a small assembly of talent

Tilbrigði I, III, & IV – 2006  – Etching, drypoint, chine collé, 50 x 60 cm

Vænting I-III – 2000  – mixed media print, etching, photolitho, painting, collage

Vendipunktar I-V – 2006  – mixed media print, 220 x 93 cm

Eearthsound III – 2002  – Etching, 100 x 70 cm

Vager∂ur Hauksdóttir is a printmaker who resides in Iceland, but works by travelling.  Vager∂ur uses traditional printmaking methods, but not as a means to reproduce the same print over and over.  In fact, her methods don’t allow for reproduction.  She reuses the same variable set of plates and images throughout her entire editions or bodies of work, but in no pattern or specific amount.  While the same image might reappear multiple times within an edition, it’s barely obvious, so we are able to experience the freshness of her work that she experiences while creating it.  She spends time getting to know the images and the processes that she uses, so her abstract perspective is more successful in allowing us to view her work as an experience.  It’s like her work is a testimony for some ongoing research project that she is doing.

Light Horizon, 2008, Oil on linen, 73″ x 119″

Light Before Heat, China, 2004, Oil on Linen, 75″ x 110″

Light in the Woods, 2011, Oil on linen, 72″ x 108″

At the Cincinnati Art Museum in the third floor contemporary art gallery, resides one of April Gornik’s paintings.  It is titled, “Storm Crossing the Desert”.  She painted it in 1983.  It was the first of Gornik’s paintings I’ve ever experienced, and if you’re reading this and haven’t been there to see it, GO.  Her paintings and drawings are populated by trees, boulders, bushes, and water that are all manifested in mountains, prairies, and waterways.  Always there is a strong state of weather – sun shining, rain pouring, dark clouds storming, or moonlight casting.  What I find interesting about her work is the distance she reveals in the places she paints.  These places either seem in far reach physically, but also metaphorically.  I wonder, “WHERE is this?” as if each of them are painted of monumental places.  Of course, this is why it doesn’t matter in the end whether Gornik painted these from a place she has visited, or just a mere place she creates from her mind.  No matter what place she is painting, the images she creates are haunting… but haunting in a good way.  Sometimes, Gornik paints with muted, even almost monochrome, colors. This allows her to emphasize other characteristics of her paintings.  I notice this when I realize that they aren’t as symmetrical or tidy as I first thought.  Gornik puts it “light is the prim mover.”  Well, naturally, she’s absolutely right.

As I was reading about her creative ‘journey’ if you will, I learned that it was after she spent time as a conceptualist that she began painting landscapes – which indeed was way ‘out of fashion’ in that day.   I could see myself being interested in following that same track in the near future.

Peacock | Stuffed Animal skins | 8 ft x 7ft | 2010

No Rain No Rainbows | Stuffed Animal skins |16 ft x 9.5 ft | 2011

Galaxy | Stuffed Animal skins | 6.5 ft x 6.5 ft | 2010

Whew! This woman is cool.  Augustina Woodgate is mostly a sculptor/ installation artist.  Here I’m responding to this particular body of work of hers… her body of work full of large scale drawings made with shapes from cut up stuffed animals.  As I continue to mention in these posts, I investigate largely with the formal creative of sense of space.  When it comes to creating a strong sense of space and depth, Woodgate nails it.   Her ability to know color, it’s saturation, and the values, is brilliant and great to learn from.  The large scale she works with is really interesting.  I imagine her (any artist working in large scale even) having to really move in and out of the piece, towards the piece and away from the piece.  This relationship is communicated to me because my eyes are so easily led in and out and around.  If I were physically able to view these pieces in person, I’d be walking up to them and away from them, and engaging with it in all perspectives.  To top it off, she’s being resourceful by using the skins from pre-used objects.

Cycle, 2008 , Etching on Rives BFK paper,  Two 9” x 9” plates printed on 25” x 14” paper, Edition of 20

So I began interning last week at Clay Street Press for Mark Patsfall.  First job assigned is to work on organizing shelves of art work, which includes pulling the majority of them down to re-wrap, re-label, re-organize, and etc.  A small edition of the many prints I was handling included one of Tim McMichael’s edition of Etchings.  In this particular body of work, McMichael (as he writes) examines overlapping realities and myths of natural systems and human constructs, their psychological impact and enduring power. He also explores the periodical life of maps and their base ability to quantify concepts that are vast and ephemeral. This pursuit includes investigating the emergent qualities of nature and its colonial infrastructures.  The other pieces from the same collection are here .  What he explores is evident throughout the entire body, however naturally I am most intrigued formally.  McMichael puts a great amount of detail into the texture of his shapes. Via line weight and shape size, he manipulates space and depth… which is constantly something I am trying to figure out in my own work.  I think it’s so interesting how he creates these spaces and worlds of shapes.  Barely any form in his compositions are objectively recognizable, but I read them as landscapes of energy.

