Since 2014
August 19—September 15, 2017 FINAL WEEK
Endless Wave solo exhibition
Subliminal Projects Gallery Los Angeles, CA (USA)
New ballpoint pen originals and prints by the British art duo Kai & Sunny at the gallery owned by Shepard Fairey (print collaboration between the three, incorporating Fairey's iconic Obey graphic, pictured cropped). More info.
Submissions to The Ballpointer are welcome and encouraged but, by doing so, you are authorizing the use and publication of of any texts and/or data provided. Having said that, let us know you're out there.
Nov 3—27, 2016 NOW UP
The Ballpoint Pen Show group exhibition
Pony Club Gallery Portland, Oregon
Ballpoint drawings (one pictured) by local emerging artists and several from abroad marking their US debut. More info.
March 4—30, 2017 NOW UP
The Paintings of Pepe Lozano solo exhibition
Salas de Arte del Hotel Averroes Cordoba, Spain
New oil paintings by Spanish artist Pepe Lozano bearing compositional similarities to recent hyperrealist works done in ballpoint pen (Menelaopictured cropped, oil on canvas). Salas de Arte del Hotel Averroes is celebrating 10 years of exhibitions. More info.
March 25—27, 2017 THIS WEEKEND ONLY
Group exhibition of paintings & sculptures
group exhibition
Art N Heart Gallery Indore, India
New ballpoint pen originals by Munaf Shaikh on display as part of a 3-day art event. More info.
March 17—19, 2017 THIS WEEKEND ONLY
MYTHICWORLD convention
Doubletree Hilton SeaTac, WA (USA)
Ballpoint pen & gold leaf artwork by Rebecca Yanovskaya, who is billed as a ''special guest'', in this convention celebrating creative genius in the fantasy genre. ''Passports'' (tickets) are necessary to partake in what is billed as ''Faerieworlds in a Hotel'' which will include two ''Masquerades''. All in one weekend under one roof!
Oct 13—Nov 13, 2016 NOW UP
Point of Origin group exhibition
The Lodge Gallery New York, NY
Ballpointer Nicolas Sanchez' mini sketchbook masterpiece of Rembrandt (pictured) on display along with artworks by more than 50 artists. More info.
January 14—March 15, 2016 FINAL DAYS
Exploring Reality group exhibition
Schneider Museum Ashland, Oregon
Winter Exhibition co-curated by Shane McAdams featuring his Splayed Oak (pictured) and eight other artists' work, all 'exploring reality'. More info.
Oct 14—Nov 3, 2016 NOW UP
Arte Plural Grupo Rojo group exhibition
Galeri d'Art Tarragona, Spain
Pepe Lozano's monthly schedule of touring exhibitions continues, this time among artworks by 9 other artists.
More info.More info.
Dec 8, 2016—Jan 31, 2017 NOW UP
GONZO group exhibition
Westbank Gallery London, England
Ballpointer James Mylne's Chilled Hunter (pictured, cropped) in a group show honoring 'Gonzo' journalist and counterculture icon Hunter S. Thompson. More info.
Oct 6—16, 2016 NOW UP
The London Ibiza Collective group exhibition
S Artspace Gallery New York City
Ten artists from London and ''the party island of'' Ibiza, ballpointer James Mylne among them (pictured), occupy a ''massive art space'' in downtown Manhattan. More info.
BALLPOINTBRIEF by E. Lee posted October 5, 2016
Bíró's Birthday・September 29・
SUB : SUB SUB
TEXTS ...
March 4—April 15, 2017 NOW UP
Life, Space & Hallucination group exhibition
Kenise Barnes Fine Art Larchmont, NY (USA)
New ballpoint ''Pen Blows'' and more by Shane McAdams (pictured : Pen Blow 176) in a three-artist exhibition with Charles Clary and Jackie Tileston. More info.
Sept 22—29, 2016 NOW UP
Grandly Grimey solo exhibition
Westbank Gallery London, England
In his first solo exhibition since 2012, James Mylne will show ''work which recontextualizes classical ideas of power that were once portrayed through art movements such as Rococo''. He announces it as his ''biggest yet''. More info.
Oct 6—9, 2016 NOW UP
HK Reflected joint exhibition
Voxfire Gallery HK Honk Kong
In a four-day event, ballpointer Peter Ross (artwork pictured), along with fellow artist Harold de Puymorin, presents artwork which ''reflects the city's rich urban condition and bring to the forefront ideas of past and future''. Reception Thurs Oct 6, 7-10pm, free admission. More info.
