I step from the cool marble lobby of a mid-town office building into the blazing sunlight of a New York City summer afternoon. Glancing left and right in the glare, I accommodate my eyes and my will to the next event on my schedule. In the distance the heat rises from the streets and sidewalks of 5th Avenue in visible waves. A maze of stoplights and brake lights blink back at me. My next meeting is in Queens, across the East River, in a large warehouse, turned artist’s studio. Today, I had planned to go subterranean, taking the ‘4’ down to Grand Central, then transferring to the ’7’ train to Queens. But, the heat and the extra weight in my backpack of a large book given to me at my last meeting prove too much. I step to the curb and raise my hand in that casual pointing-to-the-sky way that New Yorkers do to hail a cab.

Within seconds, a yellow Checker pulls up, just missing my toes. I open the back door, throw my pack onto the seat and crawl in. I lean forward and give the driver the address of my destination. He presses a button or two on his meter and we are off! artes fine arts magazine

I am separated from the front seat and the driver by the customary plastic divider, with a small rectangular window in the center. The passenger space is festooned with all the information I should ever need to know about rates, liability and precautions…with my safety in mind, of course. The irony of this strikes me as the driver reaches speeds of close to sixty between stops—and in heavy traffic. His favorite toy seems to be his horn and the sides of his vehicle appear to come dangerously close to brushing both pedestrians and other encroaching vehicles off the road as we speed south to the Queensboro Bridge. I sit rod-stiff, gripping my pack and staring at the side of the driver’s head, trying my best to telepathically communicate the message: “Slow down. I want to live!”

“Are you English?” he suddenly says, in fractured English.

“Excuse me, did you ask me a question? I say, having heard the inquiry, but being momentarily disarmed by how this man can manage to initiate a discussion when I believe he should be using all of his mental faculties to win at the game of “Chicken” he is playing with the other cab drivers on Lexington Avenue.

“Are you English?” he repeats

“Uh…no, American. Why do you ask?”

“I think you sound English when you tell me where you are going. I am in America for six months and I try to learn the difference. Where I am from, you are all English.”

I now dare to drop my eyes from the windshield re-enactment of Bullitt and Steve McQueen’s high speed chase through the streets of San Francisco, to glance at the picture and name on the license posted in a frame on the back of the driver’s seat. In his photograph, he is dark skinned, with a shock of disorderly black hair and dark eyes. I catch his first name as Adam…last name unintelligible.

“Are you Israeli? I ask, using all of my deductive skills to decipher the word, a-dam, meaning ‘first man’ in Hebrew and draw an immediate conclusion from this bit of trivia. I am also trying to pigeonhole the possible ethnic origins of this nascent conversationalist, as he grips the steering wheel of our bright-yellow death wagon. To my chagrin, his eyes are now cast in my general direction, as we careen down 59th Street.

“No, I am Palestinian, from West Bank. I live with my brother’s family in Astoria. Big Arab neighborhood there. Why do you think I am a Jew?”

“Because of your name, ‘Adam’. That is a common name for Jewish men,” I say, trying to rescue my erudition and keep from being dumped into the East River, as we now cross the bridge and I glance through the back window at the Manhattan skyline falling away—hopefully not, in my case, for the last time.

“It is Arab name, too. We both have Adam in our religion. Do you like politics?” he asks, as though trying to spare me the embarrassment I already felt. “I am glad Bush is gone,” he adds, not waiting for an answer to his question. “He hated Palestinians and Sadat. He made nice to Sadat in front of cameras, but he was really a Jew lover.”

“I didn’t like Bush either,” I say, trying to win this man’s loyalty back and talk my way out of a possible hostage-for-cash situation, as I imagine myself missing the upcoming meeting and find myself, instead, bound and gagged in some darkened back room in his brother’s house. “But I think everyone wants peace in the Middle East. It’s just very hard to figure out how to do it so both sides get what they want.”

“We stand a better chance with Obama,” Adam says, “He’s Arab, too, so he is on our side.”

“Adam,” I say, reflexively leaning forward to engage him, knowing full well that I might be throwing my tenuous grasp on my own safety out the window, “Obama is an American. That has been proven time and time again. His interests are exactly the same as yours and mine. He just wants this big problem to be fixed.” I hesitate for a moment then shift the focus away from this no-win situation. “You’ve been here for six months. Did you come to be with your family?”

“I stay with my brother while I am here for two years to make money. My wife and kids are back home. My son is smart and he wants to go to American college to be engineer. The only way we can do that if I work here to send money home. Then, my son comes to U.S. for school. My son is very smart…not like his father.”

“I think you’re smart for having a plan and carrying it out. You must miss your family,” I say, relaxing a bit now that we have diffused the situation and found some common ground. “And you get to see your brother a lot,” I add.

The cab moves out of heavy stop-and-go traffic on the bridge and into the borough of Queens. A jumble of small retail shops, warehouses and poorly-parked trucks covered with graffiti line the narrow side streets that Adam takes, in a zigzag route to my destination. He drives with the confidence of someone who is in familiar territory and I ask him if his family lives nearby.

“Yes, just a few blocks for here, he replies. Then he adds, almost as a random afterthought, “Do you know why the Jews don’t eat pork?”

“Why? “I ask, watching the meter tick off the dollars and wondering if I won’t have to pay if I suddenly disappear down a dark alley and into the back of a waiting van, the cold steel floor against my cheek as I am rushed out of the city to an unceremonious encounter with a New Jersey backwater landfill.

“Because,” Adam carefully explains, “when God made the world, he put lots of animals here, including pigs. The pigs grew so fast that there were too many of them. So when God decided to add people, he turned some of the pigs into Jews. That is why Jews don’t eat pork. They would be eating their relatives.”

I sit dumbfounded by this logic, my mouth agape in disbelief. I weigh the odds of my safe arrival at my destination against the need to speak out once more against this astounding explanation. I, of course, cast safety to the wind and respond, “Adam, that is the most preposterous thing I have ever heard! You brag about your intelligent son and how you want him to come to school in the U.S. Does he believe this, too? Did you teach him this nonsense?”

“All Arabs believe this. The kids have their own ideas, but my generation has many stories about why the Jews are the way they are.”

“And you think there can be peace in Palestine if people keep thinking like this?” I ask.

“The Koran teaches these things and it is not our place to question it. God will decide who will win.”

“Adam, God has nothing to do with this. It’s about people like Obama, Netanyahu and the Palestinian Authority who will solve this problem. Hamas needs to stop shooting mortars into Israel and Israel should stop expanding settlements on the West Bank for any of this to work out. But nothing positive can ever happen if you keep talking this nonsense about the Jews and pigs!

I am angry now and disbelieving that I am having a heated debate with a cab driver about an issue that I had never given much thought to. I am leaning forward, close to the tiny window separating us, eager to engage the discussion. Adam has now turned in his seat and is smiling back at me. “We’re here,” he says.

I look around in disbelief. The yellow death mobile is parked in front of a towering warehouse on a deeply-shadowed side street, far from the hustle of Queens’ main thoroughfares. It appears, after all, that I might live to tell the tale.

“Thank you,” I say, “I hope I didn’t offend you.”

“In our country we talk like this all the time,” Adam says. “It is good to have these debates. I like that you say what you feel.”

I open the door, grateful to have solid ground under my feet. I reach for my pack and pay my fare through the open side window of the cab. As I turn to go, surveying my isolated surroundings, I turn back to the cab as Adam is making a note on a clip board propped against the steering wheel. “Adam, my meeting will take about an hour. Do you think you could work the streets of Queens for a while and pick me up here for the ride back to Grand Central?”

