A favorite among websites to visit is Trend Tablet, the site founded by Lidewij Edelkoort, who, as the site claims, is “a trend forecaster, curator, publisher, and educator who constantly lives in the future.”
A circuitous amble across the site links me to the work of the Piecework Collective, and from there to the Mississippi-based quilting workshop, YaloRun Textiles. At the YaloRun site you can find packs of pre-cut quilt scraps curated by Susan Cianciolo.
Using scraps dawned on Robert Spellman, too. Look closely at the surface of his paintings and you’ll see them.
A ladybug’s carapace, the fuselage of a bomber, the elements of a sofa (or davenport if you are from Ohio). Many of his paintings present one thing. It helps us see, as he seems to, the beauty of what we forget to notice. Since I’ve written the word forget, it occurs to me that Spellman’s paintings startle recollection and seem to portray what has happened to these things in the time that elapsed since we last noticed them—they’ve become iconic, wizened, perhaps a little melancholic and ghostly.
Paintings by Robert Spellman.
For the optimists among us, the paintings give us another chance for sweet regard, before old things disappear altogether in the constant renovation of the future.
BOMBERS, BOOKS, and BUGS: New and Old Work from Robert Spellman
January 16—March 2, 2018
Opening Reception: January 26, 5-8pm
Naropa University, Nalanda Gallery, 63rd & Arapahoe Avenue, Boulder CO