Because of the pandemic, as is the case with everyone else who was slated to have an exhibition opening, the exhibition “The Shape of Things” with artist Diane Di Bernardino Sanborn at Water Street Studios, Batavia Illinois (suburb of Chicago) has been cancelled.
Along with Diane Sanborn’s beautiful abstract paintings I was going to show 10 new works on cut-out metal and acrylic. Shape is an overriding theme in both our work. Her paintings have enigmatic shapes as well as shaped color fields. What’s most important is the health, safety and welfare of everyone. I wish all of you out there to stay healthy throughout this pandemic crisis.
Special Thanks to the Ohio Arts Council for funding through the ADAP program that assisted me in producing work for the show.
ADAP (Artists With Disabilities Access Program) provides funding that gives individual artists with disabilities—and organizations that serve them—the resources they need to further their artistic development. ADAP awards help artists with disabilities advance their artistic practices, making Ohio a more accessible and inclusive place to build an artistic career.
I’m honored that my work “Wavy Gravy” is part of the exhibition THE NEW NOW, presented by The Artist Archives of the Western Reserve. Photo Courtesy Stuart Allen Pearl
Pictured: Me and my husband Bruce Baumwoll (on the right) Photo Courtesy Stuart Allen Pearl
The Artists Archives of the Western Reserve (AAWR) is proud to present NewNow 2018, Northeast Ohio’s premier biannual competitive art exhibition. This years multi-media show was juried by Steven Matijcio, the curator of the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, one of the oldest contemporary art institutions in the United States. The exhibition will be held in Tri-C’s beautiful 3,000 sq. ft. Gallery East, 4250 Richmond Road, Highland Hills, OH 44122 beginning with an opening reception on Thursday, September 13th, 6-8:30pm.
2018 marks the third incarnation for the NewNow, and this year’s exhibition was the most competitive to date, with a total of 55 works selected from nearly 550 entries made by 172 individual artists.
The NewNow is set apart from the throng of other regional juried art exhibitions, through its consistent use of a highly qualified, non-regional juror. “The NewNow offers local artists a unique opportunity to get their work in front of fresh eyes and seeks to rise above the local art politics which can often lead to the same artists being selected for shows repeatedly.” explains AAWR Executive Director Mindy Tousley.
Exhibiting Artists:
Jennifer Adams, Barbara Bachtell, Yvonne Bakale, Diane Belfiglio, Jeff Benedetto, Kim Bissett, Christina Bock, Cynthia Brewster, Denise Buckley, John Carlson, Robert Carpenter, Libby Chaney, Ryn Clarke, Bonnie Dolin, Julianne Edberg, Timothy Gaewsky, Doreen Grasso, Ben Hauser, Lee Heinen, Bob Herbst, Linda Hutchinson, William Martin Jean, Larry Kasperek, Terry Klausman, Michael Levy, Rosalie Litt, Baila Litton, Lynne Lofton, Susan Donovan Lowe, John Martin, Kathleen McKenna, Frank Miller, Charles Mintz, Don Parsisson, Stuart Pearl, Robert Pierson, Diane Pribojan, Andrew Reach, Catherine Rozmarynowycz, Lisa Schonberg, George Schroeder, Susan Squires, Melinda K. P. Stees, Alex Strader, Antwoine Washington, Michael Weil, Jennifer Whitten
I’m proud to have been included with Kim Bissett, Terry Klausman, Ruth Bercaw and PJ Rogers in the exhibition REINVENTION at the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve (AAWR). Thanks To Mindy Tousley, executive director of the AAWR for asking me to be a part of this exhibition and thanks to Christine Ries at AAWR. Special thanks to John Sargent III, who brought my art to the attention of Mindy Tousley for this exhibition. Thanks to the Ohio Arts Council for their support.
A beautiful catalog accompanies the exhibition and my work Diamonds in the Rough being featured on the cover is very nice. In her moving introduction, Mindy Tousley, executive director of AAWR, says in the Reinvention catalog introduction:
Reinvention documents the stories of five artists who have reinvented themselves and their work in order to overcome limitations forced on them because of traumatic injury, aging or disease. The acceptance, adaptation and growth that each underwent as part of the crisis process resulted in the production of powerful, original bodies of work in divergent directions.