Adam reaches to his dashboard for a business card and scribbles his cell phone number on the back. “Call me five minutes before you are ready to leave and I will be here for you.”

Later, when I emerge from my meeting, having followed his instructions, the shiny yellow cab sits idling, a sunny beacon in the dull gray surrounding of this warehouse district. Adam is behind the wheel and has someone else with him in the front seat (takes two to drag a body, I briefly consider). I open the back door to toss my back pack in, only to find a flat white object, about the size of a shirt box, sitting in my place on the seat. Cautiously, I move it aside, listening for a tell-tale tick-tock-tick-tock and climb in.

Adam turns to me and says, “This is my nephew, Shamir. He is my brother’s son and he goes to school here in Queens. I wanted him to meet you.”

I extend my reach through the small window to introduce myself. A broad-faced boy, with apple-red cheeks and widely-set, black eyes, Shamir shakes my hand and offers me a demurring smile, eyes slightly downcast. As we speak, the cab slowly pulls away.

“Shamir is going to go to college too,” Adam says as he guides the cab, more cautiously this time, toward Queens Boulevard. “I went to the house to get him because I want him to meet a smart American man and to know that he could be that also.” He looks at Shamir for signs of recognition for the importance of this message. Shamir now trains his dark eyes on me, but says nothing.

“Thank you, Adam,” I say. “I take that as a good sign,” hinting at our previous debate.

“And box in the back seat…that is for you.”

I reach for the small box and am surprised by its heft. Given its size, I can’t imagine what might be inside that could weigh this much and still not be life-threatening. I carefully open the top to discover an assortment of rich, honey and almond-soaked deserts, in neat rows. There is a well-ordered line of triangle-cut baklava, honey oozing from the sides; six glazed brown cookies with a toasted almond pressed into the center of each and a third row of flaky-crusted rolled creations, a creamed confection spilling out of each end. All sit on neatly-arrayed, pierced paper doilies, evoking an image of a family dinner table presentation from another, slower-paced world.

“My God, Adam, what is this?” I say in utter disbelief.

It’s from my brother’s bakery, he announces proudly. “I want you to have a taste of my homeland and to remember our talk. Take them with you on the train and share them with your family at home.”

I thank him profusely and we talk eagerly about his son and wife and family back home. We avoid politics. Shamir sits quietly and attentively, not missing a word, appearing proud to be in his uncle’s cab on such an important occasion.

We get to the station in good time, the majority of traffic flowing out of the city as we drive in-town, late in the day. On 42nd Street, Adam pulls over to the curb near the station entrance. I lean forward through the window to shake his hand in thanks and farewell and to say goodbye to Shamir, as well. I gather up my possessions, including my gift, nudge the door open with my foot and turn my attention back to the tiny window.

“How much do I owe you?” I ask.

“Nothing,” Adam said. “My compliments.”

The idea behind a work of art has always fascinated me—in the best sense of the word you could call it propaganda, though artists prefer to call it their vision. As an avid consumer of art, I want more than what’s just in front of me. I want the mechanics of art, the living innards, be it a painting, a book, a movie, or a play, to turn me every way but loose, to wake me from the dead, to hold me captive, to lift me to the next plateau, to enlarge me as a human being. Like Poe’s Annabel Lee, I want winged seraphs to whisk me away to heaven. A good work of art attempts to do that. A true masterpiece, to use an overworked and frequently misapplied word, does just that. Here—shades of Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary, c’est moi”—there is an infusive, god-like bonding between the art and the viewer, and in no small way the artist, where all become one. The lucky ones get to take this epiphany home with them, and like the very best of marriages, continue the conversation.

The special section, Complex, But Not Complicated, in NY Arts’ fall issue is about the ideas, and ultimately the structure behind the work of 12 artists, none two exactly alike. I have selected artists whose work, from first viewing, caught me off guard, and pierced my very armor. I asked each artist to supply the text—using their own words— to explain the ideas behind their work, be it about their specific work or works on the page, or their overall aesthetic. The reader should bear in mind, as is the case with many artists: the artists in this section are not tethered to the one medium on display. In fact, most of the painters can sculpt, and most of the sculptors and conceptual artists can draw as well as paint. It is particularly enlightening to reflect on how each artist’s ideas, some subtle, some not so, work their magic.

The age of the artists in this mix ranges from early 30s to late 60s. Added up, there are some 500-plus years of experience. A few of the artists are represented by a gal¬lery; most are not. One could say that their place in the art world, if one wants to count the number of years they’ve been on the scene, varies from the near-, and continually emerging, to that of a grand master, a painter’s painter, if you will. Nearly half—Judi Harvest, Lori Nelson, Carol Salmanson, Gae Savannah, and EJay Weiss—live and work, and in some cases teach, in and around New York City. The other six, many of whom exhibit internationally, live abroad. Derek Besant and Steve Rockwell are from Canada. Anne Ferrer is from France. Helga Griffiths is from Germany. And Resi Girardello and Barbara Taboni, Italy. Last but not least, adding a welcome bit of country flavor and Southern hospitality is Bristol, Tennessee’s own Val Lyle. I hope that readers enjoy this section as much as I enjoyed assembling it. For me it was an act of love.

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Steve Rockwell, The Steve Rockwell Sandwich, 1989. Photo credit: Skip Dean. Courtesy of the artist.

Making a Meal Out of a Cubist Still Life

Steve Rockwell

“There has been nothing new in art since 1915” was something that I blurted out to an art professor 21 years ago at a party. It turned out to be an awkward conversation stopper, and obviously untrue in terms of art history. I was only trying to get across that the seeds of most of the art that followed had already been sown by then. Personally, the notion has proven to be a nugget of nutrients when it came to panning ideas. Collage elements in a typical Cubist still life from the year 1912, not only banished illusionism, but made it possible to view the painting and its components as concrete objects. By serving an actual sandwich as art, as I first did in 1989, the object was consumed and ingested as well as viewed.

In a recent show, I embedded Dutch Panter cigar tins, clear Cuban cigar tubes, food lids, and a wine cork into mahogany supports. My focus had been various forms of human consumption, in this case eating, drinking, and smoking. Frequent subjects of early Cubist works were pipes, wine bottles, playing cards, and fragments of daily newspapers. A popular inclusion was the word “journal,” which could be variously sliced into “jour” and “jou,” day and play respectively in English. “Journal” and “jou” happens to be other Cubist elements that I have “actualized” in my work. The journal is dArt International magazine, which I released in Los Angeles in 1998, and continues to be served. “Jou” refers to Color Match Game, which was created in 1987 and continues to be played in tournaments across North America. One could say that the bulk of my work may be apprehended through reading, eating, and playing. 

www.steverockwellart.com

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Anne Ferrer, Tunnel of Love, 2006, Ripstop fabric, fans, 12'x20'x18'. Install. Musee d'art Moderne Centre Pompidou, Paris. Court. the artist

A Billowing of Beauty

“I restrict the form with the stitches and seams, so that they will become intricate organisms as the pieces balloon.” -Anne Ferrer

I have the desire to achieve in my sculpture an accessible, spontaneous experience for the viewer that is bold, exuberant, swollen, but also exquisitely delicate and smart. I combine two mediums that seem to naturally accomplish this best: air and lightweight colorful fabric. I restrict the form with the stitches and seams, so that they will become intricate organisms as the pieces balloon. I use this unexpected alchemy to achieve beauty, through a sensual lightness and a bold presence, all the while, smiling at what Parisians breathe. It is an “Air de Paris” filled with fashion, seduction, appearance, futility, irreverence, and humor. This “souffle,” impulsion of freedom is inspired by the energy and boldness I discovered and loved in American art while I was an art student at Yale in the 80s. I earned my MFA there in 1988. American art critic, Julie Johnson, writes that this work is “light, air-filled, and sewn of hot colorful fabric. The sculptures are luscious, ripe, and over-the-top. With time, they have expanded to take over the entire space, crowding up to the walls. Some have been edible collaborations with pastry chefs, and lately some are created with perfumists as well as composers. They are a feast for the senses, a visual ravishment. Like the original Gargantua, who was born from a feast of tripe in a delicious garden, the work was born from associations with delicious consumption, beauty, and sexuality, but also from the world’s aggressive or violent associations. This is the line where pleasure and the disgust of over-consumption meet.” I want my work to be totally vain and essential.

www.anneferrer.com

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Carol Salmanson, Diaphany, 2008. Installation, Mixed Greens Gallery, NY. LEDs, fluorescents, gel filters, aluminum frame, 3 windows, 111”x 80”, 80”x 31” & 80”x 53”. Courtesy, the artist.

