HABITATION
APRIL 29- JUNE 1, 2022
5435 Richmond Rd, Williamsburg, Virginia, 23188, (757) 675-6627
WITH SPECIAL GUEST SHAUNA PECK, SPONSORED BY LANEY MOREWITZ
ENJOY SPECIAL REFRESHMENTS AND MEET PARTICIPATING ARTISTS AND PATRONS
FEATURED ARTISTS INCLUDE SHAUNA PECK, ASA JACKSON, ELIOT DUDIK, ELIZABETH MEAD, NICOLE SANTIAGO, LUTHER GERLACH, JOHN R. G. ROTH, RYAN LYTLE, KRISTIN SKEES, NOREEN DEAN DRESSER, GLENN H. SHEPARD, SIDNEY ROUSE, IRIS WU, MARK EDWARD ATKINSON, TEDDY JOHNSON AND OTHERS
FEATURED PROJECTS 2022
Art Rosenbaum
Born in upstate New York in 1938, Art Rosenbaum is an acclaimed artist, folklorist, and teacher active from the 1960s to the present. He studied art history and painting at Columbia University during the waning years of high modernism and was part of the generation that re-introduced figuration and narrative into postwar art. Rosenbaum is best known for his expressive realism and for his significant contributions to the American South. Many projects include his wife, painter, and photographer, Margo Newmark Rosenbaum.
Rosenbaum lived in the historic West Village of Manhattan in the 1960s. He hosted a radio show during his years at Columbia. Bob Dylan was a regular listener and colleague in the legendary folk clubs. Continuing his interest in Americana, Rosenbaum brought critical attention to Southern culture during his years in Athens, Georgia, from the late 1970s to the present. A professor at the University of Georgia, Rosenbaum taught alongside painters such as Elaine de Kooning, Alice Neel, Richard Olsen, and Judith McWillie. He mentored numerous creative luminaries to emerge from Athens during this fruitful era, including Michael Stipe of REM. As discussed in Grace Elizabeth Hale’s lauded 2020 book Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture, Rosenbaum helped bring serious attention to many now-revered folk artists and musicians.
Paintings like Rakestraw’s Dream (1993) and Howard Finster with Couple and Fire (2006) feature the Southerners he championed in complex compositions. Outsider artists, folk musicians, and local hipsters populate Rosenbaum’s large, energetic canvases and richly detailed drawings. Rosenbaum’s style and technical prowess reveals his deep engagement with art history, ranging from the Italian Mannerists to American Regionalism. Rosenbaum’s work often includes subjects observed in his extensive travels throughout Europe, India, and Latin America. India Triptych (1998), for example, shows traditional hand drummers alongside figures in traditional saris and contemporary sports jerseys. His abstractions, such as The Way of the Sea (2019), showcases his expressive style in a raw, formally sophisticated form that echoes his early work of the late 1960s and '70s.
Rosenbaum was named the first Wheatley Professor in Fine Arts Emeritus at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia. In 2003, he received the prestigious Governor of Georgia’s Award in the Humanities. His collection of folk music, “The Art of Field Recording Volumes I: 50 Years of Traditional American Music Documented by Art Rosenbaum,” won a Grammy for Best Historical Album in 2008. Rosenbaum’s work is part of many prominent private and public collections, including the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Georgia Museum of Art.