This is an exhibition of my recent paintings @ Prairie Ronde Gallery, Vicksburg, alongside Cindy Steiler, Prairie Ronde artist-in-residence @ Vicksburg Cultural Arts Center.
Category: Uncategorized
Cranes, change and permanence on East Michigan Avenue
This exhibition of paintings included in the 2019 October Art Hop at Suzanne’s Organics Salon features the downtown Kalamazoo urban landscape; it juxtaposes elements from the vintage architecture and the ongoing metamorphosis with new construction going up on all sides. Continue reading “Cranes, change and permanence on East Michigan Avenue”
Project MAPEA in Child in the City seminar in Antwerp
As a visual artist it was something of a novelty to be attending an academic seminar broadly designed for architects, urban planners and other professionals from this area. But since our mapping project began in Caracas from involvement with youth and children in shantytown communities, when I saw the call for the Children in the Sustainable City Seminar it seemed the right place for our proposal.
This trip to Antwerp turned out be a stimulating and fruitful experience over the two-day meeting. Above all, it was so reassuring to find oneself talking the same language when it came to sharing experiences, it can get very frustrating trying to explain this multi-disciplinary workshop model even in the art world.
MAPEA has reached four editions in the last four years so it continues to grow and prove its validity. At this moment it seems more urgent than ever to bring this activity to children amid such violence, encouraging a conversation about the environment and developing tools with which to do so. My participation in the seminar was a way of continuing our work when the crisis in Venezuela frustrated this year’s plans. By the end of March, when I should have been travelling to Caracas, flights were cancelled and the possibility of achieving the results we hoped for seemed pretty remote. It was a heart-breaking decision to cancel the trip, and we continue to wait for a change in tide to resume our plans.
Continue reading “Project MAPEA in Child in the City seminar in Antwerp”
Kalamazoo Arthop
Detroit: urban regeneration through art and ecology
Two of my favourite subjects… in one place! Last week we went to Detroit to discover something of the urban regeneration process underway there during Detroit Design Festival (celebrating the recent designation of Detroit as a UNESCO City of Design, first in the USA). In a very short visit we managed to see some urban farming in Corktown, the Heidelberg project, downtown Detroit, MOCAD and the Murals in the Market After Dark with the advice and company of Emily Jane Boeuf of USArt boutique.
Continue reading “Detroit: urban regeneration through art and ecology”
Natalya Critchley 