Tag Archives: Brooklyn Museum of Art

Ark Arts Center opens new exhibit on art of tattoos

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The Arkansas Arts Center kicks off the 2012-2013 exhibition season with Tattoo Witness: Photographs by Mark Perrott on Friday, June 22. A reception for AAC members will take place tonight. The exhibit is organized and toured by the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, PA.

Perrott’s photographs, which document 25 years of tattoo culture, highlight the artistry of the tattoos as well as the individuals who have stories to tell. Tattoos are one of the oldest subjects in art, dating back over 5000 years.

The exhibit features 25 large-scale black and white photos of men and women and their tattoos.
It grew out of a project which Perrott began in 1979 when he started hanging out at a tattoo parlor in Pittsburgh. That led him to continue to explore the artform in a widening area. Between 1995 and 2003 his continued curiosity compelled him to visit ten American mid-career tattoo masters at their studios, scattered across the country.

Mark Perrott – TONY, 1992

Mark Perrott has worked as a professional photographer for the past 40 years. In addition to his commercial work, which includes portraiture and photography for annual reports, Perrott has taken photographs that document Pittsburgh’s citizens and its rich industrial landscape. His photographs are included in the permanent collections of a number of museums, including Carnegie Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Baltimore Museum of Art and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The exhibition will showcase a collection of murals painted by local tattoo artists including Robert Berry from 7th Street Tattoo in Little Rock, Richard Moore from Backroads Tattoo in Russellville, Caleb Pritchett from Electric Heart Tattoo in Little Rock, Chris Thomas from Golden Lotus Tattoo Studio in Sherwood, Brooke and Ryan Cook from Lucky Bella in North Little Rock, Nancy Miller from Main Street Tattoo in Jacksonville and Scott Diffee from The Parlor in North Little Rock.

A section in the exhibition called Arkansas Tattoo Witness Corner will feature a selection of videos created by local individuals telling the stories behind their tattoos. To be included in the Arkansas Tattoo Witness Corner section of the exhibition, people can submit videos telling their tattoo story. Videos should be three minutes or less in length. People can upload their videos through the Arkansas Arts Center web site at http://www.arkarts.com. Videos will be accepted throughout the run of the exhibition.

RELATED PROGRAMS
The lecture TATTOOED: The Sociogenesis of a Body Art by Michael Atkinson, Ph.D. will be held Thursday, June 21, 2012. A reception will be held at 5:30 p.m., and the lecture will begin at 6 p.m. Dr. Michael Atkinson, sociologist and tattoo enthusiast, authored the book Tattooed: The Sociogenesis of Body Art. In this lecture, Dr. Atkinson will discuss the change in tattoo culture in North America in the past decade including the role of women and other influences. Admission to the lecture is $5. Arkansas Arts Center Members attend free.

The Arkansas Arts Center will offer free public tours of Tattoo Witness: Photographs by Mark Perrott by docents on Saturdays at 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. and Sundays at 1 and 2:30 p.m.

Live demonstrations will reveal the art and technique of tattooing by local tattoo parlors from 2 to 4 p.m. on the following dates (visitors cannot receive tattoos at the Arts Center):

June 24: Golden Lotus Tattoo Studio, Sherwood
July 15: Lucky Bella, North Little Rock
August 5: 7th Street Tattoo, Little Rock
August 26 : Electric Heart Tattoo, Little Rock

11th National Drawing Invitational at Arkansas Arts Center

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The Arkansas Arts Center presents the exhibition 11th National Drawing Invitational: New York, Singular Drawings on view April 20 – September 9, 2012, in the Jeannette Edris Rockefeller Gallery.

In 1986, Arkansas Arts Center Director and Chief Curator Townsend Wolfe organized the first National Drawing Invitational to further advance the Arts Center’s commitment to collect and exhibit drawings and to focus on living American artists and their work. For the 11th National Drawing Invitational, guest Curator Charlotta Kotik puts together an exhibition that features drawings by ten New York artists whose works border on obsession in their execution.

Ati Maier

Charlotta Kotik works as a writer and independent curator, facilitating various projects for galleries around the world. Until 2007, Kotik was Chair and Curator at the Brooklyn Museum of Art Drawing Department. Currently, Kotik is Curator Emerita at the museum. During the course of her career, Ms. Kotik has organized over 100 museums exhibitions, presenting the work by contemporary artists such as Mariko Mori, Kerry James Marshall, John Cage, Jenny Holzer and Robert Longo.

The National Drawing Invitational continues the Arkansas Arts Center’s commitment to collect and exhibit drawings of all periods. The Arkansas Arts Center began its collection of drawings in 1971 when Wolfe purchased Willem de Kooning and Andrew Wyeth works on paper. Today the drawing collection includes over 5,000 sheets.

11th National Drawing Invitational: New York, Singular Drawings is sponsored by Friday, Eldredge & Clark, LLP