A Lighted Conversion

Carol Salmanson

I started working with light so that I could take the spatial and color concerns of my painting into a different realm. By developing a vocabulary of various lighting technologies, reflective materials, and structures, I’ve created works that fully activate their surrounding areas. I focus on both object and space, exploiting walls and other surfaces, as well as the work’s surroundings.

My window installation, Diaphany, at Mixed Greens Gallery in New York in the winter of 2008-2009, used the building’s architecture as its starting point. It incorporated the windows’ mullions, sills, and fire escape into its geometry. A total of 2,642 LEDs joined with the hard edges and soft blends of gel filters to change the experience of the urban street.

The wall piece, Luminous Layers, uses different colors of LEDs beamed through prism rods for a jewel-like effect. They are nestled into angled stainless steel to create multiple reflections. These three pieces work together to amplify each other’s effects and create a warm, inviting sensation from what should be a cold, sterile material.

My most recent work, All That’s Left, was shown last winter at the East/West Project in Berlin. It consisted of ten boxes with LEDs embedded into reflective sheeting and backlit with white light, to depict brick fragments. They transformed the heavy feeling of salvaged masonry into an evocative, ethereal experience.

All of my work is about the unspoken intricacies of human interaction, which I learned to observe to compensate for a hereditary hearing problem. Like the best theater, which captures hidden dynamics to go beyond words, the work explores the energy in subconscious perceptions and calculations, the things you see and know without realizing it. Information intersects with emotions to create a specific kind of knowledge that is nonverbal, precise, and intense.

www.carolsalmanson.com

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Helga Griffiths, Wavespace, 2009. Wire net support, 4000 blue light-emitting diodes, control units, computer with dedicated software, thermo sensors, wave sensor, mobile data transmission 8 active loudspeakers, sound (percussion), thermo sensors, 22.5 x 1 x 5 meters. Courtesy of the artist.

Waves of Influence

Helga Griffiths

I work with scientific data to test and reshape perceptions of everyday phenomena by presenting them in unfamiliar ways and contexts. Perceptual forms are interchanged and complex codes created, often beginning with the deconstruction of the familiar to open up new avenues of reception. Our confidence in familiar sensory perception is shaken, and an experiential space is created in which emotions, memories, and associations can grow and move freely. This can develop into a play between proximity and distance, for example, by having information that we normally receive only through touching an object suddenly perceived remotely through our senses of sight or hearing. The information is received through a completely different channel from what we are used to. My recent installation Wavespace is an example of this technique. This multisensory installation combines light and sound elements in novel ways to recreate the experience of weather and the sea in the exhibition space.

Weather and climate are complex, chaotic phenomena. We humans are exposed to the weather and respond to it on an individual level. We might feel the rain or snow on our skin, but we do not fully comprehend the complex mechanisms that cause the drop or the snowflake to fall just then and there. Our ability to predict future atmospheric events is also quite general and limited to short intervals of time and space. We influence the climate with our behavior and actions, but we are not in total control of the complex climate.

For this specific project, I gathered data on extreme weather events measured over a period of 100 years, a period longer than my own lifespan, and transformed it into an abstract and imaginative interpretation that could be experienced through light and sound elements. The historical data were augmented by real-time data from a wave sensor located in the nearby sea and thermal detectors that sense the presence of visitors in the exhibition space. Information about events remote in time and space can thus be experienced with different senses in this walk-through installation, where they are perceived as constantly changing waves of blue LED light and sound moving through the exhibition space. For the acoustic element of the installation, of which the importance is at least equal to that of the visual aspect, I avoided naturalistic sounds for the most part, in favor of sounds created with a wide range of percussive instruments.

The thermo sensors in the exhibition space itself detect heat radiated by visitors, providing information that is used to modify the sounds and light patterns, so that visitors experience direct interaction with the installation, a microclimatic analogy to man’s influence on world climate. In this constantly changing atmosphere of sound and light, participants can experience the fragility of their environment in relation to their own presence in space. The juxtaposition of historical weather data with real-time information provokes a reassessment of one’s own position on the climate timeline, and provides an effective counterpoint to conventional perceptions of weather and the sea.

www.helgagriffiths.de

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Barbara Taboni, Portland, 2009. Iron, concrete, video with sound, endless loop, variable dimensions. Courtesy of the artist

Concrete Meanderings

Barbara Taboni

In this age we are often surrounded by concrete, and in most cities you will find concrete areas in the process of construction. The name of the cement widely used in the world is Portland, hence the title of my work. The elements of iron scaffolding, used on construction sites and rusted by time, give me the chance to build a strong geometry, made up of the relations of forces calculated to the millimeter. This architecture allows the viewer to enter and walk in the workspace and engage with it. Parts of the human body in white concrete are placed under scaffolding; its disaggregation is symbolic: spiritual, cultural, social, and political.

These act as a base to the whole structure. As in Gothic cathedrals, there are figures that support the building, which become its points of strength. The human body always accompanies my imagination. In Portland, it functions as a mirror; it forces you to ask questions. Mankind is called to support a tottering age, balancing its relationship with the universe. The video is visually a uterus, a concrete mixer that mixes the raw materials. The cement turns inside the machine, which acts as a sound box, accompanying the exhibition with a soundtrack similar to a mantra that covers any other noise, canceling any distractions. Now you’re inside of Portland, which requires thought to be present. I chose to do a loop; the repetition is a character I have been experimenting. It is a circular rhythm, like all rituals. The small screen on the ground, with light and sound, is the beating heart of the installation. The goal of my work is to open questions, at times ironic, at times dramatic. This is what the artist can do; the answers come from the viewers.

www.barbarataboni.carbonmade.com

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Lori Nelson, First Day on the Job, 2009. Oil on panel, 12” x 12”. Courtesy of the artist.

Drawing Near by Drawing Far

“I paint people in their distant mode, complex, ready for some undefined or internal episode, but still far enough away to be generalized.” -Lori Nelson

The thing to do when looking at a city is try to not look closely or sharply at the city. Look blurrily and let the shapes mass. Sometimes you’ll get the opportunity to be above the city while at the same time remaining within the city. You will be on the rooftop of a building (a friend has a key) looking around and down, laughing and joking about falling accidentally, dropping your phone, or spitting. Not from an airplane, but from this high building, you may possibly understand for a maddeningly slippery moment that the city is only one entity, a mass, a single body, breathing and solid, complex, but not complicated from this vantage where the details recede enough to unify the pieces. If you can stop talking for about a minute, you’ll understand that the city is really only just one massive thing and the many busy pieces that make it up will seem hard to grasp, though you know they do exist.

www.lorinelson.com

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Gae Savannah, Rhydal (detail), 2010. Sequins, vinyl, garland, steel, 70"x19"x13". Courtesy of Rupert Ravens Contemporary, Newark, NJ.

