Ellen C. Caldwell | ECLAIRE.me

In the wake of rumors that the Trump administration plans to defund the National Endowment for the Arts (in addition to defunding the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting), it is no surprise that artists are continuing to take note and respond visually. In the coming days, weeks, months, and years, it is artists who will be physically documenting, commenting upon, and perhaps protesting, the changes around us. May we continue to support and appreciate their art and struggle.

William Kentridge’s “Triumphs and Laments” at Treveterno is powerful and moving. It is also a performative, public work of art that serves as both an ecological, urban beautification project and an equally important historical commentary highlighting the duality of narratives as told by both the victors and lamenters. It is my ultimate hope that Kentridge’s and Jones’ vision will inspire similar projects and installations around the world.

Rebecca Farr’s show “Out of Nothing” is raw, yet welcoming. In it and through it, she challenges viewers to embrace their own loss…Not many shows could hold up to this November, but the form, function, adaptability, and beauty underlying Farr’s show do that and more.

Pow! Wow! Long Beach, a contemporary art festival, recently took over Long Beach, California — both in and off the streets, with an accompanying exhibit at the Long Beach Museum of Art (LBMA) called “Vitality & Verve in the Third Dimension.”

Debra Scacco creates rich, multimedia pieces that play with light, reflections, shadows, walls, and borders in her 2015-2016 solo show The Letting Go at Klowden Mann.

In a world of binaries, Grace Ndiritu creates a slippery space where she can present the world with art that is just as thoroughly slippery as the world, museums, and history-shaping narratives that surround us.

Camille Page’s underwater paintings blend a perfect amount of the figurative with the abstract.

In this Process of a Painting, artist DyaniWhite Hawk walks us through her step-by-step process from the very beginning in building the stretcher bars for the canvas to showcasing the finished piece

Featuring prints from U.S. newspapers that quite physically depict the faces of the casualties of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Emily L. R. Adams ties in the medium of the motor oil as an underlying commentary on both the human cost of and monetary investment in war.

Taking items as mundane as daily desktop calendar pages, museum wall labels, and stickers, artist Alex Gingrow transforms them all into powerful agents with important social messages.