tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74900009449917949952024-03-18T20:36:42.599-07:00Starr ReviewThese reviews were written between 2011 and 2016, until
the author discontinued Starr Review to found her publishing company, Upper Hand Press.
Starr has resumed art blogging in December 2019 with STARR REVIEW NEW EDITION. Follow at STARRREVIEWNE.BLOGSPOT.COM.STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.comBlogger153125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-36610376552818774472016-10-12T10:29:00.000-07:002016-10-12T10:29:40.150-07:00The Sensorium of Sight: "The Blind Photographer"
The Blind Photographer: 150 Extraordinary
Photographs from Around the World,
edited by Julian Rothenstein and Mel Gooding,
published by Princeton Architectural Press,
2016.
When the Princeton Architectural Press offered me a copy of
The Blind Photographer: 150 Extraordinary Photographs from Around the World I leaped at the chance STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-29559976182062697962016-10-01T13:02:00.001-07:002016-10-01T13:02:42.158-07:00Aminah Robinson's Presidential Suite, 2016
Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson, Hot Boiling Sun,
watercolor on paper, study. Photo courtesy of
Hammond Harkins Galleries
"Hot Boiling Sun comin' down on me," is what Aminah Robinson wrote on this watercolor study for a the much larger work, Hot Boilin' Sun. So much of what characterizes Robinson's enduring hold on us is condensed into this single sheet.
Look at this woman's right arm, how STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-89738396741161262042016-09-20T17:14:00.000-07:002016-09-20T17:14:50.789-07:00"Summer Ponds—New Work by Betsy DeFusco" at the Ohio State Faculty Club
How lovely to have a backyard pond like Betsy Furlong DeFusco does, with time to contemplate its inspiration on canvas, in color. "It's very relaxing to sit and watch the fish swimming around endlessly in a swirl of color, and I soon became engaged in seeing a whole world of activity in a tiny body of water. I am constantly inspired by the different worlds in nature and by the act of painting STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-61364248625120373222016-09-06T14:44:00.001-07:002016-09-07T12:09:55.604-07:00A Group Improvisation by the Tone Road Ramblers
This is a long-awaited opportunity for me to write about the Tone Road Ramblers when readers can experience one of their improvisations without its being through the abstraction of prose only. The video comes to us with thanks to Eric Mandat. It can also be viewed on YouTube.
Morgan Powell
As it’s currently constituted, the personnel of the Tone
Road Ramblers are: Morgan Powell and STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-4832773238608053982016-08-22T10:33:00.000-07:002016-08-22T10:33:23.791-07:00I Reconsider the Necessity of Criticism
Ray Sasaki speaks trumpet
The work entailed by running a young publishing company has
been so all-consuming that I concluded a few months ago that I could no longer
devote time to writing Starr Review: that
I was overwhelmed and responsible to my authors were sufficient reasons to give
it up. I didn’t mention my growing skepticism that it made much of a difference
one way or the other STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-52220180763774388052016-04-27T10:40:00.000-07:002016-04-27T16:25:51.015-07:00Of Ugly Ducklings and Contemporary Art
The "swan song" brings to mind a silly image of feathered magnificence deflated into flaccid, supine tubing. Perhaps it's the logical end of a creature that begins life as a flinching ugly duckling. Still, the swan's song was originally believed to be surpassingly beautiful because swans were thought to be silent until the end.
Matt Kish, Beavercreek, Ohio. © Feinknopf STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-76209741308638735162016-01-17T17:32:00.004-08:002016-01-18T09:12:07.613-08:00"High Style:" Couture and Attitude in Twentieth Century Fashion at the Cincinnati Art Museum
<!--[if gte mso 9]>
<![endif]-->
<!--[if gte mso 9]>
Normal
0
false
false
false
EN-US
ZH-CN
X-NONE
<![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]>
STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-43811325594860587702016-01-12T16:21:00.000-08:002016-01-12T16:21:11.275-08:00 "A Free, Unsullied Land" isn't a romance. On a new novel by Maggie Kast.
The world of Maggie Kast's 2015 novel, A Free, Unsullied Land is not a place where many of us pick up a novel to go. Everything about this book surprises by it's unvarnished and fresh realism.
