Laura Levine

Red-Winged Blackbird and Wood Thrush prints released today
Posted by Laura Levine at 3:12 pm on December 16th

20x200 is releasing two new prints from the Tweet Suite: Birds of North America series today - Wood Thrush and Red-Winged Blackbird.

Prints are $20, $50, and $200, and are produced with archival pigment ink on 100% cotton rag paper. Enter the code free2xship50 at checkout when you purchase two of their $50. prints for free shipping. (See their website for more info).

You can find Wood Thrush here.

You can find Red-Winged Blackbird here.

You can find more bird prints at my online Illogator gallery.

And....a new pigment ink print of one of my favorite photographs, a portrait I took of Bjork in the forest in Woodstock in 1991 (which is being offered at a crazy-low holiday-only price) can be found here.

Thanks for looking, and happy holidays!

- laura

http://www.lauralevine.com

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Sing Me Back Home book cover
Posted by Laura Levine at 1:13 pm on December 9th

The terrific book designer Beth Middleworth (Bats4Bones Design) thankfully remembered my portrait of Johnny Cash when she was asked to design the cover for the book SING ME BACK HOME by NY Times editor Dana Jennings (FSG). I love what she did with just some simple type.

Jenning's country music-related memoir has gotten wonderful reviews. He is also currently writing a must-read blog on the Times website about his experience with prostate cancer.

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Bjork print release for the holidays
Posted by Laura Levine at 9:11 pm on December 2nd

Bjork, Woodstock, NY 1991

I'm releasing a very affordable edition of one of my favorite photographs - Bjork, Woodstock, NY, 1991 - as a signed archival digital pigment ink print. Up until now I've only made silver gelatin (darkroom) prints of my photographs directly from the negative, but I've been collaborating with a wonderful digital printer whose work is exceptional and quite honestly you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between one of these luscious prints and a traditional silver print.

Between now and the end of the year we are pleased to offer this print at a special introductory price to our friends and collectors, available in two sizes:

8 x 10 inches, $75. (+ 5. US shipping) - or - 11 x 14 inches, $145. (+10 US shipping)

Each fine art print in this open edition is made with archival pigment inks on Harman gloss paper and will be individually hand-signed and titled by the photographer.

You can order it on Illogator.

This offer is only for a limited time. After December 31, the print will be available at its regular price, which will be $250 and $350.

Please contact me directly if you have any questions about silver prints, pigment prints, other available images, payment methods (we also accept checks) or overseas orders. Please allow a couple of weeks for delivery.

To place an order or read the story behind this image, please click here:

http://www.illogator.com/lauralevine/?section=browse_gallery&gallery_id=417&item_id=4446

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LP Cover Lover
Posted by Laura Levine at 8:23 pm on October 19th

Speaking of online collections of great record album cover art, this one is the grandaddy of them all!

This one was donated by me, and in fact there's another great website of more Savoy/Harvey gospel LP covers at http://www.harveyalbums.com/. But I digress.....

www.harveyalbums.com/

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Gallery of 60s & 70s Asian Pop Record Covers
Posted by Laura Levine at 10:22 am on October 19th

A fellow named David Greenfield posted an amazing gallery of fantastic 60s and 70s Asian pop record album covers here.

Enjoy!

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East Village/LES Show at Varga Gallery in Woodstock, NY
Posted by Laura Levine at 12:11 pm on September 11th

Madonna, NYC, 1982

My 1982 portrait of Madonna taken for Interview Magazine will be part of what promises to be a huge retrospective of the East Village/Lower East Side art show which opens this weekend at the Varga Gallery in Woodstock.

Several of my early 80s photographic portraits will be included in show. This brings back fond memories the East Village gallery scene, where I made the rounds showing at the Fun Gallery, Pompeii, Danceteria, Helio Gallery, Bridgewater Gallery, Kraine Club and P.S. 122, among others.

