TODD WILLIAMSON - Art News Blog

TODD WILLIAMSON

Art Scams! What to look for.

8/13/2020

I get a lot of email #art #scams and with the worldwide crisis, I get more than ever!
They are tricky to see as a scam but most of them have similarities that make them easy to spot.
Here are a few things to look for:
Usually they are very polite but with bad grammar.
They are buying for a spouse for a birthday or anniversary.
They are always in a hurry and they want to pay by check! DONT DO IT!
They best thing is to trust your instincts. They are usually right.
If I ever think they could be real, I forward them on to my reps and let them take it from there.
Recently one of my galleries thought it was a real thing and went along. The check bounced!
Then the "buyer" had the balls to send a 2nd check!! Crazy!
The police are little help with check fraud in case your wondering. So in this case you only lose the bounced check fees.
Dont think they can pay by Cashiers Check either. It is usually a fake one!
In some cases, they pay by credit card but they always overpay then want you to send them money! Again, DONT! If you cash they check, you are complicit in the eyes of the law.
They will tell you they have their own shipper and want you to pay the shipper, DONT!
Do business the way you always do and trust those nagging feelings you know you get.

Here is an example of the latest one. This one even came with the guys photo.
Name
Tom Glen
Email
glentom101@gmail.com
Phone Number
Comment
Greetings... I am Tom Glen from Sydney Texas. I have been on the lookout for some artworks lately in regards to I and my wife's anniversary which is just around the corner. I stormed on to some of your works which I found quite impressive and intriguing. I must admit you're doing quite an impressive job. You are undoubtedly good at what you do.

With that being said, I would like to purchase some of your works as a surprise gift to my wife in honor of our upcoming wedding anniversary. It would be of help if you could send some pictures of your piece of works, with their respective prices and sizes, which are ready for immediate (or close to immediate) sales. My budget for this is within the price range of $1500 to $5000.

I look forward to reading from you in a view to knowing more about your pieces of inventory. As a matter of importance, I would also like to know if you accept a check as a means of payment.

Tom Glen.

Thoughts in the Studio

6/22/2020

Lately, I have had lots of talks with other artists about the changes that are inevitable now that covid has overtaken the world. Our lifetime is now part of history and we have to adapt and find ways to be creative and relative in this brave new world.
One thing I hear over and over is the percentage of current galleries that will not be around this time next year. Some huge galleries have already closed. Everyone is scrambling to find a way to showcase their art and make a living at the same time.
I keep asking myself how much of the old way of doing business is still relevant? There have always been many things that were taboo for artist. Do those old taboo's apply? I don't think so. I think it is a new world and its time for us to create a good business model where we work together. Exhibitions were already moving towards arts collectives and art groups rather than galleries but now this seems even more important
Being in control of your art and how its shown and sold are more important than ever.
What do you think is important?
How do we implement these into our presentations?
How do we show the work and continue to grow our businesses without alienating potential in the future?
Art reps and consultants seem like the way of the future in my eyes. What do you think?

In the Studio - Instagram Live Discussion

6/9/2020

In this series, Victoria Chapman, director VC Projects, discusses artists' practice, life during isolation, past and upcoming exhibitions, and issues that most artists face.

Today, I had a great discussion with Victoria via an Instagram Live. Victoria and I have known and worked together for many years. We talked about isolation and how it comes out in artists' work, as well as how artists deal with the challenges it presents.

We'd love to hear from you! What are your challenges? Has isolation hindered or helped your creativity? Going forward how will your practice evolve? Leave a comment to help support the artist community in navigating these challenging times.

