TRA Featured Item

"Smokey Eye" 48 x 73 inches $2750 Retail NOW $650

This is a print on wallpaper. That's right. Our printer did this piece for us a while back as a sample of what he can do for us. He can print on wallpaper, tile, metal, just about anything. At 48 x 73 inches, this piece really pops. It is vibrant and striking. It is stretched on canvas and ready to hang. Our printer visited us yesterday and said "Why do you still have this? Get rid of it!" So we are. Let your clients know!

Epiphany Glass Show

TRA Art Group Presents: Epiphany Glass

Stop by to view work from master glass blowers April Wagner and Jason Ruff.

April Wagner and Jason Ruff met while attending the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, MI. They both graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art, emphasis in glass, in the early ‘90s. For the past 10 years, they have owned and operated epiphany studios, located in Pontiac, MI. Their studio is the largest, most sophisticated private studio of its kind in the Midwest. Their work is exhibited in galleries worldwide, and featured in numerous private and corporate collections including those of Russian President Vladimir Putin, General Motors, The Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, Pfizer, Inc., Strategic Staffing Solutions, and Ross Controls. April was recently featured as one of Crain’s Detroit Business’s 40 under 40 honorees for 2005.

The gallery is inside the Michigan Design Center down the hall from TRA Art Group. Please join us to celebrate these prolific Michigan Artists.

TRA Featured Item

"Winter" and "Summer" by Susan Kulbacki are a diptych which can be sold separately. They are signed giclees on canvas. A giclee is a high quality print on canvas or paper. These are signed by Susan. The canvases are floating inside a 2 1/2 inch thick curved wood frame. The image is a study of the same tree in summer and winter months. They would look great in a cottage setting. Since many of our clients were busy spending their last nice weekend at their cottages I thought these items would be fitting. Come in for a closer look. Below you will find the artist's bio."Summer" and "Winter" by Susan Kulbacki
Retail $1950 each Sale Price $695 each.

Bio

Susan Kulbacki has had a life-long love of art. Beginning with coloring books and mud pies, it gradually matured into the beautiful oil paintings for which Susan is now so well known. Her early love of nature has remained with her as well, and that love is apparent in much of her artwork.

Susan was fortunate because in the Detroit area where she was raised, the Public Schools had a wonderful partnership with the Detroit Institute of Art, and she was selected to participate in the Saturday morning program. She says, “My early training was crucial to my development as an adult.” Although she was only in the fifth grade, the children were allowed to paint in different galleries; one day they might be in the Picasso Gallery and the next day in a Gothic Gallery. Instructors would give brief talks and afterwards the students would paint or draw their impressions. The one rule was they were never allowed to copy. Susan also studied life drawing at the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts.

During high school, Susan expanded her artistic horizons by taking part in theatre where she helped create and paint the sets. Because Susan’s father had dreams of her becoming an architect, she followed his advice and enrolled in mechanical drawing and drafting classes. Unfortunately, at that time women were not encouraged to study these traditionally male professions. Further discouraged when she found she was the only female in her classes, Susan rethought her career goals. Following her heart, she decided to instead pursue the arts.

After high school, Susan entered Michigan State University on a National Merit Scholarship. Remaining there for only a year, Susan moved to New York City despite her family’s strong disapproval. Eager to intensify and expand her involvement with art, the young artist wanted to explore the many artistic opportunities available in New York. Unfortunately, just a week after moving there, Susan was hit by a speeding taxi. While the recovery period was lengthy, Susan was aided in the healing process by her strong determination and attitude.

After recovering, Susan enjoyed the fast pace and exciting world that New York offered. Proximity to museums was an important factor in the jobs she held, which ranged from secretary and landscape gardener to a business Susan owned where she was an agent for artist’s models. Susan continued painting and drawing throughout this time, and the daily exposure to fine art gained through her trips to the Museum of Modern Art everyday after work were an education like nothing else she had experienced. Susan would sit in front of a painting for an hour or longer studying it until it “spoke” to her.

Susan moved from New York to Woodstock where she was very involved with the art community and met many established artists. In Woodstock, she had her first show, and continued studying art.

