Marquand Books Studio is pleased to present a new exhibition featuring the work of lauded photographer Hector Acebes. Opening during September’s First Thursday Art Walk in downtown Seattle, Hector Acebes: Portraits in Africa, 1948–1953 features selections from the artist’s extensive travels throughout Africa in the 1940s and 50s. Acebes established a career as a lecturer and professional filmmaker; his work is included in museum collections and galleries in the United States, South America, and Europe.
Acebes was the subject of a traveling museum retrospective organized by Spelman College. His large-scale portraits of rural Africans are remarkably contemporary in feel. Bold, strong, and graphic, his photographs connect emotionally in ways that set his work apart from other explorer/photographers of that era.
Marquand Books produced Hector Acebes: Portraits in Africa, 1948–1953, a 144-page monograph with more than 90 duotone portraits, with text by Isolde Brielmaier and Ed Marquand. Copies will be available at the exhibition opening.
Born in Manhattan in 1921, Hector Acebes was educated in Spain and Columbia before returning to New York City for high school, where he began to study photography. Acebes refined his photographic skills throughout his time as a student at MIT, where he completed an engineering degree. Now 90, Acebes currently resides in Bogota, Colombia with two daughters.
Hector Acebes: Portraits in Africa, 1948–1953
Opening reception Thursday, September 1, 2011 from 5-7 p.m.
Open Fridays from 2 to 6 p.m. and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and by appointment until October 1.
Marquand Books Studio | Paper Hammer is at 1400 Second Avenue in downtown Seattle.
Opening September 1 in the Japantown area of Seattle’s International District south of downtown is Dirk Park’s Prole Drift gallery. With an established arts pedigree as co-director of Miami’s Art Aqua Art Fair and co-founder of Pioneer Square’s Platform Gallery, Japantown’s bargain rental prices and undeveloped empty storefronts presented Park with the opportunity to begin a new space to showcase art.
The gallery’s name is a shortened version of the term “proletarian drift,” coined in the early 1980s by cultural historian Paul Fussell. The phrase refers to incidents in which upper-class cultural trends and styles become common with working- or middle-class individuals (small-batch whisky, designer jeans) and can be applied in the reverse (punk, Mockney).
Continue reading: “Proletarian Drifting”
Congratulations to Chief Curator and Curator of Art after 1945 Rene Barilleaux and the McNay Art Museum staff on receiving the 2011 Mitchell A. Wilder Design Competition Best of Show Gold Award for the exhibition catalogue New Image Sculpture. Sponsored by the Texas Association of Museums, The 32nd annual competition received 40 entries from across the state of Texas.
Marquand Books produced New Image Sculpture for the McNay, designed by Jeff Wincapaw. The 128-page publication accompanied the museum’s recent exhibition New Image Sculpture: Extraordinary Sculptures of Ordinary Objects.
On the lookout for fresh, creative content online? Below, find five useful, engaging, and well-crafted Web sites worth bookmarking.
1. The Selby is in your Place
The Selby is a Web site, a book, and a regular feature in T: The New York Times Style Magazine. NYC-based illustrator and photographer Todd Selby uninhibitedly and naturally documents artists, writers, designers, and Average Joes in their homes or businesses. Browse The Selby’s instinctive images of Grey Gardens filmmaker Albert Maysles and his wife Gillian Walker or of Eric Werner and Mya Henry, owners of Tulum, Mexico’s outdoor Hartwood restaurant.
2. Nancy Pearl
Quite possibly the world’s most recognized living librarian, local Seattle resident and NPR contributor Nancy Pearl adds a couple of witty new book reviews to her Web site on a monthly basis. The Booklust author’s picks, ranging from young adult literature to thrillers and cookbooks, are most always worth checking out.
3. Remodelista
Marquand Books’ retail space Paper Hammer was pleased to be a part of the 2011 Remodelista Local Market at Seattle’s Henrybuilt in Georgetown. Based in San Francisco, the Remodelista team seems to know what’s new in Seattle culture and design before most locals do. Sarah Lonsdale and crew have cultivated a successful blog and marketplace featuring useful and well-made objects for daily living.
4. Typography Daily
Quick design inspiration to add to morning news updates, toast, and coffee. Fontify your day with fresh ideas in letterpress, type, and all things design. Founded in 2009, Typography Daily is updated with a fresh dose of type every 24 hours.
5. Triple Canopy
Founded in 2007, the Brooklyn-based online art and culture magazine Triple Canopy is riding high on the Ferris wheel since their recent New York Times feature, a successful Kickstarter campaign, and a hearty Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts grant. The journal mixes video, images, and writing focused around compelling, if sometimes abstract, themes.
The lauded exhibition Picasso and Braque: The Cubist Experiment, 1910–1912 features paintings and an almost complete set of prints produced by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque throughout a two year exchange.
Marquand Books produced the 136-page exhibition catalogue, designed by Jeff Wincapaw and distributed by Yale University Press. The show will travel to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art next month, opening on Saturday, September 17.
In addition to strong local exhibitions at SAM (Beauty and Bounty: American Art in an Age of Exploration), Bellevue Arts Museum (Michael Cooper: A Sculptural Odyssey), and the Tacoma Art Museum (Dale Chihuly’s Northwest), a series of late summer festivals, openings, and art walks are scheduled for August and September, including this weekend’s 10x10x10xTieton opening. Here are some highlights from across Washington State:
August 11
Blitz Capitol Hill’s Art Walk from 5 to 8 p.m.
West Seattle Art Walk from 6 to 9 p.m.
August 12-14
Bainbridge Island Summer Studio Tour, featuring more than 50 artists in six studios from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
August 12
SAM Remix at Olympic Sculpture Park from 8 p.m. to midnight
Kirkland Art Walk downtown from 6 to 8 p.m.
August 13
Mighty Tieton / 10x10x10xTieton Juried Exhibition from 12 to 5 p.m.
Continue reading: “Late Summer Arts Guide”
This Saturday, August 13, from 12–5 p.m., Mighty Tieton presents the opening of the annual 10x10x10xTieton juried art exhibition at Mighty Tieton Warehouse on 608 Wisconsin Ave. Additionally, a reception for the 10x10x10xTieton exhibit is being held August 27 during Tieton’s Highland Community Days Celebration.
The gallery will be open Fridays through Sundays from 12–3 p.m. until October 2.
