As an artist, Casey has explored ideas such as memory, mortality, sustainability, and collection within both the spheres of gallery and social practice. She is constantly thinking and creating, which I respect a great deal. Casey uses a variety of media - though primarily uses clay - to create installations and sculptural work which play with scale, addressing hierarchy in subject and material. Her interest in shadow and light plays a huge part in the feel of her pieces. Even the smallest, most fragile elements can seem incredibly large in how she considers her compositions. Her attention to detail is incredible and she often highlights fascinating features through color or using shadows and mirrors. I enjoy the works where her sense of humor comes out as well as when she has more sentimental moments.
As a mentor, Casey Whittier is an incredible source of technical and conceptual information. She has offered up a number of insightful readings, as well as demonstrated her method of photo transfer onto slip, which have been incredibly influential to my thought and material processes as of late.
As an artist, Casey has explored ideas such as memory, mortality, sustainability, and collection within both the spheres of gallery and social practice. She is constantly thinking and creating, which I respect a great deal. Casey uses a variety of media - though primarily uses clay - to create installations and sculptural work which play with scale, addressing hierarchy in subject and material. Her interest in shadow and light plays a huge part in the feel of her pieces. Even the smallest, most fragile elements can seem incredibly large in how she considers her compositions. Her attention to detail is incredible and she often highlights fascinating features through color or using shadows and mirrors. I enjoy the works where her sense of humor comes out as well as when she has more sentimental moments.
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An artist who works in a variety of mediums, in the scale of the miniature is Rose Eken. She references a culture of the club musician through instruments and their electronic equipment; cigarettes and liquor bottles; set lists and fast food; records and the milk crates which might hold them or serve as the listeners' seat. In the ceramic medium, worked with unfired stoneware and then moved to glazed paper clay. She recreates glossy, bright, recognizable labels and surface decoration on sculptures which have a playful, abstracted handling reminiscent of Funk Movement artists like Robert Arneson or Edward Kienholz. She first was creating vignette installations, evoking a scene of set up or the aftermath of an energetic live music show. Eken would also set up and photograph miniature sets of interior and exterior spaces. Now, she is creating ordered set ups which contain neatly arranged collections of these elements she was sculpting. I think its fantastic that, save for her videos, there is an absence of the physical figure, but a reference to its material and musical culture. There were several points in my life when I saw the detritus left by show goers in a space, several times a week, still feeling the energy of the crowd that had just been entertained. I very much appreciate her nod to this lifestyle.
I have been fortunate enough to have had some pleasant and informative interactions with Margaret Kinkeade. She is incredibly knowledgeable and generous. She creates artwork which addresses memory and emotions associated with replicated, collected tools as ephemeral objects. Her installations often reference the rustic domestic, utilizing wooden framing and supportive elements. Using a stark white clay body to create or sgraffito through terra sigillata, she creates two and three dimensional, literal and figurative, drawings of household items. Through tile and sculpture she evokes a personal, yet relatable narrative. The viewer might not recall her story, but have associations of their own, recalling feelings of time gone by. She adds her own physical memory through working a media which holds the pressure and marks of the artist. Sussane Lussier has an artist's touch with which I am quite enamored. Her sculptural work is not for want of craftsmanship, but intentionally pushed to an emotive place which evokes a state of being worn. Her pieces can be incredibly ornamental and beautiful, and still have an uneasy tension or grotesqueness to them. There is an incredibly gorgeous, folk art referencing, crudeness to the works but, she still successfully alludes to high society's material culture. She uses motifs of the natural world and entertainment which showcases and even perverts it, narrative which is made even stronger with the purposeful creation of flawed surfaces.
Joseph Cornell was a collector. He had no formal training in art, but created a tremendous amount of boxed collages and assemblages. He was incredibly shy and somewhat reclusive, but did interact with select artists and theater related people, including ballerinas. From second hand and book stores he collected trinkets, memorabilia, sheet music and literature. He is associated with dada, Surrealism, and the avante-guarde, in how he created cut and paste, random but symbolic juxtapositions of strange narrative and homage. The influence of cabinets of curiosity and Victorian collection are incredibly apparent, especially as he probably utilized some of the once precious items from past treasuries. He evokes the feeling of nostalgia in his ordered accumulation of olden days. He pays tribute to beautiful ladies of stage and screen without seeming like a crazed fanatic. A romantic appreciation for their craft and loveliness is preserved in memorabilia boxes. He also ventured into film, though I have yet to view any of those collections of images. I definitely see his influence on artists from Terry Gilliam to Dario Robleto, who I have discussed in previous blogs.
In my search of cabinets of curiosity and collections of the Enlightenment Era, I came across Wooden Libraries, or Holzbibliotheks or xylotheques, of the late 18th century. As the world was becoming documented by explorers and illustration, other naturalists were creating physical libraries which were made of local and exotic flora. Carl Schildbach, and Benedictine monk, Candid Huber, were two such individuals who archiving the blossoms, leaves, fruit and bark of plants in their area. The life cycle of regional greenery was physically encapsulated in each volume. Linnean classification information, Latin name and common names were written or printed and attached to the hinged books created from the specimen. The texture and colors of the preserved collections are informative and sensually attractive. The objects within the covers are arranged randomly but have a visual harmony to them as they they interact with parts of themself that they never see in their life cycle. Preservation of these ephemeral objects is a lovely notion.
