Do you remember November?

Documentation of what our day is like..."flooding," "lost my way," "North Korea nuclear calamity" this piece by Martin Wilner has an Agnes Martin feel...minimalistic...care in the language, the mark, the box, the value...a gradation of rhythmical marking...an exploration of November 2006 and all that it entailed...sometimes I really appreciate the simplistic and how much information something so clean can provide...

The short bursts of commentary provide insight into the perception of those events...how we choose to explain our day can be just as significant as the stories themselves...what do you eliminate from the conversation? Depending on who you are telling the story too, what is our tone and level of humor? There is also information to be learned in the way the words are penned or drawn...beautiful and styled for our eye's enjoyment...our doodles seem to matter here...

Late night drop outs

Something mysterious and appealing about sky cam photographs of Merkley??? Using simple formal devices of repetition to tie the visual plane together, the cups, thrown, crushed and upright move you around the piece...An added element is the different height planes in this piece...emphasizing the foreshortening....

The underbelly is always an interest to those of us who may be outsiders to this world...this dirty, gritty surface is a nice backdrop to bent, broken and angled figures...they have been dropped from the sky like fallen angels to splat right into our local rave...but what of their faces? How do they seem to feel about the drop? Well, they seem slightly unimpressed by the whole situation, posing for America's Next Top Model...but doesn't this add to the complexity of the photograph? It all seems so plausible, but not quite...posed and digitally enhanced, but not over the top...

A bang with the works

One of the more unusual ways to create a drawing...in seeing images of these being created, Rosemarie Fiore uses fireworks in concentration to make these concentric circles and worm like images...it is possible to categorize this as gimmick painting, but the end result is so interesting...layered and dense with information...sometimes the end justifies the means...

This piece specifically, Firework Drawing #23, has a nice blend of burn and neutrals with lurid color...as an abstract piece, this is visually successful with loud color balls bouncing and flowing around the picture plane...it reminds me of how Pollack tried to control the drips...the spontaneity of the burn marks and colored scorches creates a visual explosion...I think that is another aspect that draws me to this work - conceptually, there is a close tie between the material and the mark making...it doesn't try to be something it's not...this is a testament to the artist and her desire to stay true to the work...

The old is new

The tangled web of organic material, creating a solid mass of colorful flesh...Erik Parker has done an amazing job in this colorful, hyper decorative portrait...The context of the portrait, referencing the religious donor portraits...the style also alludes to the works of Jim Nutt, but with a urban, street twist...

The placement is central and frontal, visually we are focused on one and only symmetrical form...the concentric, halo form around the head is complex and unusual, not expected and dynamic...it is geometric and hard edged to contrast the drippy line forms in the head to create interest...the angle of the stripes visually carry the eye around...darker values behind to head to recede the shapes into space...bright and intense hues pull the viewer to the front and continue to the focus to the foreground...

The graphic, hard edge quality is interesting in contrast to the fragmented, organic line masses...creating an overall contemporary feel on a very traditional context...

Beyond the sums

Brazilian Artist Stephan Doitschinoff or "CALMA," often uses biblical themes and sensibilities, like the highly symbolic work of the Byzantines and early Gothic...each image has a reason, a symbolic message to the viewer...Calma's work departs from those kinds of works by choosing imagery from the street, juxtaposing it with decorative elements and stylized commercial line quality...this piece does an excellent job of taking the dirty and fragmented urban jungle and places it the context of higher art...

Often times high art has an error of snobbery too it, as if it cannot be reached by the common person, but the combination of accessible religious imagery, pattern and smart formal arrangement make this piece a great success...the background has a quiet undulating feeling...soft but complex...and the action of the figurative element in the foreground uses strong angles and geometries to create drama in contrast to the mostly mono-chromatic backdrop...the touches of white under the figure and in the red environment carries the eye around and ties this piece strongly together...

I enjoy the religious references and the contemporary context...the whole says a great deal more than the sum of its parts...

Neonized nature

Explosive color and movement of organic flowing hue masses...combined with the rays of angularity...the work of Hannah Stouffer is energetic and at times haunting...strange reptilian forms quietly roll across the burning landscape...I like the balance of representational and abstract imagery...these elements seem to exist in harmony, with neither over powering the other...

The dark background in contrast to the white areas creates visual tension...the repetition of circular and arrow forms moves the viewer around the picture planes like fingers pointing...look here and then look there...the way she develops the abstract, flowing washes in this piece entitiled Black Roses, is interesting and effective...this piece is loud and urban, a piece of bright nature in an otherwise, concrete, dark context...

Something awkward this way comes

Something about this conceptual piece resonates with me...a foreboding and sense of strange balance, as if on a tightrope...I must walk carefully or thousands of small little lives will be lost...the baby forms, however disconnected we can make ourselves, still say something difficult to accept...we are trapped and dominated by the male form...

There is also something obviously awkward about the male form and how it cannot seem to move throughout space...it to is trapped by the babies...it reminds me of the fence metaphor, is a fence meant to keep us out or trap them inside? So the "kept" symbiotic relationship is in tact and unrelenting...the figure cannot engage and the babies cannot disengage...limbo and detante...a fragile truce, but one we assume will be broken...kinetically, they cannot go on forever stuck in the moment...Phil Toledano has done an excellent job stopping time in this piece...there are several in the series entitled, "Hope and Fear." I cannot wait to see what happens in the space between...