Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/691761
culturedmag.com 91 Ethiopian artist Elias Sime locally forages his native town of Addis Ababa for the raw material to make reclaimed assemblages. Subdued, exalted and transformed at the same time, Sime tirelessly handworks his collection of found materials onto vast canvases. Each panel in his ongoing Tightrope series is a mirage of discarded motherboards and colorful electric wires that is simultaneously an urban landscape in bird's eye view. "I often imagine the people who touched the material, including the conceivers, producers, consumers, the garbage collectors and the trash diggers who made it available for me to collect." Currently, Sime and curator and anthropologist Meskerem Assegued are constructing a visitors center located in the Bale Mountains National Park. Built of mud and timber walls supported by sculptures made of wood—rummaged from the nearby forest—Sime and Assegued want to "use architecture and art as a tool to incorporate the life of the mountain while addressing the need to protect it." Bruce High Quality Foundation University aims to turn the financially insolvent art student trope on its head with their artist-led curriculum. Recently the foundation announced they've decided to expand their reach—thanks to a partnership with Art Center/South Florida. Starting in January, BHQFU plans to have a new crop of teachers leading a Miami-based program. "I thought I'd have to find a back door or build my own world from scratch, yet here I am now walking through the front door with a key and 24-hour access," says current artist-in-residence Andrew Ross. "When BHFQ added the U their community of attendees started to become a family." BHQFU.ORG The revival of interest around women artists, particularly those of an older generation, continues with the Denver Art Museum's "Women of Abstract Expressionism"—a 12-artist survey of modernism's most macho movement. Curated by Gwen Chanzit, it will be the first AbEx exhibition to solely focus on the ladies working in the style during the 1940s and '50s. The show will feature prominent painters Helen Frankenthaler, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner and Joan Mitchell as well as lesser-known artists like Sonia Gechtoff, who was primarily painting on the West Coast. On view through September 25. DENVERARTMUSEUM.ORG Coinciding with his studio's 20th anniversary, David Weeks presents his new collection OTTO, long and lean fixtures that exude a singular elegance, that bring to mind a dancer's limbs. "The litheness of OTTO was a design intention from the start," says Weeks, a feat made possible by his new use of LEDs. DAVIDWEEKSSTUDIO.COM 22 23 24 25 David Weeks' OTTO sketches Andrew Ross' Untitled (When Philosophy Becomes Practice, I Know), 2015 Sime's Tightrope: Mobile 2, 2015 Helen Frankenthaler in front of Mountains and Sea, 1952 ©ELIAS SIME, COURTESY JAMES COHAN, NEW YORK; ©2016 HELEN FRANKENTHALER FOUNDATION