Blinding Glitz

“Glamour Trance freezes time and stunts emotional development, yet supremely entertains, quixotic escapism. All the same, behind the puerile myopia, irony lurks.” -Gae Savannah

Rhydal, seen here in detail, speaks to Glamour Trance. 21st-century Americans court oblivion in shopping, fundamentalism, hegemony, pedigree, capitalism, sugar, and fashion. The list is long. Calling to mind the protagonists of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels or Rita Hayworth in the film Gilda, the sculpture’s hypnotic sizzle is intoxicat¬ing. Glamour Trance freezes time and stunts emotional development, yet supremely entertains, quixotic escapism. All the same, behind the puerile myopia, irony lurks. We turn a blind eye to our culture’s scourges: droning slaughter and daily torture of gentle farm animals. While ultimately Fitzgerald left the city of illusion, New York, many of us continue to eat at the trough of la-la, celebrity glitz.

www.gaesavannah.com

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Val Lyle, Fetus, 2008. Cockleburs (burdock), 19”x 30”x 16”. Courtesy of the artist.

Scraps of Appalachia

“ … I use common burdock and cockleburs to create sculptures that point out the various elephants in the living rooms of our country without taking sides.” -Val Lyle

Appalachia has been the smoky base flavor of my work even as I’ve lived in New York City, Florida, Hawaii, and Arizona. Living now in my family hometown in Bristol, Tennessee, I look to my roots directly. I am troubled by the artistic gentrification that would rob me of a heritage. Because I’ve come to think that a voice with a clear sense of heritage and place is the freshest voice in contemporary art, I address global issues through an Appalachian lens, and interpret rural Appalachia with a contemporary eye.

My current immersion installation focuses on the vanishing wooden barn, with large-scale paintings of interior and exterior views rendered in a contemporary, cropped, and abstracted style alongside drying tobacco, hay bales, and farm tools. Eight-foot-tall figurative rope sculptures stand next to their humble inspiration, a strand of bailing twine. Giant projections of barn imagery loop to live, old-time music. The strong play between positive and negative space carries through the individual artworks and the exhibition itself. Viewers spontaneously crawl through hay tunnels and gush their own “barn” stories brought to life by familiar scents. The interiors become a vehicle for embracing the vulnerable child that we all once were. The barn exteriors acknowledge the inevitable loss of innocence and time that occurs so naturally. Light shining through board slats becomes saturated with meanings.

Arte Povera could be applied to much of my current work, for I use rope, burdock, and other discarded materials. But making art out of common stuff comes naturally to me, perhaps from a tradition steeped in “making do,” a way of life in Appalachia, where both materials and means are scarce. I continue to use all appropriate media to execute a visual and physical artistic concept. With a nod to Merritt Oppenheim’s fur-covered teacup, and a humorous wink in the title The Sticky Subjects series, I use common burdock and cockleburs to create sculptures that point out the various elephants in the living rooms of our country without taking sides. A tea service titled Tea Time for Darfur references Great Britain’s role and the world’s non-action in the staggering number of deaths in Sudan. In this day of Octomoms, loving couples without children, and unplanned marriages due to pregnancy, the Cocklebur Fetus is hope and fear made visible. A life-size ‘M16′ needs little explanation in burdock. The series continues to grow. So does the burdock.

www.VGLyle.com

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Derek Michael Besant, I Am the River project, 2010. Temporary public art installations; digital vinyl banner on city construction site, 40’x50’. Courtesy, the artist.

A Fluid Display for the Masses

“I learned long ago, that work inside a gallery or museum was quite something else when you attempted to integrate it into the reality of urban settings.” -Derek Michael Besant

At one point I asked myself, if the human body is 90-percent water, then what makes up the other ten percent? This question started me photographing people I knew in stages of submerging in and out of water. I’ve often used my friends as models in my experiments, so they are cautious when I make any request for them to participate in one of my art projects. I even have an exhibition of this work, reconstructed as photo-based images, printed larger-than-life scale by thermal transfer into veil scrims. The veil material I work with has a sheen to it that acts like water tension or refraction on its surface, and the veil moving slightly on a wall when a person passes near it, gives another presence that a viewer might take more time to look at out of the corner of an eye.

Water. Something we can drink, bathe in, or swim through. The element that freezes solid, falls through our fin¬gers like sand, or is sometimes used to baptize the faithful. I have always been drawn to the fact that it can obliterate one’s vision or clarify the suspension of a body, like floating in air in slow motion. It is akin to a lens of sorts. Something to look through…

I read somewhere that British filmmaker Peter Greenaway always mentioned that the minute one discusses water, there is the possibility of drowning. And that has surfaced as a discussion every time I exhibit a full exhibition of this work in a museum. But the other relationships arise as far as the Pre-Raphaelite painters’ obsessions with classical themes, such as Ophelia. I think there will always be lines drawn between similar subjects, themes crossed among the trodden route, and attempts to define water in some rituals that deal with cleansing, healing, or washing away of something to oblivion. In my case, I tend to follow an idea that takes me to new ways of looking at things I thought I knew about.

I learned long ago, that work inside a gallery or museum was quite something else when you attempted to integrate it into the reality of urban settings. So, I started observing how signage functioned outdoors. This led me to the billboard industry, where I still do much of my research. New technologies have yielded incredible materials and ways to build work for settings where they operate differently. For instance, I can plan a series of images of people underwater that arrive on construction site scaffolds for a week or less. Images 30 feet by 30 feet across a building façade not only create an opportunity to consider scale, materials, and methods, but also how imagery reads as art rather than advertising.

One of my upcoming projects with water as subject matter will involve installing 100 images of submerged people that wrap onto buses and subway trains, like an outdoor museum exhibition in motion around a city. The technology for this is changing as rapidly as computer programs do, so I wait to output imagery until the last moment, to capitalize on the latest applications. The audience captured by this act is much larger than the audience who would normally see my work in a museum space. There is also the surprise encounter in the traffic. Watch the bus next time. It might be one of my works going by.

www.derekbesant.com

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Resi Girardello, Rococò Conversations, 2010. Copper wire, metal nets. Installation on Costa Deliziosa Cruise Ship, curated by Casa¬grande & Recalcati. Photo: Cristian Zambelli. Courtesy of the artist.

Everything Is Vanity

Resi Girardello

Water, for me, is a place to research. Primordial water is the birthplace of works of art. Everything originated from small organisms that float in the waters, which were once transformed, not only in our imagination, into fantastic beings, like seductive sirens. Tenuous forms come to life through light, and suggest shapes through their absence. In my works—works built with ancient constructive techniques, but talking of the modern condition—the theme is the shell, the being in its appearance, sometimes without a real presence, in a society in which empty appearances scare us. The frame is real; the content evolves and escapes. To construct shells of magical moments, sirens remain floating shells, tiny primordial beings magnified and revealed in their structures that guard the secrets of futuristic architecture. These shells with the worthy attributes of mythical goddesses of the past—small figures of small worlds, past or here—are meaningful and full of personality. Sometimes my intricately woven “costumed” shells appear on dishes, as if they could be consumed in an ironic dinner. Another theme finds them swinging on swings, as in the mythical Rococo era, when elegance and delicacy were the main themes of art. The swing series focuses on elusive and non-existent women, as if to find that steady archetype of femininity that only our grandmothers could have, and that, despite the emancipation of the contemporary, sometimes is looked at with longing by those who seek their true identity. The reality is revealed in its reflection: elusive as love, which is the engine of the world … yet fleeting and ephemeral as the pleasure of swinging on a swing. Today in Berlin it’s raining outside, but my characters have escaped. I know they want to walk over the rainbow.

www.resigirardello.com

* * *

The Bee’s Omen

“Soon after I was building beehives in my studio, one cell at a time, just as the honeybee does.” -Judi Harvest

When I saw that Einstein had said, “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination … no more men,” I began researching Colony Collapse Disorder, a recent worldwide phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or honey bee colony abruptly disappear, leading to the death of the hive. Soon after I was building beehives in my studio, one cell at a time, just as the honeybee does.