Four and Construct 045.15 archival epson ultrachrome pigment prints on cotton rag paper
Solid Ambiguities, Epson Ultrachrome GS Print on Canvas
Kim Bissett and me with her work Spring Day, charcoal and mixed media drawing on paper
I Clasp My Umbrella Firmly by PJ Rogers, electrostatic print, collage on paper
digital work Layers of Time in the Garden 4 by PJ Rogers, archival injet print on paper
Catalog Cover with Diamonds in the Rough
statement
My generation, the baby boomers, bridged the span between the old analog world and the digital world that would supplant it and this would be an important part of my creative development. As a child I was exposed to architecture when I discovered the blue prints of our house that was buried behind a rack of clothes in my parent’s closet. These drawings fascinated me. But I was also lucky to have been exposed to modern art as well through the lithos of modern artists that hung in our home and visits to my mother’s cousin, an art dealer, starting me on a lifelong love of art. She would take me in front of a piece of artwork in her collection and teach me how to see in a way I hadn’t before. Fast forward to college where I decided that I would study architecture and my early exposure to modern art would serve me well in learning to design. At that time (1980) architects learned to draft by hand with conventional drafting tools (parallel ruling bar, triangles, protractor, mechanical pencils, rapidograph pens). But also at that moment, was the birth of CADD (Computer Assisted Design and Drafting) and I had the opportunity to be an early adopter of computers in architecture at its earliest stage with a CADD program on a main frame at Pratt’s computer lab. Digital technology would progress at a rapid pace with the dawn of the age of the Personal Computer. But as technology progressed, a spine disease also progressed during my 20 years as an architect, leaving me disabled and unable to continue the rigors of practicing architecture.
After a second surgery and severed from my profession, pain took control of me both physically and emotionally and I slipped into a deep depression. Then, at the urging of my life partner Bruce Baumwoll, I began to learn Photoshop. I started to use it to make greeting cards, employing images from Bruce’s collection of vintage ephemera. Photoshop was quite different than the CADD software I used in architecture, being a raster program instead of a vector program and required me to adjust to a new way of drawing. The creation of these cards was a transition to what would become making original digital art from scratch. Magically a rich vocabulary of artistic expression began to spring forth. Bruce, seeing something special happening, purchased a large format Epson fine art printer for me. Bruce had an ulterior motive. He helped me print my work and hung them up all around the house to inspire me further and give me hope of a new path for me going forward in my life.
I have come to embrace digital technology to create large format works that would be too physically demanding for me to paint. With Epson Large format fine art printers, I produce my works in editions of three. An outgrowth from my architecture, through geometric abstraction, I’m interested in bridging the realm of the artist and technician and merging these together to create an aesthetic that speaks to modernity in the digital age. Using color and geometric fragments akin to bits, I recombine them, in a visual dance of color, composition and optic play to imbue in them a kinetic sense of movement; a stand in for my inability to move freely through the world without pain.
As I contemplate what it means to be human in today’s technological world, I embrace technology to help me express myself and have a voice. For me, digitally created art must be rendered as a physical print to make it a tangible instead of a virtual object, thus bringing the digital back to the analog in the age old custom of hanging a picture on the wall to be viewed and appreciated as an object of beauty, something that a computer screen cannot match.
I’m pleased to announce my work being exhibited in a group show at the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve. I’m honored to be in the company of four accomplished artists; Ruth Bercaw, Terry Klausman, PJ Rogers (Now deceased), and Kim Bisset. The show is titled “REINVENTION”. Mindy Tousley, director of AAWR and curator of the show says about it:
“I am putting together an exhibition of regional artists who have re –invented themselves or at least their artwork because of physical trauma associated with aging or aging related disabilities. In the case of all of the artists I have selected they have overcome the changes forced on them and gone on to complete bodies of work that are very different & in some cases superior to what they were doing before. I came upon the idea for this show because of my association with the artists and their stories. I saw firsthand the changes in their work over the course of time.”