Enjoy Your Weekend

One of my goals for the weekend is to finish reading some exhibition catalogs from The Morris Museum of Art, in particular the essays that accompanied the Will Henry Stevens show. Curator Estill Curtis Pennington says that Stevens' works on paper, such as the abstract 1938 pastel above, suggest he was much more than a "mildly accomplished artist with some mystical relationship to nature," as certain critics may have thought in the past. Pennington observes that Stevens was "inspired to subtle experimentation with a rather delicate, indeed somewhat illusive medium." If you find yourself in or around Augusta, Georgia this summer, be sure to explore The Morris' mid-century holdings. Below, Stevens is shown in his Newcomb College studio, 1941.

And of course I also have more art to hang. For an unframed Molinelli print that I purchased from Coleen and Co., I was inspired by the simple masculine frames on Mallory Mathison's wall. I took my cues from the wooden beams in the picture and juxtaposed very dark brown with the candy-pink, but a gilt frame would have been another striking option. The second piece is a modest vintage store find that I reinvented with a burnished gold frame.

I hope this weekend you find something interesting in your corner of the world, too.

Images one and two are from The Morris' publication, Will Henry Stevens: An Eye Transformed, A Hand Transforming (July 15–December 31, 1993).

BTW: Some of the reading I've already done has led me to artist Josephine Marien Crawford, a Southerner who studied cubism with André Lhote in Paris in the late 1920s. Click here to learn about a free related exhibition on view in NOLA through August 29. A book by North Carolinian Louise C. Hoffman accompanies the show. Crawford's work is also included in Women Artists in Louisiana, 1825–1965: A Place of Their Own, on view through September 13 at NOMA.