Illustration, left:

Judi Harvest, Monumental Bee Hive, 2008-09. Porcelain, beeswax, gold leaf, resin, wire, collage materials, light, and sound, 80 x 50 x 32 inches. Photo credit: James Dee. Courtesy of the artist.

www.judiharvest.com

* * *

EJay Weiss, Seascape with Venus Comb Murex, 2010. Acrylic/canvas, 64”x62”. Courtesy, the artist.

Escaping Measures

EJay Weiss

I am compelled to explore the bounded, yet infinite depth of the picture plane. I find the territory within the second dimension to be paradoxical, especially since paint is just a physical substance without form. The same set of physical forces that holds paint to the canvas also binds us to the planet, and gives movement to the tectonic plates that formed the continents. In a painting, there is an added dimension of timelessness. By definition, the second dimension is timeless, having height and width, but no real physical depth. Painting tends to be illusory, relatively free of time and distance. Without distance, there can be no time, only the now. Einstein pointed out space/time bends and is a continuum. Time requires fixing a point in space, in order to measure it. Where we “enter” or “exit” a painting is relative, as we tend to see a painting at once, as a singularity, or as a unified field.

Painting represents a multilayered process of viewing inward, outward, or otherwise. The metaphysics of this process substantiates the visual poetry that results in all great painting, no matter what period or style of painting we are referring to. Some 35,000 years ago the Paleolithic cave painters of Lascaux, France, produced masterpieces that rival Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling in imagination, breadth of imagery, form, and color.

What unfolds within the field of the painting provides a mirror to nature, which we didn’t create. But we do create art to reflect both nature and ourselves. My paintings express what is a seemingly natural and organic order. The canvas provides me with a grounded space in which an evolutionary process in paint occurs. What evolves is the geological structure of the painting itself, as an event, which tends to bend and transcend the visual limits of time and space back into its original matrix. Each painting evolves in its own spatial dimension, a bounded and infinite reflection of the way our own world is paradoxical: com¬plete, beautiful, harmonious, yet continuously unfolding before us. These recent seascapes exemplify the process I have outlined here.

weissejay@netzero.net

* * *

This article appears courtesy of NY Arts Magazine and will be appearing in their October 2010 issue. Visit them at www.nyartsmagazine.com

notations sequence 5 (2009) Viscosity print, 22"x15"

  An industrial park is not a likely spot to discover passion, at least not the kind we report on in ARTES e-Magazine. But, the big, black SUV in the parking lot means that the ‘artist is in the house’. Print maker, Roxanne Faber Savage approaches her task with a particular passion that makes the process of creating art look both deliberative and revelatory at the same time. Roxanne is fast becoming a master of the trade, but allows herself to be surprised by the process of print making each day. This trait serves as a critic’s marker for what expertise in any creative endeavor should be all about: allowing for the element of surprise in a medium that an artist has come to know well.     

Blue Bird Box (2007) Paper lithograph, 30"x 22"

I met Roxanne here at her studio on a day when she brings her newest work together to review and consider the possibilities going forward. Prints are pinned to the walls and scattered on the floor like so many designer’s samples—each waiting its turn to be evaluated, scrutinized, critiqued and sometimes even put away for a while. Savage’s print-making style is evolutionary, where she learns from her failures as well as her successes. I watch as she sits on the concrete floor of her studio, a recently-produced piece in her hands. Sometimes the answer she seeks is clear, sometimes not immediately so. But, each work serves as a step on her journey.    

 A fair inquiry might be: Where is this journey taking us? Knowing the artist, I posed the question surmising already what the answer might be. “I let the work drive the creative process,” Roxanne explains. “This is a very tactile experience for me. I love the feel of the materials—the papers and inks. I never know where I might end up, but I let the materials I’m working with direct the outcome. Then, it’s my task to decide whether I like where we’ve arrived together.” The result is a range of deeply symbolic images linked by the common elements of inspiration from nature, graphic intensity and a personal desire to achieve visceral impact through her work.    

 Working in studios in both Connecticut (Center for Contemporary Print Making, Norwalk) and New York City (Kathy Caraccio Print Studio) and using time-tested print-making techniques that are as old as print making itself, as well as mixed media, Savage describes her work as, “feeling-based”. “I animate the materials and let them speak to me. I want the process to do what it wants to do. When ink escapes the lines or the application goes in a direction I hadn’t planned, that’s when the process becomes interesting to me. I have learned to expect the unexpected and allow that serendipitous outcome to inform me as an artist,” Savage says.    

 “I don’t need clarity when I approach a subject,” Savage explains. “I am much more excited about the unknown.” This sense of working within the margins of the unexpected has an historical foundation with other great printmakers. Abstract Expressionism ushered in a new generation of American artists, like Rauschenberg, Warhol and contemporary artist, David Salle, all of whom valued the accidental effects that the printing process could create. Picasso, too, relied on the whimsy of the printer’s press to create second and third state images that took on a life of their own.    

Half & Half, Quattro (2008) carbondum intaglio with mixed media, 22" x 22"

 Savage’s work appears to follow the subtle influences of seasonal change in New England. “In winter, when the trees are bare of leaves, the moon and sky are on my mind. Because of the dark and cold, these natural elements gain primacy in ways that they wouldn’t at another time of the year,” she explains. “Much to the chagrin of my kids, I will sometimes suddenly pull off the road and stop the car to take in some scene or spectacle of nature that others may just drive by.” Her Moon Project is the result of this kind of observation of nature. The resulting images are abstracted, interpretive and haunting. Phases of a blue-gray orb hang suspended, often repeating in slightly different iterations, offering a fourth dimension to the work—the implied passage of time. Multi-layered and enigmatic, her moon series offers that same sense of mystery that has bridled man’s imagination about our closest celestial neighbor since our earliest awareness of the surrounding universe. As is the case with, Half and Half Quattro (2009), Savage may enhance the image by drawing directly on the print. “For me, the figure of the moon carries with it a primal sense of wonder. Spontaneously adding to this piece, as it went to press, allowed me to add a sense of wonder and surprise that adds contextual meaning and a level of complexity that I am after in all the work I do,” she says.    

Heaven's Powerlines, Your Bird Can Sing (2008). Paper lithograph with monoprint, 22"x 28"

 Another motif that finds traction in Savage’s work is her Heaven’s Power Lines Series. “Objectivity doesn’t really interest me,” she says. “The symbolism or synthesis of an object is what matters.” For Savage, the bird and cloud-filled skies in her work provide a glimpse of the spiritual unknown that may lie beyond. But, for the earth-bound viewer, an array of birds, neatly ordered on power lines, reminiscent of the choir of angels hovering in Michael Damaskenos’ late 16th century depiction of The Adoration of the Magi , symbolize a gathering force of nature that lies just beyond our reach or ability to fully understand. Telephone wires are strung between poles that tilt at vertiginous angles into the scene—like primitive snares designed to capture, or at least converse, with these elusive free spirits.    

