North Fork Arts Projects

This essay first appeared in THE HALO-HALO REVIEW , November 2019 EILEEN TABIOS Engages  “Hawak/Hold (Davao Gulf)” by Katrina Bello (Graphite on paper, 6.5 x 9.5 inches, 2019) [Click on images to enlarge] Katrina Bello : Scaling Up by Scaling Down Vast. Empty. Full. Perfect.  When I make my drawings, I am in the grip of these immensities. —Katrina Bello, Facebook (Sept. 20, 2019) This past September, I read of conceptual artist Kenneth Goldsmith’s printing out of all of Hillary Clinton's emails and then she showing up at the Venice Biennale to read them. I appreciated  this particular work  by an artist whose works sometimes don’t work for me. But the work’s effectiveness made me consider as well how money (and lack thereof) affects artwork. It took a lot of resources to print out 62,000 pages of Hillary's email and put them on a faux White House presidential desk. Monetary effect is on my mind as, for the 2nd or 3rd time recently, I

"Button Art" REMY "MIMA" CABACUNGAN Pop-Up Exhibit Nov. 2, 2019 Just as the African-American community was graced by the masterful quilters of Gee’s Bend , Alabama, the Filipino-American community was graced by the cushion art of Remy “Mima” Cabacungan. In 2005, just before turning 98 years old, Mima participated in the group exhibit “Brown Strokes on White Canvas” at the University of Phoenix, curated by Julian Oteyza and Linda Pirrone. You can see a write-up I did at  Our Own Voice , December 2008 , accompanied by a press release that offers the history to Mima’s “Button Vision” for creating art based on embroidered cushions. I thought the works profound with their colorist perspectives, uplifting the pretty cushion genre into sophisticated postmodernism.   Here are some examples; I love the joyful wit of the third image entitled “Dalmatian”! Ever since I saw the images of Mima’s “button art” at that exhibit, I had longed for one s