A Tree In The Bronx

This image is a small park within a public housing complex in the Bronx Borough and I used the monotype printing technique to create it. There is a narrow sliver of a building placed on the left side of the print as a reminder that this scene takes place in a man-made environment.

The interest of the print, however, is the large tree in the center that sprouts leafless limbs and branches into and across the sky. It was in late March and I was waiting for the bus to go back to the city. when I saw it. I snapped a picture from my phone camera which I used as a reference for this print.

 I painted the branches and limbs, the sky and the clouds in a manner to suggests all these elements dancing to the rhythm of the air surrounding them. The trees in the distance were painted with the local colors of greens, reds and browns while I used the building to reflect the glaring light of the bright daytime. This print is my expression of a harmonious relationship between nature and civilization I discovered on that day.

Chris Antemann: Forbidden Fruit

The Museum of Art and Design is presenting the beautiful porcelain sculptures of Chris Antemann.  I've never heard of this artist before until now when, as a security guard employed by a national security firm, I was assigned to MAD for one day and posted at the gallery that displays her collaborative exhibition with the renowned MEISSEN Porcelain factory. 

These strikingly seductive and beautifully erotic pieces are a tour de force. One end of the gallery hangs the ornate Lemon Chandelier embellished with scantily clad figurines and lemons. 

   In the center of the gallery there is the elaborate installation entitled Love Temple inspired by an 18^th century model of the same name by Johann Joachim Kændler.

 Antemann has redesigned the original version to its basic form and added her figures and decorations to fashion a five- foot- tall feasting rotunda for her Forbidden Fruit Dinner Party.

Per the exhibition wall texts, her concept owes much to the French Rococo painter Antoine Watteau, 18th century French banquet fads, and the Biblical story of The Garden of Eden.

It’s Small Art for a BIG Cause on Friday, Oct. 21.

Here are my two submissions to the 5x5 Exhibition at the Tampa Museum of Art. It’s Small Art for a BIG Cause on Friday, Oct. 21 organized by the Arts Council of Hillsborough County. All art work has to measure 5x5 inches for continuity and visual effect during display.  

Proceeds from donated artwork fund individual artist grants and workshops from the Arts Council of Hillsborough County.

TEXTGRID 1
MIXED MEDIA
5x5 inches

TEXTGRID 2
MIXED MEDIA
5x5 inches

THE QCS DID NOT DIE

https://academicnyc.com/open-call/

I have six pieces in this exhibition. Through the 

sponsorship of The Queens CorrespondAnce School, artists 

mail their artwork and collaborate with another artist via

 USPS. All participating artists will have their original 

submission sent to another participating artist, and also alter 

another artist’s original submission. All final collaborations

 will be exhibited at Academic, a gallery in Long Island City,

 Queens. 

The opening reception was Friday, September 2 and it 

 runs through September 24th, 2016.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1128458573900860/

https://www.facebook.com/academic100/

https://twitter.com/MidniteTour/status/768226541390077952

Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting

            Alberto Burri, an Italian artist recognized for having transformed the traditional easel painting into the Objet d'art (art object), was the subject of a large retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum entitled Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting which ended in January 2016. As a painter and sculptor, his experimentations laid the foundations for Process Art and the progressive Italian art form “Arte Povera”. The Sacchi (sacks) paintings, made from stitched and patched sections of torn burlap bags and often combined with pieces of abandoned clothing and paint bits, would cement Burri’s reputation worldwide during the second half of the Twentieth Century.

            

            Born in Citta di Castello, Italy on March 12, 1915, Burri was the son of a wine merchant and an elementary school teacher. He earned his medical degree at the University of Perugia. On October 12, 1940, Italy entered World War II and Burri was sent to Libya as a medic in the Italian army. He would use his surgical knowledge to treat the wounded soldiers mostly amputees and those requiring skin grafts because of serious burns. May 8, 1943, his unit was captured in Tunisia at the Battle of El Alamein and sent to a prison camp at Gainesville, Texas for the remainder of the war.

Alberto Burri, Sacchi

He learned to paint there through a local YMCA with donated materials and his first paintings, inspired by an Umbrian nostalgia, were views of the desert from camp. Italian prisoners had an easier life in contrast to German, and Japanese prisoners. For one thing, officers were exempt from manual labor and they were allowed to mix with the local Italian American community and engage in recreational activities such as building religious altars, playing soccer, and tend vegetable gardens. Italian detainee artists assigned repaint local church. After the war, Burri’s POW experience had a transformative effect as the young Italian doctor resigned from medicine on his return to Italy and pursue art. He endured the remonstrations from family and friends with a tranquil determination upon his arrival to the age-old city of Città di Castello, in Umbria. 