View this post on Instagram

Live Feed, we visit @todd_williamson_art in his Hollywood studio and learn about his studio practices, his 2019 exhibition at Venice Biennial, his Pollock Prize for Creativity, the meaning behind his colorfield paintings and more. . Todd Williamson, born in Cullman, Alabama, Graduated from Belmont University, Nashville, is a Los Angeles based artist, who exhibits in USA as well as Internationally. . His work is in numerous collections around the world and was included in the permanent collection of the Pio Monte della Misericordia in 2015 where it hung next to Caravaggio's Seven Works of Mercy for a period of time. Besides solo exhibitions e.g. in Milan, Montreal, Paris, Rome and Venice, (New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, Stuttgart) Joint exhibitions in Abu Dhabi, Berlin, Shanghai and Peking (Bejing) together with artists like Ed Ruscha, Jenny Holzer, Chuck Close, Ed Moses, and Robert Ryman. Williamson has also done a number of public artworks including the Sun America Building in Century City, the California Bar Association Los Angeles, the Nashville International Airport as well as the Aria Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. His work is also included in "The Circle of Truth" traveling exhibitions at the NUMu New Museum Los Gatos CA, MOAH Museum of Art & History Lancaster CA, and Color at the Cica Museum Korea Todd Williamson is also the current recipient of the Pollock Prize for Creativity from the Pollock Krasner Foundation and has a solo show at the MAC Museum Art and Cars in Singen Germany called "California Dreamin' an uncertain paradise" where the show is shown in conjunction with CA artist Laddie John Dill in "California Abstract". 2019 officially recognized solo exhibition at the 58th Venice Biennale. (the show was one of 20 officially recognized exhibitions at the Biennale. It was reviewed and chosen by the curator Ralph Rugoff and the Biennale directors . #toddwilliamson #art #losangeles #pollockkrasnerfoundation #abstractart #colorfieldpainting #studiolife #international-artist #venicebiennale #artcurator #artcollector #artad

A post shared by VC Projects (@vc_projects) on Jun 9, 2020 at 10:50am PDT

In the Studio art talk

6/8/2020

Join us In the Studio Tuesday, June 9th, 10am pacific for a "studio visit" and chat with VC Projects director Victoria Chapman!
Victoria has been exploring the idea of isolation with artists and curators over the past few months and how the isolation has reared its ugly head in their art, lives, and creative practice.
Instagram live
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBMByS_h_SF/?igshid=1uq8mybw2saa8

www.ToddWilliamson.com
#contemporarypainting #artstudio #artstudio #studiovisit #museum #contemporaryartist #contemporaryart #fineart #artcollectors #artcollecting #venicebiennale2019

April 21st, 2020

4/21/2020

"Contemporary art is a new voice in an ongoing dialogue of artistic ideas. Every artist working today contends with, looks at, draws inspiration from, and rejects all the art that has come before. It is the topmost layer of a sedimentation of proposals, styles, ideas, images, forms, and vocabularies that have accrued over time. Contemporary art is a way of looking at the world and making sense of the questions, problems, joy, and chaos that exist all around us and trying to find an expression that gives form to, or makes sense of it all. It can sometimes take on urgent, global problems, but it can also be extremely intimate or deal with the language of art itself: abstraction, color, or shapes. It can be about the process and the inventiveness of coming up with new technologies and new materials. Contemporary art can often feel like an obscure, elusive, or almost hostile thing that people either shy away from or that lends itself to ridicule and derision." by Christian Rattemeyuer, director Sculpture Center MOMAI thought this was very appropriate and truly describes contemporary art. Even artists dont always understand contemporary art. I have to work to understand a lot of video art and installations. I am too impatient to sit for 10 minutes to watch a jumbled mass of images that do not make sense to me without a description from the artist but I am willing to be educated and I do try to understand that all art recreates the world of the artist as they see it.

"Living in Interesting Times"

4/15/2020

There is a curse that is associated with "living in interesting times". In history these times were marked by plagues, wars, dictators but also by the birth of civilization and the renaissance.
Artists have always been the "historians" of these periods of great change. We bear the burden of taking something like this and making art from it or trying as best we can to explain it through color, movement, sound, etc.
The world as we knew has changed. It is not going to be like it was whether the country opens back up this month or next or even later. We are different. We will have grown. We will have matured. We will have weathered the storm, hopefully. We are living through one of the greatest stories still to be written.
I deal with my stressors by painting and hiding in my studio. The past 6 weeks have been a forced labor camp for most artists that I know and they have been very creative and productive for the most part.
As we slowly see the light at the end of the tunnel, we all need to come together as support. Little things during this very difficult period will mean a lot to people and especially to artists, who already feel the world a little more than the average person.
That life force or "zip" as Clifford Still called it, is heavy in our hands as we go into the unknown. It is up to us to fix the problems that we know exist and come out of this better than we went into it.
Corrections needed to be made in the way we lived our lives and in our business. The big, the gaudy, the reality series way of living is most likely not going to be so in vogue once the "Interesting Times" give way to normal living again.
The world is now at 7.5 billion people. The Empire State building which was the tallest building in the world for nearly 40 years is now number 34. Collectively we have loved "big" over the past few decades. Big museum exhibitions, big ticket items, and big homes. Will we start to question the direction we were going? Will the public now want art that is personal to them where they dont need a docent to explain every detail? Who's to say but we are definitely in for a change going forward.
#cliffordstill #pandemic #livingininterestingtimes #zip #stressors #artist #studio #empirestatebuilding #worldpopulation

