Mar 28 2009
My work is included in this exhibit
10TH INTERNATIONAL MINIART EXCHANGE MEXICO
Cultural Center Acasolo at the School of Architecture,
University Autónoma in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico
March 25 to April 23, 2009.
Mar 13 2009
My contribution for the Surrealism Festival
Showing now at the Mistlin Gallery, 1015 J Street, Modesto, California. March 3-26, 2009. Organized by the Modesto Art Museum.
It’s Untitled. Any ideas for a title?
Mar 05 2009
“Writing on the wall is not allowed here,” said the museum attendant as he walked toward me. “Ahh, but I’m not writing on the wall,” was my response. “ I’m writing on a piece of paper on top of a brochure on top of a catalog. It’s not going through to the wall at all.” “Yes, personally I don’t care, but it’s still not permitted” he replied.
“Ok! Got it. Sorry!”
That was earlier this week as I was taking some notes on a sculpture titled DYBY, by Magdalena Abakanowicz. It’s part of the permanent collection at Weatherspoon Art Museum at The University of North Carolina in Greensboro. I’d forgotten how much I admire her work, until, turning a corner; I saw it at the end of a hallway in front of a window. Abakanowicz’s style is immediately recognizable to me, familiar. The strength of her work always wrenches my gut. The headless, life-size or larger figures she creates never fail to spark a mental/emotional, questioning inner dialog about our human existence.
What Abakanowicz verbalizes about art and imagination is also notable. Here’s the last paragraph as written on the museum wall’s description plaque next to DYBY.
Art does not solve problems but makes us aware of their existence. It opens our eyes to see and our brains to imagine. To have imagination and to be aware of it means to benefit from possessing an inner richness and endless flood of images. It means to see the world in its entirety, since the point of images is to show all that which escapes conceptualization. –M. AbakanowiczInterestingly, if someone asked me to list artistic influences, her name would not immediately come to mind. It took seeing her work again to remind me that if my figurative paintings speak honestly, it’s partly due to experiencing her work.
Come to think of it, how do people come up with those “artists who have influenced me” lists so quickly? I’d have to think long and hard to put one together. In a way, everything we admire, everything that affects us, leaves an imprint on some internal level.
The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web. -Pablo Picasso