... An online retrospective would instead become our story. No other ballpointer is more deserving than Lennie Mace, who has produced an expansive body of work in more than 30 years as a professional artist. The artwork presented here is surely new to many, but these were among the artworks which put Mace on the map. Drawn between 1984 and 1994, before the internet and social media, these were the viral works of their time, written about in newspapers and magazines and discussed on TV in New York City and around the USA. These are not Mace's earliest ballpoint penworks — The Ballpointer featured one earlier example, drawn in 1982, as a PICK in May — and they are not his only ballpoint artworks from that period, but they represent a finely documented birth and evolution of one artist's foray into uncharted art territory. With that 1982 drawing as a starting point, it became interesting to gauge Mace's progress in ballpoint pen during his first prolific decade. These were drawn as the artist grew into a popular illustrator (another story) and colorful character in 1980s New York (another movie), and for his earliest solo exhibitions at the start of the 1990s. At that time, there were neither ballpoint predecessors nor peers; no footsteps for Mace to follow...
Read the fully archived article, the first of a 3-part series ・
Jan 14—Feb 19, 2017 NOW UP
Music Box II group exhibition
Haven Gallery Northport, NY (USA)
Rebecca Yanovskaya contributes Paso Doble (pictured cropped), which she describes as ''inspired by the music (she) loves and the dance it accompanies''. More info.
Slideshow below : 1: Puzzled Self-Portrait (1984, 21 x 28cm) drawn on blank puzzle. 2: dreAmm (1988, 21 x 28cm) 3: Iris, Stenciled (1990, 41 x 29cm) shows Mace's original stencil graffiti icon which recurs in many early artworks. 4: Corner of Love & Hate (1990, 29 x 41cm). 5: CBS Dog (1993, 28 x 41cm) third of ' pet' series which continues to this day; drawn on nationally televised news. 6: Small Face Dog (1994, 30 x 41cm) the commission was actually to draw the rare ' Small Faces' 45rpm single.
January 28—March 12, 2017 NOW UP
The Accidental Landscape solo exhibition
Museum of Wisconsin Art West Bend, WI (USA)
A collection of new artwork by Shane McAdams falling into what have come to be recognized as 'nontraditional landscapes' (Move Right pictured cropped, ballpoint inks and mixed-media). More info.
RETROSPECTACLE by E. Lee
originally posted June 12, 2016
Lennie Mace・New York, New York
Decade 1 : 1984-1994 Birth of Visual Vocabulary
If only every assignment proved so fruitful. Show up to report one story; come away with five or more stories. At the invitation of artist Lennie Mace, staff of The Ballpointer converged in the mountains of central Japan to report about what could be called 'the castle that ballpoints built ' — the castle that ballpoints are buildING, that is. While it is already quite a sight to behold, Mace's Ena Castle (Ena being the name of the town) is still too much of a work-in-progress and was deemed not-yet-ready for the exposure it will one day deserve. Luckily Mace is full of other stories. At the time of our visit, the artist happened to be in the midst of scanning slides and transparencies into digital data for publication in an upcoming book about him and his artwork. By our insistent pleading, informal slideshows accompanied by drinks became a nightly event. Mace not only provided candid narration but also gave his permission for The Ballpointer to share a sampling of his archive with readers. More below...
INKBLOTTER last revised October 9, 2016
Ballpoint pen artwork & more, now on display or coming soon.
Support the Starving ARTS, Ballpoint and Otherwise.
June 8—August 20, 2016 NOW UP
Point of Vision - Celebrating Women Artists in Fantasy and Science Fiction group exhibition
Society of Illustrators New York City
Rebecca Yanovskaya's ballpoint pen and gold leaf Funeral Rites (pictured) displayed among artwork by a number of other women illustrators. More info.
Sept 10—Oct 8, 2016 FINAL DAYS
(HE)ARTBROKEN solo exhibition
Jonathan Levine gallery (Gallery l) New York, NY
New ballpoint pen drawings by Juan Francisco Casas in his first solo exhibition at the gallery. More info.
Listings published courtesy of The Ballpointer, space permitting.
Something you'd like to see? Something you'd like us to see?...
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January 15—February 8, 2016 NOW UP
Ballpoint group exhibition
Sugarlift Brooklyn, New York
Ten new faces appear seemingly out of nowhere, staking their claim to ballpoint brilliance. Curated by Guno Park, whose ballpoint drawings are also featured (art of Nicolas Sanchezpictured above). More info.
Oct 8—30, 2016 NOW UP
Spain Art y Proyecto Arte group exhibition
Escuela de las Artes Arroyomolinos, Spain
Ballpointer Pepe Lozano's The Look of The Absent (pictured) among artworks by 40 artists. More info.
January 15—February 14, 2016 FINAL DAYS
SPQR(ca)VITA solo exhibition
Royal Academy of Spain in Rome Rome, Italy
Juan Francisco Casas' first solo exhibition at the academy, where the artist spent some time. More Info.
