I just received my copy of this great independent art magazine. There’s a nice four page spread on my sculpture, along with excellent work by 12 other artists. It’s Issue # 3, Winter 2108 of Creative Bloch Art Magazine. Order your own copy here.
I have work in the annual faculty exhibition at Palomar College. The Boehm Gallery at Palomar College is located at 1140 West Mission Road, San Marcos, California 92069. Gallery hours are limited to weekday afternoons while school is in session.
Call 760-744-1150×2304 or email boehmgallery@gmail.com for current exhibit hours. Happy Thanksgiving!
By default we think of drawing, both noun and verb, as dragging pencil across paper or the evidence of that action. That is not untrue. If we also consider drawing as anything that works in parallel to, or in preparation for, an artist’s primary practice, then these collages are also drawings. Using cut paper, and quickly assembled, these sketches allow me to record ideas for possible future sculptures. There are always so many more ideas than there is time to make them in sculpture. Some ideas are not worth pursuing further. Drawings are artworks and sometimes they are the only record of an artistic idea or impulse. What I find most interesting about drawing as a record is that it gives insight into an artist’s thought process, sometimes more than the resulting sculpture. These collages are part of an ongoing sketchbook. Some of these thoughts make their way into The Hankie Project, some into the Welcome to Oblivion or Stimulatorium series.
There are only a few days to see RIPE, the Annual Faculty Exhibition at Palomar College in San Marcos, California.
My installation/wall piece, Duende, will be on view until next Tuesday. I’ll be there Monday,December 12th at 11:30AM. Join me for a guided tour of the exhibition.
I’ve donated a couple of sculptures to the silent auction that supports the art department’s visiting artist program, including this small work (below).
I am please to be represented at ART SAN DIEGO 2016 again this year. Booth 401 is a joint project by some of San Diego’s most interesting arts organizations; the Mesa College Museum Studies Program, The San Diego Art Prize, San Diego Art Institute, and San Diego Visual Arts Network. The collaboration between these organizations is rooted in a mutual interest to promote artists, exhibit their work, and network with the San Diego community.
The booth features artwork by San Diego Art Institute members who have been past years’ nominees for the San Diego Art Prize, and highlights the artists that have made the transition from their studios to solid representation in the San Diego art scene. My work was nominated for the Art Prize in 2011.
There is a range of affordable artwork available, including drawing, painting, sculpture, textiles and ceramics. Other participating artists include Claudia Cano, Andrea Chung, Beliz Iristay, Bhavna Mehta, Margaret Noble, PANCA, Sasha Koozel Reibstein, Aren Skalman, Anna Stump and Joe Yorty.
It a pleasure to be in such good company. Joe Yorty and Sasha Koozel Reibstein were two of my favorites from the group.
I am pleased to have my installation, Duende, included in this survey exhibition of contemporary sculptors. The work is on view at the Point Loma Nazarene University Keller Art Gallery through September 30, 2016.
Click here for more information on Duende. And let me know what you think.
Recently I wrote about the urge to be original, observing that young artists are especially concerned with making something absolutely “new”. I believe that research and study is an integral part of art-making. When artists have done thourough research, they almost always find artists who have made work similar to what they are making.
Indeed the point of research is to find the other artists, either historical or contemporary, whose work shares qualities with our own work. There are several reasons why this matters:
Most importantly, other artists will inspire us. We call this inspiration “influence”. We will see how other artists approached issues, materials, and expression and learn from their progress.
We are required to know who our influences are. Our first influences are usually our teachers, parents, or peers. As we develop the practice of research, our influences will grow and change. This is a valuable, even critical, part of artistic identity. We are all members of a continuum, it is important to remember that.
Also, from other artists with whom we share certain qualities, we will find out where our markets might be, who our audience is, and which galleries may like our work.
Ideally, when we connect with these artists we will find friendship and camaraderie. Trade secrets will be shared. We will know what to call our style or movement. Importantly, we will be able to put our practice into context.
