Art-driven image makeovers are being created around the metro this merry month of May. Consider Clive, surely the largest city in Iowa without a high school. Most towns identify predominantly with their schools, particularly with their high schools. Residents wear their colors, call themselves after their mascots, cheer their teams
Read More →After a longer-than-usual winter, Shakespeare’s “new fangled mirth of spring” will be appropriately celebrated around central Iowa’s art scene. For the first time, Des Moines Art Center’s (DMAC) Iowa Artists’ Exhibition will include theatrics — three productions, in three different DMAC venues, of the Bard of Avon’s “Love’s Labours Lost”
Read More →In science, the word transparency refers to the physical property that allows light to pass through matter. Its political and social definitions have become far more muddied and ambiguous. The Des Moines Art Center’s (DMAC) dazzling new exhibition “Transparencies – Contemporary Art and the History of Glass” reflects upon both
Read More →Painter Madai Taylor is a complex holy man who preaches to his congregation literally from the Bible but paints religious abstractions. He admits these contradictory postures can be misinterpreted as a conflict. “I do wonder how people embrace the duality of my being a non-subjective artist and a preacher. I
Read More →It’s red carpet season in Des Moines. No fewer than five bridal shows are scheduled this month, Bravo Greater Des Moines’ Awards Gala dresses up Hy-Vee Center on Feb. 2, and Des Moines Metro Opera’s Wine and Food Showcase returns to the downtown Marriott on Feb. 15. Those are just
Read More →The Des Moines Art Center’s (DMAC) exhibition year began with three brilliant films by Argentine Miguel Angel Rios and concluded with three more by Bavarian Thomas Demand. Both artists went to painstaking ends to preserve incidents that most people might quickly dismiss from memory. Angel Rios wistfully revisited his native
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Posted November 14, 2012in Art Pimp
Conceptual artist Thomas Demand built his considerable reputation photographing paper models of mostly famous places — the New York City hotel room where L. Ron Hubbard created Scientology, the studio of Jackson Pollock, the podium from which Slobodan Milošević gave his most infamous speech, the hole where Saddam Hussein was
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Posted October 24, 2012in Art Pimp
“Untitled (Structures),” Leslie Hewitt’s exhibition at the Des Moines Art Center (DMAC), had opening night visitors referring to Yazmina Reza’s play “Art.” In the latter, the lead character proudly reveals a large, expensive, completely white painting to his closest friend. Their relationship soon dissolves as differing opinions about what constitutes
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Posted September 19, 2012in Art Pimp
Art Stop, Des Moines’ autumnal celebration of the arts, has been expanded this year to three full weekends. Three very different artists’ new shows demonstrate a range of creativity worth celebrating. Since he opened a gallery 10 years ago, with Jackie Moberg, TJ Moberg has been too busy to prepare
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