Several years later, Susan moved to New Mexico where she became very interested in the intensity of color and light, so different from the milky grayness of the East Coast. She says, “The color seemed to expand into a great space and then on into infinity.” It was here that she began painting her abstract “color field” paintings. Galleries noticed her work and shortly her work was being sold in the area’s finest art galleries.

After many years of showing her art in galleries across the country, Susan wanted to step back. She felt she was repeating herself in a kind of signature style and wasn’t creating, but rather just refining. Finding work with a traditional art gallery, Susan painted flowers, garden scenes, color field paintings and abstract garden scenes.

This venture paid off both personally and professionally as Susan met her future husband, and experienced growth as an artist.

The couple now lives in a small town snuggled in the mountains, along with their three large dogs and exotic birds. Susan paints for Rosenbaum and is delighted with the national exposure this association has brought and the wonderful open atmosphere she has found there.

Susan prefers to paint in a traditional style. She has a complicated palette that is cool over warm or vice-versa. She is passionate about her painting and likes to do it all. For years, she has kept files on her ideas and never has a “dry spell.” She likes to layer her art and loves texture. Susan appreciates every artist and style. Going back to her early years in New York, Susan still utilizes her technique of sitting in front of a painting until it “speaks” to her.

Susan has maintained her love of nature and if she cannot be found in her art studio, she can be found in her garden. Her husband teases her that all she needs to be happy on her birthday is a truckload of well-rotted horse manure. Her grandmother’s love of sewing and quilting, passed on to Susan when she was just a little girl, lives on in Susan today. And traveling, where she can find further inspiration for her painting remains a favorite pastime.

As Beethoven needed to compose, Susan needs to pant. She says, she depends on art. And after thirty years of creating her beautiful and inspired paintings, Susan likes to quote a one-hundred year old Japanese artist who says, “I’m just finally getting it, and it just keeps getting better and better.” Susan gets it too.

"Summer" and "Winter" by Susan Kulbacki
Retail $1950 each Sale Price $695 each.

TRA Featured Item

"Dry Season" by Kirt Brown. Retail Price $7800. Net cost $2574.

Hello, I'm back with more deals from the TRA archive. We own a very large painting by Kurt Brown. He is a well known landscape artist, who works with acrylics on canvas or paper. I have no idea where the subject of the painting is. I assume it is simply a composite of imagery the artist enjoys. The medium is acrylic on canvas, and it measures 56 x 86 inches. I imagine placing this work easily in a great room or even a hospital setting. It is serene and deceptively simple. The frame is a reddish Roma wood frame with a distressed finish, with a strip of gold on the inside of the frame. The frame itself is probably worth $2000. I apologize for the hotspot in the upper left region of the photo. The piece is so large that it was difficult to light correctly. (You need a lot of room to light something like this.)

The quotation below is a taken from Kirt Brown's bio:

"Interiors and whimsical fish were what Kirt first painted. Now he is known for landscapes, many of them Italian. Memories of Utah and the land surrounding his parent's cabin also influence the art he does. First painting with oils and now with acrylics on paper or canvas, he loves acrylics. He says, "Painting with oils is too much like washing dishes." The immediate affect of acrylics is very appealing to Kirt, yet, with them he can achieve the same beautiful luminious and viberant look as he could with oils. He layers colors rather than mixing and builds the surfaces. He says of his contemporary landscapes that they are peaceful and his hope is that they exude that quality."

For your home work you can fix as many grammatical mistakes as you like in the preceeding paragraph and send an email back to me. Please take note that I copied it word for word from his website. FYI; I always suggest that artists use a non-artist to proof read their bios.
Extra credit: Fix my grammer if you like.
See you soon. Jeff

TRA Featured Item

Hand Crafted Stone Globe of the World

We have an amazing piece of craftsmanship in our gallery on consignment from a collector. He no longer has room for the piece and asked us to show it for him in TRA's showroom.
It is a world globe. The literature which accompanies the work reads as such:

"To create this giant work of art, craftsmen spent nearly 1,000 hours hand-fabricating each component, beginning with a gypsum sphere as a base. As the sphere is the canvas, it is critical that it is perfectly round and in correct proportion to the cut stone pieces that will be assembled to for the map of nations. While the sphere is curing, the craftsmen carefully cut each nation, taking care to use stones indigenous to the country it represents. Only when the entire cutting process is complete are the stones assembled on the sphere to form the world's geometry.
To represent the 2/3rds of the world covered by water, the artisans use a centuries old process of stone grinding. Genuine Lapis, because of its stunning bright blue color, is ground into a fine powder and applied to the sphere where the earth is covered by oceans and great bodies of water. After the Lapis covered globe is inspected, it is hand polished to a high gloss and a thick coat if protective acrylic is applied to ensure a long lasting finish with a deep rich sheen."