Just as a singer needs to have musical knowledge, an artist must study art. Knowledge should be both broad and specific. A broad art historical education includes at least a basic knowledge of all major art movements in human history. Ideally this would include art from all continents and cultures on earth. Along the way, specific movements and genres intrugue us more than others and we naturally develop a deeper knowledge and affinity for those.
Regardless of our personal preference, it is also important to be aware of art hierarchies even if we choose to disregard them, which many contemporary practitioners do. We must familiarize ourselves with the arguments surrounding Art versus Craft, for instance. It is valuable to be able to differentiate between High Art and Popular Art, for example. These distinctions are becoming less and less relevant to artists, but the philosophies that form the basis of those arguments still effect us.
Fortunately there are many channels through which we can acquire this knowledge if we are motivated. While Art History courses at a college or university may be useful and enjoyable, they can be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. With a little effort we can educate ourself with books and essays easily obtainable through libraries and reputable internet sources.
I took the theme of Eyes literally for the exhibition, Through the Eyes of an Artist, on view at The Studio Door Gallery until June 29th, 2016. As it happens, my most recent sculpture and painting feature an abundance of oddly placed human eyes. The human eye, in absence of the face and body, appears throughout art history in a variety movements and traditions. Here are a few.
The eye is ubiquitous in Surrealism, an art movement of the 20th century that concerns itself with depicting dream states, desire, nightmares, and the bizarre world of the human imagination and subconscious. False Mirror (1928),above, one of the most famous paintings by Rene Magritte, seems to imply that human vision is limited, a mirror of our subconscious and a symbol of selective and subjective personal view. The eye in this painting has multiple functions, looking, looked at, looked through.
Contemporary Lowbrow or Pop-Surrealist painter Mark Ryden’s The Apology (2006) features a human eye in the center of a cut tree trunk. With themes borrowed from surrealism and painted in old masters style, Ryden’s paintings both defy and define the categorization of lowbrow art.
Eye imagery proliferates in the work of contemporary international art star Tony Oursler. Here in Obscura, a multimedia installation 2014, video of human eyes are projected onto sculptural orbs suspended in the darkened gallery. Eerily subverting the art experience of looking at art in a gallery, Oursler’s installation is looking at you.
The human eye is a common feature of folk art, mysticism, and psychedelic art as a symbol of higher power and consciousness. In Alex Grey’s Tears of Joy, the eye image is repeated until it becomes a pattern.
There are artists, especially young artists, who tend to focus on originality. These artists try to do things that “haven’t been done before” or something “entirely new”. This is a waste of time. I’d like to say that originality doesn’t exist, that it is a notion based on a failure of research, which I do believe to be true, but with technology moving so quickly I have to allow that there will be new, utterly original ideas, tools and objects.
So I guess my argument is, so what? SO you were the first to use a material or technique? Who cares? Other people will do it; some will even do it better than you. After a while it won’t matter who did it first. Quality works of art that resonate will stand the test of time and be examples of their form and style.
Young students, especially those who have not had much exposure to art and design history, often think that because they have never seen something like what they have just made, that it is something entirely new.
I tell them newness is irrelevant. Not good or bad, just not relevant. The more research we do, the more real looking, the more we are able to recognize elements of other artworks in our own. This is a good thing. Acknowledging these influences and investigating them is deepens our engagement to the work and the rest of humanity.
Humans have been around for a long time. All along we have been making things. We are all connected by those objects and images.
Originality doesn’t matter, quality does. For an original object there has to be no other before it, the only one of its kind, never been done before. As soon as something is invented in the world, artists begin to adopt the new material, style, equipment or technique to use in their own way.
The point is to do what you do in your own way. Do not be too concerned about whether or not is has been done before. If you are working on making your most authentic work, you will be creating a unique artwork, even if it may share some qualities with an existing artwork.