EV/LES – A Retrospective

Saturday, September 13, 2008 – reception 6 – 9pm

through Sunday, October 5, 2008

Participating artists include: Rick Prol, Mark Kostabi, Scot Borofsky, Tuli Kupferberg, Laura Levine, David Sandlin, Rodney Alan Greenblat, Stefan Eins, Christy Rupp, FA-Q, Shalom, Arnold Mesches, Judy Glantzman, Art Guerra, Brian Gormley, Richard Hambelton , Jon Singer, Maggie Ens, Shalom Gorewitz, Anne Jepsen, Jim C., Paul McMahon, Kenichi Hiratsuka, Vee, Bronson Eden, Walter Robinson and many many others.

This Saturday, September 13th VARGA Gallery hosts an exhibit celebrating classic East Village and Lower East Side artists with an opening reception and party from 6 – 9pm. The festivities will feature live outdoor performances by Phoebe Legere, Studio Stu, Phil Void, Paul McMahon, and others.

VARGA Gallery

130 Tinker Street

Woodstock, New York

http://www.VARGAgallery.com

Joey Ramone in his kitchen, NYC, 1982

Tina Weymouth and Grandmaster Flash, NYC, 1981

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Songbirds of the Catskills in THE BELIEVER
Posted by Laura Levine at 11:51 am on September 5th

Songbirds of the Catskills, 36" x 36" (acrylic and vintage trading stamps on birch panel)

McSweeney's publishes a terrific magazine called The Believer. If you haven't seen it, check it out. Culture. Art. Film. Books. Music. Science. Power tools. Really smart and one of the few publications I happily read from cover to cover.

They contacted me a while back and we've got all sorts of projects in the works. First off is the inside front cover of this month's issue, my painting Songbirds of the Catskills.

As I mentioned previously, Songbirds of the Catskills is also available as a signed limited edition archival print on Illogator. A percentage of print sales will be donated to the Catskills wildlife rescue and rehabilitation organization Ravensbeard.

http://www.illogator.com/lauralevine/
http://www.believermag.com/

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(Shown Actual Size) - BLAB! Show
Posted by Laura Levine at 8:57 pm on September 3rd

Heaven Sent Brandy, 16" x 16", acrylic on birch panel, 2008

My new series of life-size paintings of real-life tiny dogs, entitled (Shown Actual Size) debuts at the BLAB! Show at the Copro-Nason Gallery in Los Angeles this Saturday Sept. 6, 2008.

As Marc already mentioned, the exhibiting artists are Gary Baseman, Mark Burckhardt, Luke Chen, Ron English, Ryan Heska, Tom Huck, Andy Kehoe, Travis Lampe, Laura Levine, Travis Louie, CJ Pyle, Kevin Scalzo, SHAG, Spain, Fred Stonehouse, Gary Taxali and Mark Todd.

I won't be attending the opening, but if you're in the L.A. area, stop on by.

Saturday, September 6th, 8-11:30pm
Copro-Nason Gallery
Bergamot Station, Bldg. # T-5
2525 Michigan Ave.
Santa Monica, CA

http://www.blabshow.com
http://www.copronason.com

Boo-Boo, 16" x 16", acrylic on birch panel, 2008

Tiny Pinocchio, 16" x 16", acrylic on birch panel, 2008

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BLAB! retrospective at the Beach Museum of Art
Posted by Laura Levine at 2:44 am on August 1st

I'm very pleased to be a part of this exhibition. Here's some info as written by Mark Frauenfelder on Boing Boing.

The exhibition, organized by the Beach Museum of Art, will be on view through November 2, 2008. It is the first American museum exhibition devoted to the work of BLAB!, Monte Beauchamp’s periodic anthology of sequential and comic art, illustration, painting, and printmaking. The exhibition, which focuses on BLAB! #8-18 (1995-2007), features the work of forty-six artists and includes 150 objects from thirty-nine collections. All of the work in the exhibition has appeared in BLAB!.