A Free, Unsullied Land by Maggie Kast,2015, Fomite Press
The novel opens in 1927 in the wide world and in the Greenberg household simultaneously. The protagonist, Henriette STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-79783077863766058752015-12-29T07:17:00.000-08:002015-12-29T07:17:00.432-08:00Out West: Water and the Desert at the Palm Springs Art Museum
William Allan, Sanger Ranch, Wyoming Pond, 1997, oil on canvas, gift of Neal Schenet (c) William Allan
"Especially in the desert, where it is scarce, water is even more vital for survival than in places where it exists in abundance. Its very lack defines the desert, and yet even that ecological system could not exist without it."
An excerpt from the statement to Reflections on Water at the STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-79997405664656197992015-12-07T12:12:00.000-08:002015-12-08T03:07:30.198-08:00Wexner Center Shooting: Property Damage, or a Hole in the Heart?
How many nuances of sorrow are there to explore in the November 29 tragedy at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus?
Did you miss it? No surprise if you did. Compared to the mass killings in Paris and San Bernardino; the pursuits of terrorists around the globe; and the confusion between refugees, terrorists, and worshippers, apparently it takes a lot of spilt blood to register beyondSTARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-8170301816952635612015-12-02T09:35:00.000-08:002015-12-02T09:35:36.001-08:00"The Waning of Justice" by Charles Atlas at Columbus College of Art and Design
Charles Atlas, The Waning of Justice, detail, 2015, video installation with sound.Courtesy of Contemporary Art Space.
This Charles Atlas is not the one I grew up with, the grinning body-builder who defined the he-man. This one is the videographer whose career began filming for Merce Cunningham in the 1970s. Atlas expanded his work to develop dance explicitly for the camera rather than STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-7983137295453559262015-11-16T05:59:00.000-08:002015-11-16T05:59:08.396-08:00Quisqueya Henriquez: Bending Cultural Assumptions in Santo Domingo
I recently had the very good fortune to visit an old friend who lives in the Zona Colonial in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The cathedral there is the first built in the New World; It houses Christopher Columbus' bones, recovered from Spain at the insistence of his wife (whose remains lie outside the cathedral walls). Heroic statues testify to the uninterrupted luster of theSTARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-10530750329068461672015-10-21T12:27:00.000-07:002015-10-21T14:20:35.484-07:00"After Picasso: 80 Contemporary Artists" at the Wexner Center for Contemporary Art
Mike Bidlo
Not Picasso (Girl Before a Mirror, 1932), 1986
Oil on canvas, 64.17 x 51.18 in. (163 x 130 cm)
Private Collection, Courtesy Galerie Bruno Bischofberger
I left After Picasso: 80 Contemporary Artists, the vast show at the Wexner Center of the Ohio State University, thinking that for such a big show I felt very few moments of joy. I know that Picasso makes pulses race, and the STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-58217699305697217742015-09-22T13:54:00.000-07:002015-09-22T13:54:10.330-07:00Calvin Ma's Homebodies, Outside Looking In
When I first saw the card for the Sherrie Gallerie's September show of Calvin Ma, I couldn't wait to see it. When I saw it, I wondered if I hadn't been a little hasty in my enthusiasm. Ma's Animal Instincts, a show filled with strangely articulated human figures displayed in relation to non-domesticated animals, is very odd.
Both of my reactions, though—one to their silly gaiety; the STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-85525306089440714432015-09-01T08:11:00.001-07:002015-09-01T08:11:39.749-07:00Plenty of Time: Marc Ross at Work
Marc Ross, No Explanation Needed installed at Cultural Arts Center, August 2015
The Columbus Cultural Arts Center felt like the interior of a jewel box when I visited the show of Marc Ross's painting, which closed on the 29th of August. The space was perfect for the show of large-scale, luminous paintings dominated by single colors. Each had breathing room and glowing room, for Ross's STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-32011078260750877282015-08-22T10:28:00.001-07:002015-08-28T06:59:40.154-07:00Reflections on Criticism: Acts of Committed Imagination
Let's take a moment to review. Why do I write art criticism on the internet?
