Now showing at San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum:
Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World)

“I was out walking the dear dog and I saw 500 things that made me want to make art.”
- Maira Kalman

The first major museum retrospective of award-winning illustrator, author and designer Maira Kalman is open now at San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum. Perhaps best known for her covers and drawings for The New Yorker, Kalman’s art characteristically shines a joyful, insightful, and often humorous light on contemporary life. The New York-based, Tel Aviv-born artist has written and illustrated over a dozen books for children and adults, authored two celebrated illustrated blogs for The New York Times, and collaborated with the likes of fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi and choreographer Mark Morris.

The exhibition, organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, features a selection of 100 original works on paper that span thirty years of illustration for publication as well as less widely seen works in photography, embroidery, textiles, and performance.

The works on view – from preliminary sketches to paintings – are hung as a running narrative of personal memories, cultural references, life’s abundant pleasures and distractions, and the chaos of profound events – all rendered in Kalman’s now signature blend of written text and drawings and infused with her keen sense of the absurd.

“I think everything I do is narrative,” Kalman says. “It’s things that are from my life, and things I’ve seen, and things I’ve seen in books. It’s always telling stories.” She goes on, “As an artist, I’m reporting the big things and the small things. And sometimes you don’t know which is which.”

Describing the inspiration behind her work – her curious nature and daily observation – Kalman says: “Being curious is a completely natural part of it, and being a busybody, and wanting to know what people are doing, and why, and how it works. And why are you wearing those shoes? And what’s that hole puncher for? The nature of curiosity is both about how people live their lives and about the bigger picture of how the world works.”

Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World) runs through October 26th.

above: Maira Kalman, Crosstown Boogie Woogie, 1995, gouache on paper, 15 3/8 x 11 1/2 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Julie Saul Gallery, New York.

*above: Maira Kalman, Keep Calm, 2007, gouache on paper, 11 3/4 x 8 3/4 inches. Collection of Barbara Becker and Chad Gallant.

above: Maira Kalman, Woman with Face Net, 2000, gouache on paper, 17 x 14 3/4 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Julie Saul Gallery, New York.

above: Maira Kalman, Man Dances on Salt, 2007, gouache on paper, 9 x 7 3/4 inches. Collection of Tom and Claire O’Connor.

above: Maira Kalman, Self-Portrait (with Pete), 2004–5, gouache on paper, 16 x 15 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Julie Saul Gallery, New York.

above: portrait of Maira Kalman, courtesy of Rick Meyerowitz.

*Images courtesy of The Contemporary Jewish Museum.

Opening today at the NY Art Directors Club and running through the 14th, Superheroes & Super-Villains is a collaborative project courtesy of Parsons‘ BFA Illustration students and local youth from nonprofit 826NYC’s Superhero Supply Company. Over the course of the spring, 35 grade school students at 826NYC’s creative writing workshop crafted their very own superhero or super-villain. Those stories were presented to the Parsons illustration students, who created art representing the characters and scenes from the stories.

The stories and illustrations bring the superhero’s powers and super-villain’s motives to life, and describe how each character came to be a hero or a villain. For example, after a chance encounter stealing other kids’ cookies at a daycare center, Spinner and Ghostly embark on a worldwide crime spree, while criminal mastermind Croleum creates death traps and disguises out of his three secret command centers. Fighting for the good side, Ever Boy uses his morphing powers to inhabit the bodies of ordinary humans and evil villains to save the Earth from a massive explosion.

“The real value of the project with the Superhero Supply Company and 826NYC was twofold. For the young writers at 826NYC, their work was taken seriously and treated with great respect by the illustration students from Parsons. Plus they got to see their writing come to tangible life through the images made by the students at Parsons,” said Steven Guarnaccia, chair of Illustration at Parsons. “For the Parsons iIllustration students, in addition to the sheer pleasure of illustrating the wildly imaginative work of these young writers, there was the real-world experience of responding to an author’s text.”

826NYC is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6-18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. Their services are structured around the belief that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success. 826NYC provides free programs such as drop-in tutoring, field trips, after-school workshops, in-schools tutoring, help for English language learners, and assistance with student publications. The creative writing center is located behind a swinging bookshelf at the back of the Superhero Supply Store on 372 Fifth Avenue in Park Slope Brooklyn, which sells “high quality crimefighting merchandise” for charity, including secret identities, lairs and capes.

General Info:
Superheroes and Super-Villains
Parsons BFA Illustration Thesis Exhibition
Monday, May 10-Friday, May 14
Opening Reception: Monday, May 10, 6-8 p.m.
Art Directors Club, 106 West 29th Street, New York, NY

http://www.adcglobal.org/adc/events/calendar/

*above: Everyboy by Sophia Chang

*above: Spinner Ghostly by JP Morales

*above: Lightning Storm by Stella Lee

*above: The Shadow by Anthony Calabrese

*above: Lord Darkness by Lulu Wolf

*above: Freakshow by Katie Turner

*Images courtesy of Parsons The New School for Design.