Outi Pieski: Beavvit-Rising Together (2019)

Born in Helsinki, Finland, Outi Pieski is a member of the Sami people who inhabit the Sapmi region within the current geo-political boundaries of Finland, Denmark, Norway and Russia. She studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki where she received an MFA in 2000. Over the years her interests have broadened to include collage and installations. The natural surroundings of her northern homeland are often the subject of her art, and she pays homage to the Sami people through her use of traditional crafting methods and materials. Her work has been shown throughout Scandinavia, Europe and North America in both group and solo exhibitions and she has been commissioned to produce several pieces of public art within the Sapmi region. In recent years she has received both the Fine Arts Academy of Finland Award but the Finnish Cultural Foundation Grand Prize.

In 2017, when Pieski received the prestigious prize of the Fine Arts Academy because, the jury explained that she has the “remarkable skill to create a unique exhibition...which will invite people to immerse themselves into a special world shaped by her.” Included in the resulting Academy-sponsored show, was the installation Beavvit-Rising Together which, like several of her other pieces uses thread and steel to recreate the Sami shawl-crafting technique called duojiwhich traditionally employs leather, roots and wool. Pieski’s website explains that the name for the piece, beavvi, means “many good friends” in the Northern Sami language. It is also similar to the word beaivi which means “the sun” from which the colors of this installation are derived making it an obvious candidate for inclusion in this exhibit that focuses on the varying ways vivid colors are used by contemporary Indigenous artists.

(This piece is proposed for inclusion in A Splash of Local Color: Vibrant Hues at Work in Contemporary Indigenous Art.)

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Richard Bell: ME (2004)

Richard Bell was born into the Kamilaroi tribe in Charleville, Queensland, Australia. As a young man in the 1970s he became an activist for aboriginal self-determination. He willingly admits that his art background is rooted in ‘tourist art’. He only decided to step over the line into ‘fine art’ when a friend observed that his political messages could reach a wider audience through art than by participating in protest marches. He has been exhibiting nationally and internationally for more than 25 years and his work, which includes paintings, video art, installations, text and performance art is held in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Australia, and the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. ME , Bell’s self-portrait, chosen for the current exhibit for its bold colors, seems, in style, to be an amalgam of Van Gogh, Warhol and Lichtenstein. It was painted specifically as a 2015 Archibald Prize entry. As Bell tells it, he chose himself for th...

Windows of the Soul: The Art of Vilhelm Hammershøi in the 21st Century

In December 2018, the Getty Museum, an institution with seemingly bottomless pockets, paid 5.04 million dollars for a work entitled Interior with an Easel, Bredgade 25, painted in 1912. (See earlier post.) If one were to guess what early 20 th century modern artist would fetch such a sum, names like Bonnard, Vuillard, and Ensor may come to mind. But, no, Interior with an Easel was painted by Danish artist, Vilhelm Hammershøi . Who? Who indeed. For many the name Vilhelm Hammershøi is not a familiar one, but it may be in the future. If you’ve seen the movie The Danish Girl, you’ve already been exposed to his work thanks to the efforts of director Tom Hooper who insisted on using Hammershøi paintings as the basis for interior set design. At this point, the question that logically arises is why is Hammershøi , who died in 1916, just beginning to be recogni...

Fiona Pardington: Still Life with Nasturtiums in a Crystal Vase and an Unknown Organic Object (2013)

A descendent of three Maori tribes, Fiona Pardington was born in Devonport, New Zealand. She attended Orewa College and the Elam School of Fine Arts where she ultimately earned a DocFA. She specializes in ‘pure’ photographic darkroom techniques including hand printing and toning. In the late 1980s she began challenging the social documentary photography eventually embracing the still-life format to raise awareness of the importance of conservation. She has had solo shows throughout New Zealand. Her work is included in public and private collections worldwide. In an interview for the Auckland Art Gallery in conjunction with her exhibit, A Beautiful Hesitation, Pardington provided insight into her approach: “I think it is best to understand my still-life photographs as small alters or Tu Ahu . A tabletop is a place for concentration, and you could call it ritual, but it’s also just the thing we do when we are...

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