Ann Starr, from Home Security, 2005,ink on paper
Reviewing art unasked by a self-constituted audience could be taken as an egotistical overvaluing of my own opinions; the more so since I do this without being employed by a media outlet that might pay me minimally for a certain number of words that STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-76048062609262597412015-08-20T09:45:00.000-07:002015-08-20T11:06:24.446-07:00Andrew Lidgus: "Duality" at the Sherrie Gallerie
Andrew Lidgus, whose work is showing through August 30 at the Sherrie Gallerie in Columbus, is both a pianist and a fine artist. This may be called a duality, but Lidgus integrates two aspects of an artistic self singularly well in works that themselves defy genre. Neither paintings nor sculptures nor collages, perhaps "assemblage," that generously comprehensive category, comes closest to STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-74150934445462211222015-07-12T13:00:00.002-07:002015-07-12T13:00:19.498-07:00Linda Gall's "Old Wood & Ancient Haunts"
Linda Gall, Loose Wires, watercolor, 6 x 9," 2014. Courtesyof Hammond Harkins Gallery
Linda Gall's watercolors showing at the Hammond Harkin Gallery in Bexley, Ohio can be described only by their own, eccentric presences. Old Wood & Ancient Haunts? I accede to her title because the show is decidedly narrative and so it deserves to be called something. But the narrative is up to STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-50921105154971347192015-06-13T09:53:00.001-07:002015-06-13T09:53:56.356-07:00Jack Whitten's Black Monoliths: Born in Bessemer
Jack Whitten, Black Monolith II: Homage to Ralph EllisonThe Invisible Man, 1994, Acrylic, molasses, copper, salt, coal,ash, chocolate, onion, herbs, rust, eggshell, razor bladeon canvas, 58 x 52." Brooklyn Museum, William K.Jacobs Fund 2014.65
Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting runs through August 2 at the Wexner Center for the Arts. The show displays fifty works by an artist ofSTARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-53515827476833169182015-05-31T11:22:00.000-07:002015-05-31T11:22:32.379-07:00Holocaust Memories from Rural Poland: Esther Nisenthal Krinitz at the Columbus Museum of Art
Black and white are the colors of the Holocaust. The black and white starkness of documentary images result simply from the available technology of the 1940s. Respectful subdued tones follow suit as if to add color would be to pile unbearable sensation onto images and memories already overwhelming in color-drained grayscale.
Esther Nisenthal Krinitz, Swimming in the River, 1978. STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-16834493611935261632015-05-24T04:46:00.000-07:002015-05-24T04:46:00.286-07:00"Catherine Opie: Portraits and Landscapes" at the Wexner Center for the Arts
I think that Thomas Edison has already been installed to replace William Allen as an icon of Ohio in the Capitol's Statuary Hall. Had I only known that ours is Catherine Opie's home state, I'd have done something to see her enshrined instead next to James Garfield as the a representative of Ohio's glory. Move over, second-tier presidents, when we have artists of true STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-24029756996555387272015-05-16T10:52:00.000-07:002015-05-16T15:51:33.701-07:00Mother's Day Special: "Nothing Personal," by poet Marina Blitshteyn
Mother's Day has just passed. I'm interested in the variety of conversations it starts among women in our era. No longer a simple holiday of greeting cards, flowers from the garden, or fixing Mommy breakfast in bed, Mother's Day has become a subject for debate.
This year I heard among my acquaintance objections to a holiday initiated by a greeting card business (false: it was founded STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-30205633448004468662015-03-08T10:36:00.001-07:002015-03-08T10:36:03.197-07:00Walkin' Down the Long Street: Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson at 75
Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson, Hog Hammock Community. Buttons, beads, crayon, pen on paper. Framed: 19 x 16
inchesCourtesy Hammond Harkins Gallery
It would be so easy to frame the story of Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson as the great American tale of rags to riches. Brought up in an African-American family in Columbus, Ohio public housing, soaked in the stories of aSTARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-12772251370080482202015-02-15T04:48:00.000-08:002015-02-15T04:48:18.564-08:00The Ohio Art Council Presents "A Century of Ohio Watercolor"
Clyde Singer (1908-1999), The Onlookers, 1937. Author photo.
I spent an enjoyable afternoon at the Ohio Arts Council's show, which opens their centenary year, "One Hundred Years of Ohio Watercolors." A survey of watercolorists from our mixed-use state, where rural and urban are equally dominant, the show defines place and conveys a sense of time's passage. Some of the artists are famous (Roy STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490000944991794995.post-30885993835479608492015-01-26T07:12:00.000-08:002015-01-26T07:12:19.966-08:00Call It Something or Call It Nothing: Maika Carter's Progress
Maika Carter, from Call It Something or Call It Nothing.
View of gallery wall in Maika Carter's CallIt Something or Call It Nothing
In the small Project Room in the Gallery at Columbus College of Art and Design, recent graduate Maika Carter is having her first solo show, Call It Something or Call It Nothing, up through February 20. I haven't seen a lot of publicity for STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com1