CALIFORNIA ABSTRACT

11/12/2019

EXHIBITION OCTOBER 31, 2019 - September 13, 2020
CALIFORNIA ABSTRACT
MAC brings two biennale artists to Singen!
"California Abstract" shows works by Laddie John Dill and Todd Williamson in 2 seperate exhibitions that interact with historically significant automobiles curated with the artists.
A unique symbiosis of two international, highly decorated, Los Angeles artists awaits art collectors from 1 November in Singen. The MAC Museum Art & Cars has succeeded in uniting two "Biennale di Venezia" artists in an exhibition with Laddie John Dill (2011) and Todd Williamson (2019).
Christoph Karle, Automobile Curator at the MAC Museum Art & Cars, will be joining suitable vehicles - including a DeLorean DMC-12, which is known to car fans and moviegoers alike!

For Williamson, art takes place at different levels. His unique and award-winning technique involves creating raised parallel lines within his artwork. These equally spaced lines are often reminiscent of staves of music or lines waiting to be filled non-verbally with sophisticated and profound art. For this reason, instrumental musical works were composed especially for this exhibition, which uses his oil canvases like a sheet music. For his exceptional creativity, he received the "Pollock Prize for Creativity" award from the Pollock Krasner Foundation in 2019, becoming only the 3rd artist to receive this grand award!
Exhibition period
November 01, 2019 - September 13, 2020
#contemporaryart #museum #toddwilliamson #laddiejohndill #collector

Venice Biennale / Those Crucifixes by Todd Williamson: reminiscences of the sacred memory between Naples and Italy

11/12/2019

by Antonio Conte
The Venice Biennale  is one of the most important artistic events in our peninsula and no one can avoid making a pass at least once in their life also because contemporary art is ever more complete and embraces more fields of human knowledge, impossible don't get involved by the innumerable inputs that come to us like bullets that hit our senses, without exception.
On the page, the artist's works at the BiennaleA special feature of the artistic event  is its unraveling throughout the city with collateral events and national pavilions scattered around the districts of the Serenissima. Nothing could be easier then to get lost in the alleys of the city with the map of the Biennale in search of these events.
Along the banks of the Grand Canal after the splendid Piazza San Marco towards the Arsenal  and the Gardens, the main venues for the event are many of these widespread exhibitions. A particular building, the Church of Santa Maria della Pietà hosts an installation by Todd Williamson curated by Priscilla Fraser. We pass by the light of the sun that invades and pervades Riva degli Schiavoni in the narrow and long chapel of the church.
A feeling of peace, mysticism and the sacred take the visitor head-on, thanks also to the contrast with the external landscape. Venice is a crossroads of people and suddenly finding oneself immersed in a religious silence always has a certain effect, a diffused light and an unpublished nocturne by Greg Walter composed for the occasion do the rest.
Todd Williamson  cannot help but know that once he has caught our attention he puts us in front of large-format works. Abstract works with remarkable gestural power scattered around the chapel, even on the altar. Sentences of famous people accompany the works as engravings on black plates. words, tweets and posts extrapolated from their speeches, written in Latin as messages from prophets, letters and testimonies that take on an even more profound importance.
Accustomed to the light and to the well-known melancholy of the composition,  we realize that the works recall crucifixes, recalling sacred images of an Italian tradition that the artist knows well having exhibited several times in Italy and in particular in Naples with the gallery Art1307 in the center historical and to the CAM of Casoria. The artist's works can be found in the permanent collection of the Pio Monte della Misericordia.
These crucifixes  who only at first remember abstract works are more attentive and at peace with themselves than portraits of influential figures, spokesmen of our western culture raised by the artist to true sacred icons.
A criticism of a system which makes individuals like Donald Trump, Oprah and Kylie Jenner of the apostles of the contemporary. The installation, surely inspired by the place that hosts it, challenges the Italian classical tradition and, starting from it, undermines every stake and constraint by presenting us with the new sacred faces, today's influencers capable of understanding society or at least shaping it in their image and likeness .
A criticism that the artist puts in place by  asking himself first where we are going with no more points of reference, a procession that first accompanies the visitor, making him participate thanks to the phrases of the painted characters, creating a strange short circuit between what the eye perceives and that which reaches the mind through words, then transforms it into an accomplice character and active subject that contemplates, venerates and idolizes the person, the VIP, the influencer of the moment until the next new apostle that the consumer society will impose on us .
To learn more https://www.labiennale.org/it/arte/2019
#ToddWilliamson #contemporaryart #VeniceBiennale2019 #MAKcenter #GregWalter #UNCSA

