Do you love it? Hate it? Dig its retro feel?

The winners of the 2012 Fence Salon exhibition were announced Friday night at the Arts Center of the Capital Region during the monthly Troy Night Out.
The Fence Salon, an annual exhibition open to members of the Arts Center in Troy, had a record number of submitted pieces, 511, from 241 artists. The exhibition runs through July 15.

Jim Richard Wilson, director of the Opalka Gallery at the Sage Colleges in Albany, was the juror of this year’s show. He picked 50 pieces for the Fence Select show, which runs from July 27 through Aug. 31. He also selected the winners.

The President’s Award, which includes a solo exhibition in the President’s Gallery at the Arts Center during next year’s Fence Show, went to Channing Lefebvre, for his piece “Associations 117,” 2011.

Adult artists winning $100 awards were John Hampshire for “Labyrinth 276: Tornadic Panorama,” 2011; Gary Masline “Disconnected,” 2012; Wendy Ide Williams “Flare of Flexibility,” 2011; and Sandra Dwileski “Bramble,” 2011.

In the children’s category, $25 awards went to Christopher Quinones for “Zow,” 2012; Lily Eastman, “Reflections of My Purple Purse,” 2011; Devannie Simpson, “Patchwork Tree,” 2012; and Olivia Howie, “Untitled,” 2012.

The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls is offering visitors an unprecedented opportunity to see Portrait of Walt Whitman (1887-1888) by Thomas Eakins (1844-1914).

The Whitman portrait is considered one of Eakins’s finest paintings, and only rarely leaves Philadelphia, where it is a featured work in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA). This image of one of America’s most influential poets, by one of the nation’s greatest artists, will be in Glens Falls for six months, as a second exchange for the year-long loan of The Hyde Collection’s Portrait of Henry Ossawa Tanner (ca. 1897) by Eakins.

Admission is $8 per person and is free for Hyde members and children under fourteen years of age and includes access to most exhibitions and events. Every Wednesday is free. A fee may be charged for special exhibitions and events. The Hyde Collection is a non-profit institution located at 161 Warren Street, Glens Falls, New York. From January – May 31:  open Wednesday-Saturday from 10 am – 5 pm; Sunday 12noon – 5 pm; closed Monday, Tuesday and national holidays. From June 1–December 31: open Tuesday–Saturday from 10am – 5pm; Sunday from 12noon -5pm; closed Monday and national holidays.  For information, visit www.hydecollection.org or call 518-792-1761.

Are you ready for Tulip Fest?

Check out this story about the Capital Region bands playing on Saturday and Sunday.

What do you think of the Koons piece?

Tonight at 10 p.m. on CBS Ch. 6, Schenectady native James DiSalvatore will appear in a small role in the crime drama “Unforgettable.”

DiSalvatore will be familiar to Capital Region theatergoers, with roles in plays such as Curtain Call Theatre’s 2007 production of Agatha Christie’s “Witness for the Prosecution” and Alberto Casella’s 1928 classic “Death Takes a Holiday” in 2004 at Schenectady Civic Players.

The actor will be back in Schenectady tonight to watch the show with family and friends at Gaylords Tap Room, 1889 State Street, Schenectady.

Break a leg, Jim!

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The painter David Hockney, who was recently honored by Queen Elizabeth with the Order of Merit, has put up a poster at a new exhibition at the Royal Academy in London that says, in part, all of the work in it was “made by the artist himself.”

In an interview, Hockney is said to have included that statement as a direct indictment against the work of another art superstar, Damien Hirst, who uses assistants to produce work that is credited under his name.

The AP has the story here.

Richard Dorment in the Telegraph in London weighs in with an opinion piece that says Hockney is well aware of the use of assistants throughout the history of art, but that:

When Hockney notes that in his forthcoming show at the Royal Academy “all the works were made by the artist himself, personally” he is teasing a younger artist who probably deserves it and can certainly take it.

It’s what he said later in the interview that I find so moving. “I used to point out, at art school you can teach the craft; it’s the poetry you can’t teach. But now they try to teach the poetry and not the craft.’’ He’s saying that students used to be taught how to draw perfectly at the expense of their individuality. Now scores of students graduate from art colleges believing that everything they do or touch or say can be labelled a work of art but they couldn’t draw a rabbit if you held a gun to their heads. There you have it: the difficulty of teaching art in a nutshell.

What do you think?