          Miniatures for James Johnson Sweeney          

Italy was wrecked after the war as its resources were nearly depleted. The Fascist years created a limited intellectual openness that left the nation worn and harsh. Eventually however a modern Renaissance spread as the country was gaining self-assurance in its future with the artists in the forefront. Art was used to reexamine Italian history and future prospects. Painters, poets, and intellectuals formed new groups and cultural associations publishing journals, encouraging new ideas, and promoting a new philosophy for the arts.

During the 1950’s a cultural exchange began between Italy and the USA. American artists such as de Kooning, Rauschenberg, Rothko, Twombly visited and lived in Rome. The city was a meeting place for critics, most notably James Johnson Sweeney who became the second director of Guggenheim Museum and a champion for Burri by acquiring three art works for the museum’s collection. Johnson and Burri would share a lifelong friendship that entailed Burri sending Sweeney every year at Christmas a signed miniature of a work exactly proportioned to fit in the palm of a hand. Through this good fortune, Alberto Burri along with Lucio Fontana emerged as the pioneers of post-war Italian art.

Alberto Burri, Sacchi

Dada and Surrealism were early influences on Burri’s work. The paintings by Arp and Miro that incorporated burlap as a ground prompted Burri’s own use of torn red stained burlap. Burri expressed a new aesthetic integrating stitching, burning, wood, metal, plastic, tar, cellotex (insulation material used in homes), and burlap that transformed the paintings from a mere pictures into objects. His repertoire of work included the Sacchi (sacks), Catrami (tars), Muffe (molds), Gobbi (hunchbacks made by metal protrusions placed behind the canvas), Bianchi (whites), Legni (woods), Ferri (irons), Combustioni Plastiche (plastic combustions), Cretti, and Cellotex works. Burri would often mix and match the different materials and systems.  The clean fissures of his Crettis were never accidental but guided by a scientific approach: he was a knowledgeable chemist. Using torches he created burrows in soft gooey tar or burned holes through clear plastic and laid over a stained patched surface. Scholarly opinion viewed them as symbolic of the gore and broken skin that he encountered during the war.

Alberto Burri,   Catrame 2,  1949

Alberto Burri,  Nero,  1951  




                                           

                                                          Alberto Burri, Cretti

Alberto Burri, Rosso Plastica, 1962

Burri, Combustioni  Plastiche

      Photography by Rafael Ferran ©

 The opening reception of an exhibition 

of  Rafael Ferran's paintings and prints.

Refreshments served 

Like Minds

Column © 2014 Rafael Ferran

My etching Column began as a plate handed over to me by an artist friend who was into making prints about plants at the time. Well she was stumped and flummoxed about this plate and couldn't nor wouldn't want to work with it anymore and so I inherited this plate with a definite design etched into it. 

Just like all artists wanting to maintain their originality, I began to remove her design by scrapping the plate and then immersing it into an acid bath, but it was etched it so deeply that I couldn't take out most of it(unless I spent a few days on it). I decided to make it part of a new image so I inked up the plate in black and wiped it down leaving only the ink in the etched parts. 

Ready for the second phase! 

I started with 3 shapes I cut out from thin plastic, and placed one shape in the center of the plate to mask out the design and produce a white silhouette. Using a small roller, I inked up the other two shapes in black and placed them ink-side up on either side of the center to function as stamps.  

Off to the press!

Once I positioned the plate, I placed a sheet of print paper on top, cranked it through the press, and pulled my first proof. That's how I came to create Column, technically speaking.

Now there's also the aesthetic and expressive side of me that shaped it. 

I chose not to use color but instead keep it black and white for consistency.
As I was organizing these shapes it occurred to me that what the picture needed was more segmentation or fragmentation. I opted for a jig-saw like arrangement to be created as a counterpoint to the sinuous and organic features behind them. 

Tension needed to be created!

I made the shapes long and tall, based on her vertical design, and cut out a zigzag pattern to achieve a freer exchange between the positive and negative space. As they evolved they also acquired a figurative appearance and were becoming more like three totem sentinels guarding the garden.

Here's a question for artists: 

Have you ever been surprised to come across another artist whose artwork is similar in concept to what you have been doing? Well I experienced that a couple of weeks ago going to an exhibition in Chelsea by the artist Jeremy Comins.

DENIS BIBRO FINE ART put on view his recent work from February 13^th –March 29^th, 2014. The exhibit consists of many free standing sculptures, and drawings.

He fabricates his assemblages from hand carved wood and shaped industrial PVC pipe into playful interlocking shapes within shells or shields that are reminiscent of a womb. The collection of sculptures express an organic quality  expanding into our space in various playful and articulate ways. His drawings are of nicely rendered tree forms with bark like textures and rich surface details that have all the soul of his sculptures.

Even though my work is two dimensional there is a familiar element in his work that I find so relative to my own. It is a good show by a master artist and I recommend seeing it.

                      
               http://www.denisebibrofineart.com/exhibitions/1502