Small Flaw Pic

There is one flaw in the piece. In the Bay of Bengal close up you can see a crack which is about 8 inches long. The flaw is in the acrylic outer layer. The stones are not affected. The flaw is not very noticeable either. It actually almost exactly follows the coastline of the Bay of Bengal.

Retail Price for this item is $62,500. The net price is $25,000.

The item was originally placed by the owner in an estate over-looking the Detroit River and Lake Erie. It was an adjunct to the many ships passing by from all over the world.

Featured Item June 2009

Thames River by Unknown Item# V114 Oil on Stretched Canvass 35h x 47w
Retail Price $1400 - 70% = $420

We have a lot of nice inventory that has been here for too long. I can't believe that we still own some of these items. They have been through Sample Sales and in and out of client's houses. Hopefully you can help us find a home for them.

This featured item is a skillfully rendered bird's eye view of the Thames River (I believe) in London. This is our best guess. We know nothing about the origin of the piece. We don't know the artist or the title. But we do know that it is very handsome and charming.

Let us know what you think!
Jeff

Al Newbill /// new acquisitions

Will be exhibiting new Al Newbill paintings down the hall from our space.


Al Newbill was born on January 13, 1921, in Springfield, Missouri. Although born in Missouri, Al Newbill was primarily raised in Detroit. His first painting at the age of twelve, was a copy of Winslow Homer’s “The Gulf Stream.” While attending Cass Tech High School, he concurrently enrolled in courses at Detroit’s Art Museum. Additionally he studied at the Society of Arts and Crafts, currently known as The College for Creative Studies.


After serving in the Army Air Corps during World War II, Newbill headed for New York where he studied at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art, and the New School of Social Research, where he studied Painting, Aesthetics, Psychology of Art, Art History, Art Criticism, and Chinese Art and Poetry. He remained in New York for fifteen years amid the exciting atmosphere generated by the Abstract Expressionists, one of the most important movements in 20th century American painting. Amoung his aquaintances were Franz Kline, William de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock.


Originating at Queens College, the lure of teaching eventually took Newbill away from New York to the Universities of Southern Illinois, University of California, Berkeley, Kansas, and Cornell. He then became the director of the art program for the Rodman Job Corp in New Bedford Massachusettes. He finally moved to the regional campus of Ohio State University in Mansfield where he taught until 1976. Newbill still resides today in Mansfield.

His work has been exhibited widely at prestigious institutions and galleries across the United States and remains in the permanent collection of many.

We welcome everyone to come and see the new paintings in Suite 27 of the Michigan Design Center.



Selected Exhibits
Detroit Institute of Art
Toledo Art Museum
Santa Fe Art Museum
University of Kansas, Museum of Fine Art
Arts & humanities Gallery, Ashland College, Ohio
Don Coburn Gallery, Ashland
New Paltz State Teachers College, New York
Leo Castelli Gallery, New york
Laurel Gallery
Stable Gallery
Mortimer Levitt Gallery
Creative Gallery
Parma Gallery
Holland-Goldowsky Gallery, Chicago
Hendler Gallery, Philadelphia
Stanley Yulish Gallery, Cleveland

Selected Collections
Springfield Art Museum, Springfield, Missouri
University of Kansas, Museum of Fine Art
Gallery of the University of Illnois
Kings College, New York
Marist College, New York
Ashland College, Ohio
The Olsen Foundation Collection, NY
The Chrysler Collection, NY
The Dalad roup, Ohio, Cleveland
American Recovery, Inc, Cleveland
Summit Venture Corporation, Newport Beach
Kichler Lighting, Cleveland
Paul Hamlin Interior Design, Cleveland