Art Notes

Portraits will be displayed at New Deal Gallery in Little Rock (2003 S. Louisiana St.) Friday, Nov. 18, 6-9 p.m., with fare from Lili's Mexican Street Food. On Saturday, Nov. 19, the gallery opens at 1 p.m., and CWFA hosts a live storytelling event at 2 p.m. featuring stories from people who have been incarcerated in Arkansas.

Of her painterly and vivid works, the artist has said she doesn’t want to create “narratives of victimhood,” but rather flip the script to include beautifully subversive images of freedom. 

In addition to works from the permanent collection by Diego Rivera, Georgia O'Keefe, Elaine de Kooning, modernist John Marin, impressionist painter Paul Signac, as well as loans from artists Elias Sime, Ryan RedCorn, LaToya Hobbs, and Oliver Lee Jackson.

Music from Emily Fenton and Zakk & Big Papa Binns, plus art from Mid Mod Mike at Bella Vita, photography from Ray Scott at Christ Church Episcopal and new work from Liz Sanders and Lauren Wilcox Puchowski at Historic Arkansas Museum.

We blinked and missed photographer Brian Cormack's exhibit of photographs in "Intruders In The Dirt: The Architecture and Landscape of the Arkansas Delta" while it was up at the Laman Library in September, but they're still up in a portfolio online.

If you’ve strolled through the St. Joseph Farm Stand or a pop-up market in Central Arkansas in recent months, you may have seen colorful displays of stickers, prints, and wood carvings paying tribute to all things squishy, squirmy and sweet under the banner of SLUGKNIVES.

With "physicality and aggressiveness." That's how artist Dominique Simmons describes her pastel technique. Feels about right for the times we're livin' in. Simmons' new exhibit opens at the ACANSA Gallery in conjunction with Third Friday Argenta Art Walk. Grab a snack from Brood & Barley or a drink from Flyway and check out work from Sherry J. Williamson at Bang Up Betty while you're down there; Williamson is donating 20% of her sales to the vital work that Arkansas Abortion Support Network does. 

The cliffs of the mighty Buffalo, rendered in dye and cloth.

This year, that award goes to James "Kimbo" Dryden, known for his family's longstanding work in the field of pottery, work that's been done in a quirky building in Hot Springs' Whittington Park area since 1956.

The 35th annual "Small Works on Paper" exhibit begins its tour around various galleries in the state with an opening reception Thursday, Jan. 6, at Mosaic Templars Cultural Center.

Depicting subjects local to Arkansas as well as Nigeria, Botswana and Zambia, this father-daughter exhibit examines the idea of home.

This collection of three Arkansas artists — photographer Timothy Hursley, sculptor/woodworker Peter Scheidt and documentarian/textile artist James Matthews — is up through January at the Historic Arkansas Museum.

The Minority Affairs Council of Southwest Arkansas commissions a mural and a message.

"I’ve had CEOs of billion-dollar international companies come up to me at events and art openings over the past few years and say, 'I’m very concerned about what’s going on down there.' They don’t care if Arkansas is a beautiful state. They don’t care about sports. They care about how people are treated and where to put their next multi-million-dollar business expansion. They care about their investments and their reputation."

With vivid photography from Rett Peek and devoted attention paid to the makers’ techniques, and to the economic and cultural circumstances that framed their varied work, the books make Arkansas’s material history feel exactly as it should: textured and lively and tangible.

More gallery space, more programming, more culture on tap.

Up at the the Windgate Center of Art and Design at UA Little Rock from Feb. 22-March 19 is "Sompasauna," an exhibit from UA Little Rock alum and adjunct photography professor Dylan Yarbrough.

The Arkansas Arts Center has a new name: the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts. Leaders gathered at a press conference today to announce the new name and provide an update on its facility, which is being renovated and expanded. 

Hours are 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday.

British artist Frea Buckler, whose hard-edge, saturated-color geometric works have been exhibited widely in the United Kingdom and seen in galleries in New York and Denver, brings “Loop Sequence” to The New Gallery at 1619 Scott St. starting Nov. 6.