Artforum's year end top ten list by Matthew Higgs picks Tom Fairs exhibition at KS Art as one of the worlds best shows of 2011

In Artforum's top ten list of the best art shows of the year from all over the world, a list that includes one show at the Hirshorn Gallery, one artist from the Venice Biennale and one show at the Guggenheim Museum, KS Art's modest, yet magnificent show of the pencil drawings of Tom Fairs gets its due.

Getting the New York City store holiday windows (and NYC) ready for Christmas

The week before Thanksgiving is the traditional time in NYC for the entire town to be in a holiday decorating mode.

It's fun to see what some part of the process is all about.

Here are a couple of windows at Bergdorf's in the getting ready phase. One window even had three people working on one area.

Same window below with "elves" at work.

Huge red Christmas ball ornaments on Avenue of the Americas, all wrapped up still. 

Fireplace watercolour that Forrestall painted at White Point lost in blaze

by: Elisa Barnard

Tom Forrestall, pictured at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in 2008, says he's more worried about the staff at White Point Beach Resort than the fate of one of his paintings that used to hang in the main lodge, which was destroyed by fire on the weekend.

The Tom Forrestall painting destroyed in the White Point Beach Resort fire Saturday depicted a blaze in a cabin fireplace.

The Nova Scotia artist, who always travels with his watercolours, was staying in a seaside cabin at the resort during New Year’s in 2009-10 and got caught in a snowstorm.

"We got cabin-locked by the storm, and I was looking at the fireplace, and the storm was raging on," Forrestall said in a phone interview from his Dartmouth home.

Although he is known for his egg tempera paintings, he calls watercolour "the most enjoyable side of painting."

"You’re dealing directly with the real experience of the thing. In that work, the whole focus was on the wood and the burning and the brightness, and you looked right into the flame, which is tricky to do (in paint)."

The resort’s owner, Robert Risley, was so taken by it, he bought the watercolour, valued at $4,000 unframed, and hung it in the entranceway of the main lodge.

"Risley put a beautiful, elaborate frame on it. I was greatly honoured it was in an area where it brought pleasure to so many people. I heard from people who liked it.

"When I heard about the fire, I thought, ‘That painting is gone, too.’ "

Forrestall has no photograph of it.

However, he said the loss of the artwork is minor compared with the loss of employment and the loss of the historic Liverpool-area structure.

"When I think of the overall lodge and all the people that worked there and the families that depend on it, that’s the great part of it; mine is a very small part. I’m delighted to hear they’re going to rebuild and I’d be delighted to go back.

"Perhaps some good will come out of the ashes. I’m sure of it."

The artist, who spent five weeks painting watercolours in Israel last fall, just wrapped up an exhibit of watercolours, egg tempera paintings and new "rotator" paintings in Vancouver.

All of his sketchbooks, about 300, are going to Mount Allison University’s rare book collection, and Virgil Hammock, a professor emeritus of fine arts at the Sackville, N.B., university, is writing "a book on the books."

Forrestall is showing his Israel watercolours in Toronto next spring at a private home. He has a show opening next May 5 at Kinsman Robinson Galleries in Toronto and an exhibit of watercolours at the Art Gallery of Sudbury next summer.

Filmmaker Zac Barkhouse is making a film focusing on Forrestall’s conviction that the rectangle is the wrong shape for a painting. He has made shaped paintings and is now making rotating paintings that can be shifted on the wall and viewed in different ways.

Seeing MoMa's preview of exhibition of Diego Rivera murals with muralist Curphey Forrestall

One of the main museum exhibitions Curphey was interested in seeing while he was here in NYC was Diego Rivera's murals for MoMA at (of course) MoMa. We picked Friday night to go (Free Fridays, not really necessary but time convenient for both Curphey and I) which was lively (LOTS of students and foreign visitors.)
The poster in the lobby though said the Rivera show was only opening on the 13th and yesterday was the 11th. Onward we marched to see the Fluxus show and the DeKooning. The Fluxus show was fascinating, we were both most amused by the music making sculpture pieces.

On exiting the show, Curphey noticed a locked glass door view into the Rivera show and people were circulated about. We found the entrance and were told that it was only open to members as a preview evening. Luckily I had a members card on me, so in we went! The show was fantastic.

Curphey Forrestall by entrance to the Diego exhibition at MoMA.

It was fascinating to listen to what surprised Curphey about Rivera's working methodologies; like making full life size scale charcoal drawings of the murals. He expressed an interest in trying that one day. The colors were so vibrant, and his images were so powerful. Getting to see the murals, which were painted on concrete was fascinating. There was one particular mural "Frozen Assets" (1931) of a landscape of NYC, with a dozen recognizable buildings (Rockerfeller Center, The Empire State) on the top, a cityscape of NYC with above ground subway cars in the center.

A large section towards in the lower quarter of rows of sheeted figures lying down, who were homeless workers on the Depression era construction sites in NYC and finally at the bottom, a bank vault room, with wealthy people in the cages running gold through their hands. Rivera wasn't particularly subtle about his views of the wealthy and the poor in the United States. This mural, in particular felt very poignant and very contemporary in light of OWS, and a growing (unstoppable) movement to tax the rich happening in the US right now. Curphey is working on a mural for a friend while here, so getting to see the work of one of the most famous muralists was relevant.

The rooms of sculpture were interesting to wander around in. 

Curphey looking down into Carlito Carvalhosa's "Sum of Days" installation piece.

Looking down from the sixth floor landing into the center of Carvalhosa's Sum of Days piece was thrilling,
and not for those who suffers from vertigo.

Kerry's show "Scruffy" gets a GREAT review in the New York Observer today

At the small, surprisingly harmonious group show currently hanging at KS Art on Leonard Street, the elephant in the room is the figurative image. But actually, it’s a mammoth—not only because the show is called “Scruffy,” or because the image began as a cave painting, but because it functions here like an exhumed fossil, reconceived in a world it never imagined.

...continued below click link

http://www.galleristny.com/2011/11/avoiding-the-subject-‘scruffy’-at-ks-art-and-‘walking-forward-running-past’-at-art-in-general/