Girdles (2007), paper lithograph

 Savage’s Yin for this particular Yang is her Bird Cage Series. Heavily barred and absent any doors, these ominously-formed confinement devices are apparently over-engineered for their assigned task. Here, Savage might have us believe that containing the spirit symbolized by her birds-in-flight will be no easy task. Confinement is a theme that repeats itself in her oeuvre and serves as one of many ideographs for principle themes in her life and her print making. Topics like freedom, confinement, death and mortality, sex and intimacy and rebirth all find their way into much of her work, at present. “These are issues that matter to me. “I represent them symbolically in my work,” she says. “But when they leave my hands, the interpretation belongs to the viewer.” Savage explores the boundaries between science, literature and theology in her work and each piece is layered in meaning, not only symbolized by the images themselves, but by the extensive working and re-working of the matrix surface itself. Here, content, form and process combine to produce a complex and thought-provoking result.    

Red Box No.1 (2009), lithograph, 22"x 15"

 The Red Box Series is one such example. A fundamental shape in the everyday world (and, ironically, a starting point for every new art student), Savage treats the basic cube with the same desire to interpret anew and then reinterpret again, this most basic of forms! Her red boxes are attempting to escape their own limits—their own ‘boxness’—to become something else (or something more?). As if repetition will provide some different result, Savage’s boxes reconfigure themselves in illogical planes, teasing out nuances of shading, angularity and mass only, in the end, to remain…a box. Much like Beethoven’s Thirty-Two Variations in C minor, for piano, we watch (listen!) as the artist addresses a central theme time-and-again, each version providing new ways of considering the central motif.    

 In similar ways, all of Savage’s images seem to animate themselves for the viewer, as we vicariously participate in this process of  Darwinian-like evolution; much like watching a chick struggle to escape the confines of its shell, elated when the bird is finally free of its confines, but knowing we could not have one without the other. The invitation to join in partnership with the artist, who is apparently having as much fun as we are, allows us to gain insight into some of the secrets of the creative process as a series evolves. Her willingness to share her struggle and the joy of success, even with the lowly, elemental square, lies at the heart of Savage’s boundless enthusiasm for her process and becomes the reason why it can work for us.    

 by Richard Friswell    

 Visit the print making studio of Kathy Caraccio at: www.kcaraccio.com    

 See more of Roxanne’s work at : www.roxanneprints.com    

 Go to the Center for Contemporary Print Making at: www.contemprints.org   

Philip Pearlstein, Study for Model with Butterfly Kite, 2007, watercolor on paper

 There are artists who protest too much. And they often find an audience, half-grateful, willing to defer to the presumed authority of their declarations on meaning. This simplifies matters. Or so Philip Pearlstein (b. 1924) would have one think.

 His canvases, heaped with images, are offered as meaningless. One might dismiss this as merely disingenuous, and leave it at that. But while the artist may disown his metaphors, the world cannot so easily be stripped of them. Pearlstein’s consistent pairing of objects and naked human bodies is not merely a series inventive, but empty, free associations.

Representation has its price. One does not escape allegory either by edict or by wishing. Myths will have their way, even if – like the neglected witch of Sleeping Beauty – they are not invited. A nude woman in the company of a swan is always Leda, though in one of Pearlstein’s renderings, the fable is made wooden with what might be a shooting gallery target. In another version, now accompanied by a statue of the god Mercury and an accordion, the bestiality becomes comic. In several variants of another ancient story, the sirens are made gigantic by miniature boats.

Philip Pearlstein, Mickey Mouse, White House as Bird House, Male and Female Models, 2001, oil on canvas

The thin line between rape and gynecology is drawn in one watercolor study where a butterfly hangs over a nude woman in an examination chair. Such a piece of furniture cannot be an accident of interior decoration; it demands to be recognized for what it is if the incongruity, and the threat, are to take shape. A dirigible, a kiddie car, airplane and two models become a heap of limbs and wreckage; the aftermath of a disaster, with corpses as large as the broken machines.

Superman, Nefertiti, a gargoyle and a horse that could be a plaything from Troy are the debris of Western culture, gazed upon by their naked companion, like Rembrandt’s Aristotle wondering over Homer. The difference is a world like Macbeth’s where “all is but toys,” and what mattered once, no longer does. This records an emptiness with value, and is not simply an abstraction by artist’s edict. Every choice here is charged with loss.

Philip Pearlstein, Study for Models with Dirigible Weathervane and Kidde Car Airplane, 1991, pencil on paper

Mickey Mouse and a White House for birds read like a gathering of all our country’s demons, repeated in a canvas where the Walt Disney character performs for an uninterested couple, the painter now as puppeteer, insisting that the models are nothing more than toys themselves, forcing us up against the paradox of knowing that they are not.

The wind blows through these works, with their whirligigs and Chinese kites and sailing ships, the air made visible in inflated chairs and balls. But there is also the weight of metal against flesh, an iron butcher sign with its cleaver and saw and a spear-pointed weathervane that dares us into indifference. This is realism of the magical kind, where the bizarre is always hung about with violence.

This brings us to the sense in which Pearlstein is correct in his disdain for content. It has nothing to do with abstraction, but with the brutality of our looking. An early print of his which I once knew well, had the radical amputations of limbs and head that I thought allowed for a clearer grandeur of form, free of personality. But this recent encounter with his work reminds me that he is more a documentarian of perception. He is simply recording our encounters with each other in the streets, where we are drained of what is human. Weary pornographers that we are, we have all seen too much to care.

by Stephen Vincent Kobasa, Contributing Writer

Philip Pearlstein: Recent Works, through November 24, 2009

Chauncey Stillman Gallery

Lyme Academy College of Fine Art

84 Lyme Street, Old Lyme, CT

860-434-5232

www.lymeacademy.edu

“Ahh! Nantucket in August”

Visiting the island of Nantucket in December—a splendid time to schedule a spontaneous holiday excursion—might find you light-hearted and in the mood for celebration. Yet with head tingling in search of a wool cap, hands begging for warm hiding places, and neck and shoulders aching from unnatural hunching in an effort to preserve both good spirits and heat, you might find yourself yearning for a visit to this magical island in the kinder month of August.

Ahh! Nantucket in August. Strolling down Washington Street’s emerging “antiques row,” your stride is now slow and thoughtful; your hands damp and sticky from dripping homemade ice cream in freshly-baked cones; your head and shoulders hunched more comfortably, as you wistfully peek inside one and then another and yet another charming gallery or shop dotting this remarkable island in the middle of the northern Atlantic.

One could not stray too far before stumbling upon the newly-renovated Meridian Galleries. Situated in the heart of the historic downtown art and design district, it houses one of the finest collections of landscape and marine art of the Northeast and indeed, along the “Meridian line” extending from Maine to Florida. Owner Robert Cullinane, who was classically-trained as a graphic designer and today works professionally designing everything from corporate logos to brochures, websites to branding strategies, has taken his keen eye for proportion, color, line and image, in creating the gallery’s space and curating the works he has chosen to highlight in this busiest tourist month of Nantucket’s year: August. More specifically, Cullinane features women artists of Nantucket, whose primarily marine-themed oils, watercolors and pastels fill his stunningly beautiful space in the island’s historic district. “I wanted to bring to light the work of these women artists to a collecting public who, traveling from places across the United States and abroad, might not be exposed otherwise to this talented group. They all live or work on the island and tend to gravitate to the areas for which New England—and Nantucket in particular—are most known for, namely rural landscapes and marine themes. It has always been my intention to fill this gallery with works of artists who live, work and play in our spaces, both on land and on the sea.”

Specifically, Cullinane collects the works of Yasemin Tomakan, a noted colorist and impressionist living in Greenwich, Connecticut but summering in Nantucket, who plays with her favorite images, namely, sailboats on the island’s deep blue waters, with a gentle-handed sensibility. Her decades’ long lifestyle on the water is captured in her accurately—yet soothing—portrayal of life at sea in her carefully edited oils, the only medium in which she works. Beginning at the age of eleven, when her parents first recognized her innate talent, she studied at the National Academy of Fine Arts and graduated from the prestigious Cooper Union in New York City. Her oils are on display at the gallery, although most of her work is sold as soon as it enters the space.