Artists in the exhibition: Michael Bartalos, Gary Baseman, Richard Beards, Tim Biskup, Stéphane Blanquet, Calef Brown, Greg Clarke, The Clayton Brothers, Sue Coe, Don Colley, Brian Cronin, Nicolas Debon, Douglas Fraser, Charles Paul Freund, Drew Friedman, Geoffrey Grahn, Steven Guarnaccia, Ryan Heshka, Peter Hoey, Tom Huck, Teresa James, Jeffrey Kamberos, Nora Krug, Peter Kuper, Mark Landman, Laura Levine, MATS!? [Mats Stromberg], Walter Minus, Christian Northeast, John Pound, Archer Prewitt, Chris Pyle, Helge Reumann, Xavier Robel, Jonathon Rosen, Marc Rosenthal, Sergio Ruzzier, David Sandlin, Spain, Bob Staake, Fred Stonehouse, Mark Todd, Chris Ware, and Esther Pearl Watson.

The accompanying 128-page, full-color catalogue was designed by Monte Beauchamp and contains contributions by David A. Beronä, Mark Frauenfelder, Matt Dukes Jordan, and Bill North.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/31/blab-retrospective-a.html

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Private Commissions and the Stories behind Them
Posted by Laura Levine at 9:34 pm on July 30th

The Dubners

One of the more enjoyable sidelines of this biz is doing private commissions. There's always a bit of self-imposed pressure behind them (what if it's not what they imagined? what if they don't like it?) but they're a genuine pleasure to do. In many ways they're the most gratifying type of project, in that the people who commission me are doing so out of their own pocket, so it's a great vote of confidence. So I thought I'd share a few recent pieces and the stories behind them.

This first painting is a family portrait, secretly commissioned on the occasion of my friend Stephen Dubner's birthday by his lovely wife Ellen. I always like to include personal elements in the portraits, and she was terrific about sending me reference photos, which was a great help. They're all holding items that have special meaning to them (a popular conceit from early American folk art). He's holding Freakonomics, the book he co-authored; she's a photographer, so she's got her camera; their son has a football and their daughter is holding her favorite toy, a plush dreidel (how cute is that?). Lastly, I set the portrait in their favorite family spot in Central Park.

This second painting was commissioned by a photography collector who had recently purchased a number of prints from me. There was a moment in his past that he'd always wanted to commemorate and I was happy to oblige. Back in 1975 when he was a student at Oxford, he'd gone to see Tammy Wynette perform at the Hammersmith Odeon in London. This was shortly after Evel Knievel's failed attempt to jump his motorcycle over thirteen buses in Wembley Stadium, and Evel happened to be in the audience. Tammy proudly introduced him from the stage and proceed to list off every bone he'd broken in his body. It was a special moment indeed. Fortunately, my client was very patient with me - I took so long to complete this painting that Evel passed away in the interim.

Lastly, another birthday surprise. My dear friend Mark Whitaker was turning fifty and his wife Alexis Gelber and kids had a novel idea. Years ago I'd illustrated a series of covers of jazz albums for Verve Records, called the Essential Series. One of the pieces was the cover for a boxed set of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday and Sarah Vaughan recordings. (In fact, I'd given that boxed set as a gift to Mark for an earlier birthday). We decided to work from that original painting, and Alexis, being a top-notch editor, suggested adding a couple more singers that Mark was a big fan of - in this case, we chose Nina Simone and Dinah Washington.

What I didn't realize was that I was expected to make a public presentation of the painting at his birthday dinner party! Now, I'm not much of a public speaker (in fact, terrified) so it was quite daunting to get up there and make my little speech in front of the likes of Brian Williams, Fareed Zakaria, and Henry Louis Gates, but somehow the wine made it easier, and I got through it. (In fact, Gates came up to me afterwards and told me I'd "hit a home run.").