Heart Axis UV cured inkjet and optichromic and interference ink (silk screened) on to polycarbonate, acrylic stand. – 162cm x 117cm x 75cm

Exhausted Figure Engraved acrylic and fishing wire. 170 x 55 x 35cm

Kiss registration map , Drawing

Kiss registration map, Drawing (detail)

Mariléne Oliver is a printmaker, sculptor, and drawer that lives and works in Brasil.  Initially, I ran across the first of the images above, a three-dimensional sculpture that is constructed from screen-printed sheets of plastic and was so intrigued by the way she displayed dimension of the human figure – an inside-outed dimension of the human figure, actually.  Marilene uses digital data images from medical scans such as CAT scans, MRI scans, etc, to make her work.  Primarily, she commentates on the intimate and romantic relationship she has personally with the human figure, and furthermore how medical imaging alienates us from the bodies that we have.  She believes medical imaging ‘promotes a decentralization of self’ it allows us to project ourselves into different spaces, offering us new views about our selves/ bodies that actually belittle the containment of being in the physical body.  More on her artist statement here: http://www.marileneoliver.com/writings/writsartiststat.html .  Regarding subject matter, design, and form, Marilene’s work appeals to me very strongly, so it’s very easy for me to respond aesthetically to it.  Her three-dimensional forms create such interesting use of space via transparency, translucency, layering, and light.  Even her two-dimensional drawings display an amazing quality of depth even sans color and value.  Marilene really focuses on form to clearly get across how she connects with her work and therefor gives me much to learn from for my own artistic process.

Untitled (ballpoint pen and paper)

Tara Donovan is known of as an installation artists, and that is what she is great at.  I really look to her work when I’m aspiring to work large scale.  From her work, I investigate how she makes use of space, lighting, etc.  I am no longer currently working sculpturally, but the way she forms and uses shape is so complex and interesting and as a drawer I still like to look at her work. In the drawing above, she works with a group mass composition, which successfully makes the shapes and values work together to  create unified shape and form.  It’s got a floating subject, but yet it’s pulled tightly together away from the edges.

Tara Donovan is brilliant.

Light (2007) (painting) (soot, ash, indian yellow, tree resin, egg, paper, silver leaf, gesso, clay bole, animal glue, wood panel)

Irish Black Rainbow (2005-2006) (oyster shell white, slate, henna, ash, silver powder, tin leaf, gesso, clay bole, milk, animal glue, gum arabic, egg yolk and white, paper, mino paper, wood panel)

Shinji Turner Yamamoto is dominantly known for his global tree project, which is what he is working on now.  I love his sculptural stuff, but I also look at his paintings.  I mainly admire his work for two reasons: the wide range of natural materials he uses, and the aspect of his pushing out of the typical rectangular realm of painting.  Shinji is also very strong in display quality.  His primary concepts revolve around the idea of renewal and live.  His titles and works are a bit spiritual for my personal conceptual aesthetic.  Visually speaking, Light definitely interests me, but with Irish Black Rainbow, I really was just interested in the canvas he painted on.  It’s as simple as – both Shinji and I have an extreme interest in nature and organic shapes and materials.  I think learning artists have much to learn from Shinji.  I’m really glad he exhibited in Cincinnati and that our school got to work with him last year.

Invisible Cosmos

Susannah Hays is a working artist in San Fransisco, California, and she is a professor at the Art Institute there.  It’s hard to find a lot of her work, but from what I have seen, I find her stuff to be really interesting.  First of all, I like that I have to wonder about her process.  http://www.susannahhays.com/invisiblecosmos-slideshow-as.html  is a slideshow presentation of her portfolio, which includes images I could not retrieve to post onto here.  She is a book artist, a photographer, and a printmaker.  This piece, “Invisible Cosmos”, is a photograph, and I’m pretty sure the technique is all in the development of the photo.  It’s one of those pieces where the subject is a tug and pull between the image and the medium.  I’m interested in both, but I would have to say the subject matter depends on which end of that spectrum the viewer is more interested in.  It’s a good concept to have when the viewer can make decisions like that in their mind, whether its a subconscious or conscious one.  Also, she works a lot with textures and surfaces of plant life.  I say, rock on, Susannah Hays.  I plan on continuing to research her further, since the resources to do so are not that strong or profuse.

Old Person of Brigg (1988)

Self Portrait

Raymond Gloeckler.  Wow.  All of these are woodblock prints.  As a printmaker (and a huge fan of relief printing), this kind of work amazes me.  I would hope that it would amaze anyone that even only had the slightest idea of relief printing.  This kind of detail is so complex and skillful.  I aspire to be as skillful as Raymond Gloeckler, regardless of how much time it takes.  Aside from the skill that Gloeckler possesses and reveals in his artwork, the expression that comes through his shapes and compositions are so great.  It’s hard to talk about work that I like this much sometimes.  I like how clean the prints are, how clearly we can see the lines and the line weight and technique.  Gloeckler puts himself in his work a lot, which I kind of try to do sometimes as well, even if not self-portraits.  We both work with the figure and printmaking, and so I look to his work a lot when thinking about how to create dimension and surface shape with specific imagery.

A (2002), Etching

Villa Joe, Front View (2005-06), Pencil on Paper

Volume 6 (2007) Pencil on paper

Paul Noble is an architect, a town planner, an archaeologist, a cartographer,a social historian, an activist, a creator, a destroyer, a draftsman, a story teller.  The scenes in Noble’s work are story schemes from his imagination and this kind of work shows me what freedom can be found in art.  He works a lot in large scale, and in detail.  This allows capacity in the eye to see and in the mind to grasp.  This kind of work (imaginative story telling with characters and a setting) is not exactly where my work is going at this point in time, but I fully support the concept.  I’m all about how art can be liberating and freeing for the artist.  In his etching, A, I’m really drawn to it formally before I’m interested in the concept.  The composition is extremely developed with a good balance of layered geometric AND organic shapes.  This is a quality I aspire to put into my own work.