Dec 16, 2016—Jan 2, 2017 NOW UP
La Magia del BIC solo exhibition
Museo Historica de Carcabuey Carcabuey, Spain
The touring exhibition of ballpoint pen drawings by Pepe Lozano (pictured above) continues around cities of Spain. More info.
All but the keenest viewers may have missed the many ballpoint pen cameos on screens big and small over the years. Ballpoints are regulars in Hollywood productions, and not just as set dressing...
Back to school Ballpointer
・Clueless 1995・Directed by Amy Heckerling
Early in the movie that made Alicia Silverstone a star (as Cherilyn 'Cher' Horowitz), frumpy new student Tai (Brittany Murphy) is introduced to the fashionable students of Beverly Hills High School. She carries with her a certain blue looseleaf binder, which gets lots of screen time to show Tai as an arty outsider clutching it like a security blanket...
Sept 7—30, 2017 NOW UP
Some Thin and Precious Membranes solo exhibition
Elizabeth Leach Gallery Portland, Oregon (USA)
New works by respected ballpointer Shane McAdams (pictured : Pinedevil, 2017) ''creating oppositions and the imaginary lines between seemingly disparate concepts''. More info.
At the bottom of a page where it seems she was practicing drawing cartoon facial expresses she wrote, 'Why is it so hard to draw happy!!' punctuated rhetorically with not one but two exclamation points...
Sadly, Brittany Murphy died in 2009. But what about those binders; do they still even make them?・
＊Read more K. RieSTARPOINTS on the CULTUREDpage
Google archives all of their Google Doodles. See their animated entry dedicated to László Bíró as originally 'aired' on September 29.
The Ballpointer memorializes László Bíró by permanent inclusion in our artist registry on the BULLPEN page, with a drawing by Bíró, himself, proving him to be the first to test the creative application of his invention.
Photo of Bíró and Google Doodle graphics © respective artists.
Sept 22—Nov 19, 2016 NOW UP
New Paintings / 40 Years in New York solo exhibition
Art Projects International New York, NY
An expansive retrospective of ballpoint elder IL LEE's paintings and ballpoint penworks (pictured) from the late 1970s to the present. More info.
Wikipedia included Bíró's birthday within their On this day... front-page listing, causing a ripple-effect of second-hand traffic to the site's Ballpoint Pen page and Ballpoint Pen Artwork page.
The Ballpointer, also celebrating a birthday of sorts as we enter year-three of publication, benefitted from Bíró's beneficence, as well, with daily traffic spiking dramatically two days in a row.
László Bíró invented something we each hold in our hand every day, and I'm not just talking about the drawing ballpointers among us; I'm talking about each and every person walking this planet. Plenty of other people have invented plenty of other things, but does each and every person get to ride in a limousine every day? Does each and every person get ride that limo to the Academy Awards ceremony wearing Armani with front row seats awaiting them? No. But every single one of you gets to write 'sweet- nothings' to your lover, or pissed-everythings to your enemy, thanks to Mr. Bíró's creation.
Dear Mr. Bíró, Hip-Hip-Hooray and HAPPY BIRTHDAY !・
April 7—25, 2017 NOW UP
La Magia del Bic de Pepe Lozano solo exhibition
Sala Aires, Galeria De Arte; Sala 2 Cordoba, Spain
Hyper-realist ballpoint PEN turas (ballpoint 'PEN tings') by Pepe Lozano, along with new similarly modeled pinturas (oil paintings; pictured above, cropped). More info.
Feb 13—28, 2017 NOW UP
Art Below LA group exhibition
Grand Union Station Los Angeles, CA (USA)
London-based art collaborative Art Below debut their concept in America: to 'turn AD space into ART space'. 28 established & emerging UK & US artists have posters of their work installed on train platform ad boards of California's busiest station. There's a related exhibition at Sur le Mur Gallery in West Hollywood. (a poster of James Mylne's ballpoint & mixed-media Samsara & The City pictured above on the platform of London's Regent's Park station during a 2016 installation.) More info.
January 28—February 29, 2016 NOW UP
La Magia del BIC solo exhibition
Palacio de los Condes de Santa Ana Lucena, Spain
In his annual exhibition with this venue, Pepe Lozano's delicate pen control & painterly attention to detail are apparent in his BIC 'pentings'. (pictured above). *The Ballpointer will feature Pepe Lozano and his artwork in April, 2016.
March 13—Sept 11, 2016 NOW UP
Super Natural solo exhibition
John Michael Kohler Art Center Sheboygan, WI (USA)
Slices of trees, and more, bearing Shane McAdams' genius application of ballpoint ink & resin concoctions (pictured) continue touring the US. More info.