat look so beautiful!

“Through half a century of living, the memory of watching that painter create a work of art has remained vivid in my mind and heart. That painter’s name is Sam Fisher, and when I grew up we even got to paint together.

“Last March I was pleasantly surprised when a father and son stepped into my studio. I was pleased to comply when the father asked if I would mind explaining to his son what I do. I showed the boy how I first sketch in the subject, explained a little about my working method and color palette, and even handed him brushes and painting knives so that he could ‘help me paint.’ He was quiet, but a quick learner.”

Flash forward to a week later:
Barry got a call from the boy’s schoolteacher in Alabama, asking if it was true that the boy had indeed “helped you paint a picture.” She told Barry how excited he had been, telling everyone in class that he painted a picture with a real artist. She asked Barry to please send a picture of the painting for a show-n-tell. It would be good for the boy, she said, because he previously hadn’t said two words all year, and now she couldn’t get him to stop talking about painting. Barry said that he would take a picture of the painting and send it.

But just a few days later the boy’s father had suddenly died! The teacher said it was a very sad and difficult time for the boy, and she needed that picture to help him get through it.

Barry answered that he wanted to personally come to the Alabama school to surprise the boy and also to do a painting demonstration with him in front of the class. The teacher agreed, and within days Barry arrived at the classroom.

And what a surprise it was! The boy jumped into his arms with joy.

Over the next several hours, Barry and the boy worked side-by-side to paint a picture right in front of the entire class, which also included several teachers and parents. For Barry it was an especially rewarding experience.

Why would you do all this for a boy you had only met once? “Because his father would have wanted it for his son, just as my father would have wanted it for me,” Barry replied.

“I am grateful to have had this opportunity. Someone gave me the gift of art when I was a child,” he said. “Who knows, perhaps someday this child will become an artist too, and maybe he will give the gift of art to someone else.”

Visit the BINDERS website at www.bindersart.com!

Blogging about “Art Baloney”

It’s not easy to write about art. Here is splendidly awful proof from a major art publication:

“This juxtaposition of abstraction and objective representation demonstrates that he is less interested in the opposition between the two than in producing an ambivalent, almost musical, formalized pictorial space, in which line and plane melt into irregular, multilayered patterns.” ?!?!

That is baloney, any way you slice it.

It seems that well-intentioned writers of art reviews and museum catalogs, and even sincere artists themselves, can get lost in the complexities of trying to describe what is often indescribable. When that happens the result is a bloated, convoluted and nonsensical jumble of verbage — unsuitable for human comprehension.

For more, go to Art Baloney Blog, a “collection of the most egregious and pretentious art speak or outright BS” it can manage to unearth. And they invite readers to email fresh (or stale) art baloney.

If you enjoy this kind of thing, this is the kind of thing you will enjoy.

Visit the BINDERS website at www.bindersart.com!

This Week @ BINDERS - July 13-19

ART CLASSES • WORKSHOPS • EXHIBITS

Monday, July 13:
Realistic Portrait Painting with Marvin Mattelson
10am-5pm. Workshop continues!

Guided Open Studio with Kay Powell
10:30am-2pm or 6:30-8:30pm • Every Monday
Fee: $15/session. No sign up needed. Please pay the instructor.

Lecture with Marvin Mattelson - Modeling Factors: Turning the Form
6-8:30pm. Open to the public at $50 per lecture.

Tuesday, July 14:
Realistic Portrait Painting with Marvin Mattelson
10am-5pm. Workshop continues.

Wednesday, July 15:
Realistic Portrait Painting with Marvin Mattelson
10am-5pm. Workshop continues.

Lecture with Marvin Mattelson - Marketing and Promotion
6-8:30pm. Open to the public at $50 per lecture.

Copperplate Calligraphy with Anne Elser
6-8:30pm • Wednesdays, 6 sessions, June 10-July 15 • Fee: $140

Thursday, July 16:
Realistic Portrait Painting with Marvin Mattelson
10am-5pm. Workshop continues.

Visual Liberation with Pastels with Ryan Doss
6-8:30pm • Every Thursday • Fee: $25/session • Sign up now!

Friday, July 17:
Realistic Portrait Painting with Marvin Mattelson
10am-5pm. Workshop continues.

Paint & Sketch Models - Depicting the Human Figure • Charlotte store only
9am-8pm • Every Friday until August 14 during our extended summer Friday hours

Saturday, July 18:
Realistic Portrait Painting with Marvin Mattelson
10am-5pm. Workshop continues.

Chinese Brush Art with Gail Racy
11am-2pm • 8 sessions, Saturdays July 11-August 29 • Fee: $150

Sunday, July 19:
No event planned. Regular store hours.

See all upcoming Art Classes and Workshops at BINDERS

Please note: Classes on this schedule are in our Atlanta store unless otherwise indicated. For more information please contact: Kristina Breneman at 404.237.6331 ext. 203.

EXHIBITIONS AT THE LIMELIGHT GALLERY

Open during store hours

Showing Through July 31:
Dunwoody Fine Art Association: An exhibition of work by DFAA members. The art is for sale! The public is invited to a Reception on Sunday, July 19, 2-4 PM

Visit the BINDERS website at www.bindersart.com!