Red Sails in Late Afternoon
by Yasemin Tomakan
13 x 18 in.
Oil on Canvas

Arriving Nantucket Harbor, Summer ‘08
by Yasemin Tomakan
30 x 34 in.
Oil on Canvas

Extensive world travel, in addition to rigorously pursued exploits in competitive sailing, give painter Lisa Horrigan’s work a realistic aesthetic. Indeed, time spent studying in Tokyo and Kyoto bring a clean, Eastern quality to her work, while years spent painting en plein air on the streets of Philadelphia add a spontaneous quality to her representation of her favorites subjects, including life at sea and the rural landscapes of New England. Today, her paintings are worked from her studio in West Thompson, Connecticut and held in private collections in the United Sates, England and Switzerland.

Raising Spinnakers Off Rocky Point
by Yasemin Tomakan
14 x 16 in.
Oil on Canvas

In the Veer by Lisa Horrigan
18 x 24 in.
oil on linen

Alerions by Lisa Horrigan
11 x 14 in.
oil on linen

The Fishing Pot by Joann Ballinger
16 x 20 in.
Pastel on Sandpaper

Capturing the alluring and fleeting moments of childhood fancies, pastel artist Joann Balinger works deeply hued purples and blues onto sandpaper, creating works that kindle a yearning for slower and simpler times; in their strictest essence, they capture Nantucket in August. Widely acclaimed for her ability to use light, color and form in this medium, her work as a classically-trained artist of the impressionist movement of Old Lyme and Norwich has garnered critical acclaim and is widely held in private and corporate collections around the world.

Through the Rocky by Joann Ballinger
9 x 11 in.
Pastel on Sandpaper

If a trip to Nantucket is on your bucket list, consider a visit during August. For ahh! Nantucket in August is heaven on earth, a place to behold with not only your spirit, but with your body and artistic sensibilities as well.

by Carolina Fernandez, Contributing Writer

To view the collection or to schedule a private appointment, contact Mr. Cullinane at the gallery: 508.228.9821. 258 Washington Street, Nantucket, MA 02584 Online: www.meridiangalleries.com

 

This artist defines

the dynamic connection

between life and art

in his own unique way. 
 

Peter T. Tunney is a man with a lot on his mind.  But, in spite of an almost continuous barrage of thoughts, feelings, opinions and ideas that might appear to the listener like a random Blitzkrieg of mental energy directed toward, but not exactly to, the listener, they do cohere and assume a vector that has the power to convince, somehow converting you into an unwitting ally for any of his highly-spirited causes.Those ‘causes’ can run the gamut from global warming to economic meltdown to spiritual Nihilism, to urban survival, to a recently-read dead poet’s view of life’s never-ending follies, to selling art. 

Tunney enjoying one of his ubiquitous cigars as he points out a work in his 5th Avenue gallery The Peter Tunney Experiment.

He is a perpetual motion machine, constantly scanning the world out of the corner of his eye; an urban cowboy who rides herd on a busy gallery staff, all the while fielding cell phone calls that seem to end in directives like, “yes, do it!, or, “of course we can…just make it happen!” or, next Tuesday in L.A.?- see you there.” Tunney is a man at the center of a whirlwind, where his vantage point allows him to see all the moving parts in his busy life and still—somehow—make the trains run on time.  And for anyone close enough to get caught up in that vortex, the ride can be, at the same time exhilarating and exhausting, rewarding and overwhelming, thought-provoking and mind-numbing.  But when you are released back to earth, you might feel slightly tattered, but somehow better off for it all.

Peter Tunney is a voracious reader with a self-described list of life-skills that reads like a James Thurber novel about a man that has been granted the gift to live the lives of many men, simultaneously – otherwise, the extent of his action-packed life story and the full range of his accomplishments, to date, would appear to belie his age and youthful appearance.  Tunney’s long list of accomplishments are borne of experience self-described as, “filled with risk and reward where I have taken amazing chances and been lucky enough to survive.” 

“Tunney is a man at the center of a whirlwind, where his vantage point allows him to see all the moving parts in his busy life and still – somehow – make the trains run on time.”

The success (to date) of this high-risk/high-reward formula might tempt him to adopt an illusion of immortality, but Tunney remains keenly aware of his human frailties.  Life appears to have taught him to adopt a damn-the–torpedoes, boundless belief in himself and his ability to survive in a world that he describes as, “careening to the brink of disaster.”

But,Tunney, the self-described adventurer, raconteur, story teller, magician, savant, investment banker and expedition leader, to name a few, is finally and after all, an artist.  And he appears to be an artist on a mission.  I asked him why, in the face of his many concerns about the self-abrogating directions that civilization appears to be inexorably moving, that he is so interested in reaching out through his art, with its apparent message of redemption and hope. His answer: “Because I remain an optimist in spite of it all.  I see the world as unbelievably merciful, not cruel– and the human condition is to find hope wherever it can.”

“I was hit by a car while riding my bike when I was 13 years old. I was technically dead and they brought me back to life.  I missed two years of school while I lay in a hospital bed and spent a total of five years recovering from that accident.  Why shouldn’t I believe in life?!  I’d like to be an idealist, but I know better; so I tried acceptance and it seems to be working for me.  It doesn’t make the world a better or less dangerous place, but it allows me to move through it and try to accomplish things that matter to me.  And art has always mattered to me.”

Tunney’s art is as varied as his interests, but currently tends to focus on a narrative style, where seemingly random images– life’s visual ephemera– are gathered from newspapers, catalogues, advertising flyers, street posters and photographs, only to be arrayed on canvas to serve as a sometimes ironic but always cogent backdrop for bold, stenciled messages that contribute to and codify the layers of meaning to be found in and behind each work.  

Drawn from poetic works, from literature, from the world of advertising and finally, from life in general, the medium quite literally becomes the message and it is delivered in larger-than-life style – much like the artist, himself.  Asked how he began to work in this way, Tunney shows me one of  hundreds of diaries that he has created over the years.  “Where ever and whenever I traveled, I collected things—all kinds of things—bus tickets, postcards, gum wrappers, a photo of a footprint in the sand, leaves and flowers, images of beautiful women, trinkets; whatever would remind me of the place and the people.  These would be collected, catalogued and assembled between the covers of a spiral bound book.  Sometimes I would be making one book a day.”

The diary contents were gathered from all corners of the world and each heavily-laden tome is in fact, a trove of memorabilia and memory, object and subject, specimen and fragile trophy, in other words a physical manifestation of Tunney’s fertile mind and imagination and his powers of observation of the seemingly irrelevant. “Making diaries was powerful and strange: they became a kind of condensation of the experience,” he tells me. “It was only a matter of time before I had to start gluing these things down on large canvases and board and begin to frame out a more systemetized statement about my thoughts and feelings.” 

Hence, this body of collage and stencil work for which he is best known.

Tunney has exhibited with Contemporary movement notables like Jean-Michael Basquiat and Keith Haring, now both passed.  His work has been called, “charged” by the critics and a look behind the scenes reveals that he is obsessively focused on the art that resides in every aspect of life and the world around us.  “My role,” he explains to me, “is to pay attention to the tiny things in life and through my art and that of others, to help focus the viewer on those things.”

Author’s Note: All the works appearing in this article are self-titled and are mixed media (acrylic and collage, on canvas). Sizes vary and pricing is available by contacting the artist at the location below.

For a digital re-enactment by the poet W.E. Henley of Invictus, go to:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FadohneVKU

Tunney re-lights next to a surf board bearing a representation of his artistic work. It reads “We live in a beautiful world.”