https://www.ilmondodisuk.com/biennale-veneziaquei-crocifissi-todd-williamson-reminiscenze-della-memoria-sacra-napoli-litalia/?fbclid=IwAR1UgFDreUn1kdFFUzhdft_1XN9QcpnRvNxUJJJsL8xqFzcxr7FL8Sxny34

The Traveling "Circle of Truth" Exhibition Comes to the MOAH in LancasterLancaster Museum of Art History

9/25/2019

Telephone Game, Chinese Whispers, Russian Scandal and Grapevine, each variations of a game played in childhood, speak to that elemental need to communicate, despite our instinctive knowledge that the message is subject to language, interpretation, and intent, all along the road to enlightenment or— truthiness. The search can be noble or naughty, but endlessly fascinating, and it's as old as a pack of dogs.
The Circle of Truth is an ambitious art collaboration among 49 contemporary artists, working separately, but sequentially, under the guidance of co-curators Laura Hipke and Shane Guffogg, who created the first painting and delivered it, along with a blank canvas and request to create a visual response to the next artist in the Circle.
Previous paintings in the series went into storage as the process continued with the 49 artists over a period of nine years. Although each piece is accompanied by an essay from the participant, the optic impact of 20 by 20 square paintings hung straight in chronological order presents a visual trifecta. An individual work, by Robert Williams or Ed Ruscha, for example, tells one story; pieces in proximity reflect one another; and the whole visual experience is a multi-image panorama unified by the age-old question, "Just what is the story?"
After a debut at the New Museum Los Gatos, Circle of Truth opens at the Lancaster Museum of Art on August 10 and then at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art on April 3rd, 2021.
Originally published in the Summer 2019 Issue of Juxtapoz Magazine.

Preparing for the Venice Biennale and the World Stage

7/29/2019

The Venice Biennale is often referred to as the "Olympics" of the art world and there are many reasons this is true! It is very expensive to exhibit at and NOT one penny is paid for by the Biennale. Everything must come from the artist, the supporting foundation, and the artists benefactors. Luckily I have a great group of collectors who really stepped up to the bat to help me raise the initial costs.

I was approached in early 2018 about possibly doing an exhibition during the Biennale. My first goal was a foundation and a curator to write the curatorial statement in a way that the Biennale committee would notice. I asked an old friend who is an important curator and academic in NY to write the statement for the Biennale. With a deadline approaching we went about putting ideas and thoughts on paper. What was relevant in the way I paint to the theme of the 58th Biennale, "May You Live in Interesting Times"?

We landed on the idea of Modern Apostles which eventually became "Influencers and Thought-provokers". These are people that have great influence in our world and can start a war, destroy a company, or create a best selling author with a tweet!

My curator had some issues that took president so I had to start looking once again to pick up where she had left off. I was introduced to Priscialla Fraser who is the director of the MAK Center for Art & Architecture. We clicked immediately and she agreed to write the statement and to process all the paperwork to get us accepted. This was August of 2018.

The application for the Biennale requires a curatorial statement, essays on me as the artist, the supporting foundation, the curator and tons of paperwork. It has to be approved by the director, Ralph Rugoff and is then sent before both the selection committee and the board. Its a lengthy process and we did not get the approval letter until December 26!! We were now officially one of the 21 collateral exhibitions approved by the Biennale as part of the overall program.

The Pollock Krasner Foundation agreed to support the exhibition and became my biggest financial contributor! Part of their support was also awarding me the Prize for Creativity, a special award given in honor of Lee Krasner. I am only the 3rd artist to have received this. What a huge honor! BTW, the Pollock is the most amazing group of people you can ever hope to work with!

More to come about logistics, press, costs, etc... So much to tell!