Dario Robelto is a Houston, Texas based artist who excites and enrages me. He creates conceptual art from collected materials which create very narrative laden and layered works. He has used poems and other written works to allow for an audience to create the scene itself. He uses audio of heartbeats and popular songs to talk about human history and culture. He has melted vinyl to tell stories - Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love speaking to one another through their music which documents their tumultuous, drug fueled relationship. He has mundane collections which evoke the assemblages of Joseph Cornell like the Button Collector. And then there is the Civil War anthropological works.
I am incredibly fascinated by the era of huge change and expansion in America. It catapulted incredible progress in this country. The people from this time to 1950s seem of a hardier stock, who struggled as they developed this culture. I am also a romantic. Love letters and trinkets from this era say so much about individuals in a time where they were not constantly updating their social media page, with other priorities and possibly in the last recent time where survival and success was somewhat of a challenge. Its a sentimental enjoyment and connection to the time my great grand and grandparents lived. Robelto creates beautiful homages to this era. He references geologic, medicinal, anthropological and domestic collections. The materials he uses create lush textural and contextual displays of history. The arrangements harmonic, and well crafted and displayed. The color palate evokes the fading ephemera from a culture more than a century old. But, its his material list that makes me react negatively. In example, from 2007, he created Who Will Mend Your Phantom Limbs? The list of items uses is: "Excavated bullets from various wars carved into spools, hair salvaged from excavated lockets, homemade paper (cotton, passion flower), stretched audiotape of the earliest audio recording of time (experimental clock, 1878), 10,000-year-old flower caught in amber, carved bone and ivory, braided hair, lead coated rose stem, ribbon, mourning handkerchief, locket, photograph, cast lamp black, resin, typeset, paint." He is claiming to use items that were once loved by long gone individuals and items that would be found in a museum or passed down in families. This time is still so accessible and there is so much we can gain from a historical standpoint, that it makes me cringe for the thought of altering them so much. I know it is hypocritical of me to feel this way, because I slip cast and burn out, both destroying and preserving domestic items such a gloves. These items, too, have personal memory even if I acquire them at thrift stores. There are moments that I like to sit quietly and watch the world around me. I have spent years under trees watching light and shadow, taking it all in through my senses. I feel a kinship with the art of herman de vries and Wolfgang Laib. Both artists came to creative expression through their exposure to science. They collect and place quantities of organic material together but in differing manners.
I am drawn to Laib's work because he uses natural elements which are associated with nourishment and the life cycle; the ephemeral and eternal. He is interested in allowing people the experience of specific items like pollen, beeswax, stones, and rice. The large quantities that he gathers have distinct colors which you are immersed via the use of massive scaled installations and sculptural arrangements. These materials also have scents with which you may have only had the faintest interaction . He hopes that this will spark the question of how much a person interacts with the natural world and if they'd like a stronger connection. herman de vries utilizes natural collection, photography, poetry, drawing and videos to address issues of culture and nature. He lives independently from society, though he does interact through the art world. He randomly orders foliage and other flora, calling attention to both the oneness and diversity in nature. He feels that the cities are a secondary reality, and he'd rather align himself with the first - nature. A Mandala is a symbolic, representative image of the cosmos, speaking of the cyclical nature of the universe. It is often associated with Buddhism and Hinduism, but can also be found in Western religious works as well. In the East they are created through a meditative ritual, presenting wisdom about the human condition in this existence. Often, the psychological state of the individuals making them is revealed in the process. Life can be re ordered or stabilized, by utilizing these sacred geometries. Most often these forms are impermanent - as is life - and created out of natural materials, such as sand.
Two artists I have found using this format in their work are Cameron Blaisdell and Kathy Klein. Klein uses organic elements such as flowers and seashells, creating her mandalas while in a meditative state. She hopes to show the connection in the world and inspire appreciation for all things in the natural world. The colors flora are incredibly vibrant and her compositions harmonious. The sacred symmetry is present in every creation. Cameron Blaisdell works in ceramics. She put her mandala on the wall and creates natural looking elements through clay. The objects become more permanent though she still references the themes of life, death, and rebirth as is the nature of the cosmic order. Though this is often a difficult discussion to be had, she broaches it in a way that brings peace and respect, calming possible fear of losing life, allowing for tribute to be made. Travis Bedel, also known as Bedelgeuese, "is a Phoenix, AZ based collage artist who is a graduate of the Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences." He creates physical and digital collages combining images human anatomy and elements of the natural world, both flora and fauna. His compositions are both morbid and beautiful with an amazing sense of balance and often containing vibrant color. I am so fascinated by the combination of anatomical diagrams with illustrative biological images. Its as if all of the Enlightenment Era observational work was combined in a very spiritual, New Age manner. I see references to Memento Mori and Vanitas as well as Dia de los Muertos, but that could also be my fascination with the Death Positive Movement. I wish that I understood Tumbler, or that I knew of a better way to find more information about Bedel, because this work is captivating for all of its formal qualities and content. I have found in him similarities to Argentinian art director and designer Juan Gatti, but Gatti's color palatte is softer and his compositions less centralized, often with incredible natural scenery.
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