SIDEBAR

Art as Social/Political Narrative- A Very Brief History

Art as social statement is hardly new. In fact, it may be as old as artistic expression itself.  Throughout history, civilizations relied on iconic images to accomplish their political and social objectives. Starting with cave paintings, images were created to appease and implore the gods of the animal world and forest; later the gods of the heavens and the underworld would be offered artisans’ gifts and eventually, as society ‘progressed’, images were created to ritualize and idealize the God that may have walked among us to help quell the impulses of our own unconscious and often destructive human spirit.

Only in the 20th century, with the advent of the Modern Era, did we begin to see a transition away from the pure symbology and the allegorical and mythological themes directed at the invisible forces of the Universe and begin to witness the emergence of artistic movements aimed at achieving social commentary and societal reform, right here in our midst, through the visual arts. It took the influence of modernist thinking, with all its focus on the power of science and the giant strides of industrialization, to finally reshape the agenda of the art world.

Picasso’s genius is that he was one of the first to figure that out. A handful of poets and architects came before, but it was Picasso and his colleague, Georges Braque, who spearheaded the creation of a new visual art form, papiers collés (collage) during the period 1912-15.  This mixed medium approach allowed them the freedom to incorporate various materials– wallpaper, fabric, cardboard and newsprint as well as paint and charcoal– into their compositions.  As social activists, with more than a passing interest in the emerging Futurist movement, the appropriation of a headline from their Italian manifesto, Lacerba, in a 1914 piece, for example, is intended to deliver a not-so-subtle political message for social action.

The period of the 1920s and 30s saw an intensification of the art-as-social-statement movements.  It took shape in various schools of painting, like Dadism, Surrealism and the Bauhaus School, in Germany, to name a few.  While too complex for a detailed description in this brief overview, that period saw many representations of contemporary narrative materials incorporated into artistic creations—all aimed at educating, increasing public awareness and ultimately provoking the population to act in the face of rapid social change and a range of economic and political crises which plagued the countries of Western Europe between the two world wars.

After World War II, the center for artistic influence moved from badly-ravaged and culturally-depleted Europe to the U.S., and specifically, to New York City. Abstract Expressionism and its proponents eschewed the politically-charged agenda of their European predecessors and, instead, pursued a creative direction based more on pure color and form. This period extended from 1945 to approximately 1970 and was eventually termed, post-modernism, since most of the vitality of the pre-war modernist/Futurist movement had then been abandoned.The art of Peter Tunney belongs to this new generation of social commentary delivered through the visual arts. Art that incorporates everyday materials and found objects to deliver a powerful social/political message has enjoyed a brief, but intense history, when viewed through the prism of centuries of creative image-making. But its power to speak to the issues of the time and create a heightened state of awareness for the viewer attests to the strength of its message, as well as the long-established role of the artist as an agent for social awareness and change.   

It took the arrival on the scene of Andy Warhol in the late 60s and the emergence of the Contemporary Schools of the 1970s and beyond to revitalize the social agenda and return to the use of mixed media, like collage.  Artists like Lichtenstein, Johns, Rauschenberg and the Installationists actively sought out the headlines of the day and the political issues of the time to serve as inspiration for their work. The combination of cool artistic detachment and rich symbolism in many of these works, often drawn from the news of the day, were designed to challenge and shock the viewer into awareness regarding the actions of the governments, political leaders and social institutions at the time.  The period of art as social statement had returned in force.

by Richard Friswell, Editor-in-Chief 

For an excellent overview of the history of collage, go to:
http://facweb.cs.depaul.edu/sgrais/collage.htm

To learn more about Futurism, go to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism_(art)

For an excellent and readable overview of art movements in the Modern and Contemporary period, see:
Art in the Modern Era- A guide to styles, schools and movements by Amy Dempsey, Harry N. Abrams Press, 2002
www.abramsbooks.com

Appropriation is the term used to describe the use of outside material (often copywritten) as a component in an artistic piece.  In spite of its long history, it is not without its controversy.
Read all about it at: http://www.nysun.com/arts/original-copies-the-art-of-appropriation-at-moma/83818/
and for the Canadian debate at: http://www.appropriationart.ca/statement/letter-of-concern

Bringing color to life and life to color in the fascinating world of color planning

Leslie Harrington wants you to believe.

As a color expert, she sees the difficulties people have in putting color into their lives. “It’s a risk to move in the direction of bold or lively colors,” she says, “because color can be intimidating. Many couples come to my studio having reached an impasse—particularly older couples. Because they can’t agree, they reach a compromise—a non-color for the walls or fabrics in a room.”

Leslie observes that younger couples and individuals (under 40) have less difficulty making color choices. “They see color commitment like so many other aspects of their lives—dealing with constant flux in their careers and living situations means they are more comfortable with a risky color choice because it can always be replaced. Twenty-to-forty percent of all paint is purchased to cover a mistake,” she explains.

Leslie is no stranger to the world of color planning. Working with her mother in an Ontario, Canada, Benjamin Moore paint store, she can call herself a second-generation paint and color specialist. She went on to become Benjamin Moore’s director of color for the company, where she redesigned their entire paint line to make it more reflective of current tastes and trends. In addition to her color studio in Greenwich, CT, Leslie also heads the Color Association of the United States (CAUS). “We are thought leaders for home design, fashion and manufacturing organizations,” she explains. “This commercial side of my business takes me to drug, car, packaging, furniture and other corporations, to help them contextualize color choices with their design teams. By this, I mean fusing product ideas with function and helping them choose the right colors to enhance and ultimately sell the product.”

“[For corporations, I fuse] product ideas with function [to help] them
choose the right colors to enhance and ultimately sell the product.”

Benjamin Moore color samples. "Learning to live with color is the first challenge"

Color matters in durable products, too. The Color Association works with catalogue furniture companies to develop more evolutionary, rather than revolutionary color stories for their interior palettes; since new furniture-buy decisions are anchored in past purchases which may remain in the home for years, in some cases. “Other products, like cell phones,” she says, “are more ‘throw-away’ and so can be marketed using more current color trends, without fear of a major fashion error on the part of a buyer. The right color choice, at the right time, for the right product, might mean that it will either sell briskly or languish on the retail shelf. Millions of dollars are at stake in many cases.”

“[Color choice] is a complex process that involves both psychology and science.”

But caveat emptor! A bright yellow laptop computer may not sell well, but a canary yellow off-road vehicle may. How to decide what market forces drive the ‘buy’ decision on each side of the product equation is the job of the team of experts who confer frequently under the banner of the CAUS to offer their carefully-considered forcasts on the topic. “Color is contextual,” Leslie explains, “We ask ourselves: How does this product function in the lives of its user and what trends and brand identity issues are going to come into play. It is a complex process that involves both psychology and science.

Returning to her role as a consultant for individuals and couples making color decisions, she points out that, “Color choice should be a process of elimination, not selection. It is important to know what room is being considered, since color affects behavior and attitude in that space (e.g.- red for a dining room stimulates appetite; red in a bedroom may produce tension). Color choice should be a strategic, as well as an aesthetic one, since the uses and mood of a room help to guide the color-choice process. In my work with clients, I often help them move from an emotional connection to a color to an objective decision about what color will be best for that space. A client may ‘like’ a certain color for all the wrong reasons. In my role as a color consultant, like is not part of the equation.”

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To learn more about Leslie Harrington’s work, go to http://www.lhcolor.com

For architects and designers (and others!), download a Benjamin Moore color palette or order Color Pulse 2010 at: http://www.bejaminmoore.com

To learn more about the work of the CAUS, go to: http://www.colorassociation.com