On May 24th, Caryn Coleman of art.blogging.la went to various art events and openings. If you've ever been to an art opening, whether at a small gallery or big museum, you know us art lovers have a good time when we all get together to celebrate new art! If you have never gotten the pleasure of attending an opening, you're probably imagining a bunch of stiffs moseying around, stopping every now and then to tilt their heads and mumble, "Hmmm." Well it's more like this: People of all ages, personalities, backgrounds, styles, etc. all in one place to share food, cocktails, and a passion for modern art. In other words, it's a party with art! Coleman touches on this experience in a comical way--as she should. In her Opening Recap she starts by saying:
While someone else may have said, "Going to art openings is fun," Coleman sums up her night in a much more humorous, descriptive. She paints a picture for us. Even just the words "art openings at a karaoke bar in Korea-town with dealers" makes me laugh right away and, more importantly, want to read on to see what went down!
Ending an evening of art openings at a karaoke bar in Korea-town with dealers, artists, and collectors is by far one of the best ways to be amused, embarrassed, and see the less serious side of your artworld friends.
The rest of Coleman's post is just as witty, fun, and descriptive as that amazing first sentence! In closing she writes:
I look forward to next weekend and, just perhaps, more karaoke.Me too, Caryn.
Image from Coleman's May 24th Opening Recap post
Another post I enjoyed was a short post about an exhibit by artist Anselm Kiefer. The post was titled Anselm Kiefer’s “Palmsonntag (Palm Sunday)”
. In this post, she is slightly less detailed but she still gets to the point in style. Once again she makes the point interesting and fun just by a better choice of words and phrases--never underestimate the power of thesaurus.com! The Kiefer exhibition she discusses apparently stayed open a few extra weeks, and I can see why. It looks really cool!
I love the way she uses language to change the way you imagine what the exhibition looked like, even if she hadn't provided pictures. Here's a tidbit from the post that I found to be simple but funny:
The showing of this one-of piece was in conjunction with his show at Gagosian Beverly Hills was absolutely incredible and quite the feat of physics (an additional supporting wall structure was needed for the wall pieces)Although the sentence doesn't read that well grammatically--I think she meant to say one-of-a-kind?--I envision the "feat of physics" really well. While she could have just said, "It must have been difficult," she spices it up with just three little words. But those three little words are so much more fun to read!
However, my favorite part came next...
I’m still not sure how they got the tree in there. If you missed it, shame on you...If she hadn't brought up the mystery about how they could have gotten the tree there, I wouldn't even have thought about it! But, since she did in her comical way, I get this picture of a bunch of spunky artists trying to get a huge palm tree through a little gallery entryway. And then there's the "shame on you" comment. Yeah, it's just three little words, but they are more fun to read than "too bad" or the variety of things she could have said instead. Once again, thanks Caryn!
Overall, I love love love the voice of Caryn Coleman on art.blogging.la. It's fun, light-hearted, witty, and clever, but she still maintains a really professional blog. I hope to develop my voice in the same way she has. To sum up, I'll say this: I went to art.blogging.la for the Los Angeles art news; I stayed for Caryn Coleman's voice. I hope that someone will be able to say the same thing about my voice on Art World Now someday!
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