Haverford Fall 2011 : Page 25This fall the Marlborough Chelsea gallery in New York hosted an exhibition of new works by Vincent Desiderio ’77 . The show, the painter’s seventh with the gallery, ran from Sept. 15 through Oct. 15 and included 18 new pieces in oil and mixed media. Desiderio’s work often grapples with art history, and his canvases appear so accurate and detailed as to almost seem to be photographs at times. He was profiled in the book The Rebirth of Painting in the Late Twentieth Century by the influential art critic Donald Kuspit, who called Desiderio a “postmod-ern visionary” painter. His latest Marlborough exhibition included Self-Portrait Before Orozco , in which Desiderio paints himself in front of Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco’s fresco Gods of the Modern World as it looms over him, and Bride , a near life-size portrait of a woman smiling knowingly in a wedding gown and illuminated by an unseen but brilliant light source. Desiderio, who now lives and works in Westchester County, N.Y., teaches at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and is a senior critic at the New York Academy of Art. He is a recipient of, among others, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant and two National Endowment for the Arts grants. Desiderio’s works are included in the collections of numerous museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Self Portrait Before Orozco (2010), oil and mixed media, 64 in. x 48 in. Image courtesy of Marlborough Gallery. M ULTIMEDIA O n the website for his just-launched publishing compa-ny, button-down bird, Ben Rubin ’03 describes its first offering, When Comes What Darkly Thieves , as a fairy tale: “One that you’ll wake from feeling as if someone spent all night weaving nets in which to catch your dream ani-mals.” The book, written and illustrated by Rubin, features a blind gypsy king, a giant crow and moonbeams that turn into swings, and evokes that sense of a dream whose memory and meaning dances tantaliz-ingly in and out of the dreamer’s grasp. When Comes What Darkly Thieves , whose striking col-laged illustrations employ cut-up magazine pages, will also be available in the form of an iPad app with original music by some of the hottest young alt.country musicians in Nashville, Tenn., where Rubin grew up and still lives. Among the musicians creating the score for the app are C. Ryan Norris and Scott Martin, part of the band Lambchop; William When Comes What Darkly Thieves , a book written and illustrated by Ben Rubin ’03, is also available as an iPad app with original music by some of Nashville’s hottest young alt.country musicians. Tyler, a sometime member of Lambchop and a sought-after session guitarist; as well as singer Cortney Tidwell. (Several of the musicians also headlined a launch party for the book in Nashville in September.) Music was always part of Rubin’s concept for the book, which he originally envisioned packaging with a CD. But when he began shopping his manuscript around to agents, he learned that its elaborate illustrations would make the book too expensive to print to interest a commercial publish-er. That’s when he decided to launch his own publishing effort. “The iPad app was really a fundraising idea at first,” he says. “The music was going to be provided by this other musi-cian. When she backed out of the project, the fit with Ryan, William, Scott and Cortney just happened really naturally.” Rubin has known Tyler since he was a teenager, and was friends with some of the other musicians. “I’m really excited about what’s going to come of this,” he says. “It’s not just a piece of music that is going to go along with the book. It’s going to be something that is capable of standing alone.” After graduating from Haverford, Rubin moved to Florence, Italy, for a time, to soak up the art there. He spent an unsatisfying semester in a graduate program in fine arts, then worked for several years as a lab technician doing oncology research, all the while making art on the side. Eventually he began writing novels. “And somehow that led to making a children’s book,” he says. So what are his plans for button-down bird? “I would venture that every project we do will have a strong visual component to it,” says Rubin. “But most of them are going to be for the iPad or other tablet devices featuring music as well, and depending on the project, animation or video. We’re just looking for interesting projects to explore.” More information: buttondownbird.com —E. L. Fall 2011 25 mixed media V ISUAL A RTS Publication List Using a screen reader? Click Here |
