arkansasartnotes

This is the look of the UA Architecture school-designed modular home that the Downtown Little Rock Community Development Corp. will build at 1519 Commerce St. The DLRC, the city and UA architects will break ground at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday. The DLRC says the home will be sustainable, affordable and it and others like it will help revive the South Main neighborhood.

A press release said the home was designed by 4th and 5th year students at the UA and was built in modules at a warehouse in Fayetteville. The house should be up by April. UA students have been working on designing affordable modular homes under professor Gregory Herman for several years.

The press release didn’t estimate what the house would cost to build or purchase, but earlier articles about previous projects estimated around $70,000.

I was staring at this year’s Delta Exhibition winner, Kyle Chaput’s “Oso Bay Site 47,” a lithograph, trying to figure out if I liked it this afternoon when the Arkansas Arts Center guard gestured to me to join her at the back of the room. “Do you see the bat and the rat?” she asked. And taking up her vantage point, I did see the bat and the rat. She was looking for more, too, she said.

Which is why I decided I liked Chaput’s technically superb lithograph. The Corpus Christi artist is offering more, and while he may not intend for the viewer to stand across the room and find animals in the work, he has removed interpretive boundaries. The drawing is vaguely disturbing up close, thanks to its biormorphic ambiguity. It’s not a drawing of driftwood, though a first glance suggests that. The string that wraps around what might be a branch is familiar enough. But the string doesn’t end properly, and why does that part of the — wood? — drape the way it does? Why not bat? Why not rat?

Martha Tedeschi was the juror of this year’s Delta exhibit, the 52^nd, and while she selected what we’d call a few bad apples, by and large the work is good. Tedeschi found a lot to like among Arkansas entries, such as Little Rock artist Dominique Simmons’ fine “The Devil is in the Details,” an etching of a dark, devil-enveloping cloud in the shape of the United States looming over a treeless field and crossroads; and Batesville artist Sheila Cantrell’s soft colored-pencil still life “Pitchers and Pears.” Yet she passed up an exquisite silverpoint, “Cannas Gloria” by Marjorie Williams-Smith, also of Little Rock, for a prize.

I couldn’t stop looking at “Jump” by Jimpsie Ayres (born in Stuttgart, lives in Memphis), in which an African American child, rendered in a painterly fashion, leaps into a stylized blue pool making stylized, snowflake-like splashes against a yellow and red splotched sky. It produced the kind of edgy feeling you might get if you saw Michelangelo’s David placed on a shag rug.

The Contemporaries group at the Arts Center gave its prize to “Powdered Graphite,” a paper sculpture that blooms off the wall by Timothy Harding of Fort Worth.

The show, in the Strauss and the New Acquisitions galleries, runs through March 14.

ACAC, the Arkansas Community Arts Cooperative, opens “La Pinche Situacion,” an exhibit of mural and graffiti art by Ch3mex (Jose Hernandez) tonight from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. There will be Matachines traditional dance and Hernandez, who was born in Mexico and raised in Jonesboro, will DJ, the music mavens at the Times report. ACAC is at 900 S. Rodney Parham Road, in space formerly occupied by Gallery B.

V.L. Cox is showing new work at Boswell-Mourot Gallery that departs from pure abstraction by a hint here, a symbol there, as in the quasi-landscape above, “Brushy Creek.” The gallery is holding a reception for the North Little Rock artist, who has works in several public and private collections, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 6, at 5815 Kavanaugh Blvd.

Here’s a bit about David Bailin’s show at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville — the first Bailin exhibit in Arkansas since 2000, by my reckoning. It’s coming soon. Above: “Diver,” inspired by a Greek wall painting.

Here’s some late-day art news: The Thea Foundation on Main Street in Argenta is offering three to five semi-private studio spaces to fine artists and display space. THEArtists Studio and Gallery will be located on the second floor above the Thea Foundation offices at 401 Main St. Use of certain materials will be prohibited; the space will work for artist who work in media such as pastel, watercolor, acrylic and charcoal. The studios will be available in March. Rent will range from $250-$350 a month with utilities paid. A low commission will be charged on sales.

For more information, call Sarah Mattingly at 501-379-9512 or email sarah@theafoundation.org.

‘Dogs of War’ by Sarah Sears is one of 58 works in Arkansas State University’s “2010 Delta National Small Prints Exhibition” that opens today in the Bradbury Gallery on ASU’s campus in Jonesboro. Juror for the exhibit was Whitney Museum of American Art curator of prints David Kiehl. Works by a couple of ASU professors made the cut: John Salvest and Shelley Gipson.

Baum Gallery at UCA strays from the ordinary this week when it opens its spring shows. “Tagged, Stamped & Stenciled” turns the gallery into a subway station with three large murals created by San Francisco artist Mark Bode (his work is above). A press release says visitors can create their own tags, stamps and stencil graffiti in an adjacent room. UCA students will perform in the gallery as well, in the spirit of street performers. “Polarized Dispersions,” a multi-media installation by UCA professor Michael Wyshock, features computer-generated images projected on suspended fabric. There’s an opening reception from 4-6 p.m. in McCastlain Hall tomorrow and another there from 2-4 p.m. Sunday.