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Art Exhibition – Maria Neil Art Project Turns 10 Show

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CIRCULUX REDUX, 2022
uv cured inkjet on cnc cut acrylic and composite aluminum, 13.8″h x 15″w, edition of 3
pictured on top row (left to right): Liz Maugans, Andrew Reach, Jen Craun
pictured on bottom row: Amy Casey, Timothy Callaghan, Dan Miller

Maria Neil Art Project – A project by John Farina and Adam Tully celebrates their 10th Anniversary with a show that opened last night. They have been a special presence in the Cleveland art community over the years with their collecting and patronage of the areas artists and with MNAP bringing their love of the arts to the public. They asked the artists who exhibited in their exhibitions to submit a small work. My work is in great company with the wonderful other artists work.

I was honored when they asked me to have a solo exhibition in 2015. My show with them titled BITS IN PIECES included among the 20 plus digital prints something new for me, 3d printed sculptures titled MODEL CITIZENS. As part of their mission, they encourage artists to flex their muscles and bring something special hence the word “Project” in the name. The challenge led me to producing my first 3d work since my architecture career ended in 2004. I am again working in 3d on a 3d printed piece for the upcoming show “W/O Limits” at the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve.

For the 10th Anniversary show, I created this small work, CIRCULUX REDUX, uv cured inkjet on cnc cut acrylic, 15″ x 13.8″. A child of the 60s, the analog days, I played 45 rpm records. Arranged at the corner points of a hexagon, the central elements are a nod to those plastic adapters you put on the spindle to play 45 rpms.

MariaNeilArtProject.com
15517 Waterloo Rd, Cleveland, OH 44110
Opening Reception: Friday, June 3rd 5:00-8:00p.m.On view through July 2022. Hours by appointment only. Please send an email to schedule an appointment.
[email protected]

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New Artwork – TEN BOXES ON A BOX – uv cured inkjet on cnc cut acrylic – A Study in the Precariousness of Balance

TEN BOXES ON A BOX, 2022
uv cured inkjet on cnc cut acrylic mounted to composite aluminum
dimensions variable (72″h x 30″w), edition of 3

This artwork is about the precariousness of balance. Balance is a constant in life. We all struggle to achieve it. When life and the world is in balance, existence benefits. Unfortunately for many across the globe, life is out of balance and suffering ensues. As a species, humans, with all the technology and knowledge we have accrued, still, in the 21st century, we seem to be as unbalanced as ever. The war in Ukraine demonstrates the brutality and evil that still stains humanity as it is putting millions out of balance.

The 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi spoke to this. Koyaanisqatsi is the Hopi Indian word for “life out of balance”. Filmed over many years, with a haunting score by Phillip Glass, the film shows the collision of the urban environment and technology against nature. The Hopi believe that nature was to be respected and protected. The industrial revolution and the rise of technology did bring balance on many fronts with better living conditions and medicine that cured once deadly diseases, but at a great cost that threatens the viability of a sustainable and livable planet.

On a personal level, having balance in my life is an everyday endeavor to strive for. Some days I do better than others in its pursuit. My art making is a balancing act as I counteract the pain I’m in with the joy of creating as they simultaneously intermingle. I think these counteracting forces merge together in balance and brings together what is needed to create.

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Art Using the Symbol Unicode Standard U+1F7BA Extremely Heavy Six Spoked Asterisk

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These multi-layered cnc cut artworks are an exploration of geometric abstraction utilizing symbols, in this piece, the underappreciated Asterisk.

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Symbols from cave paintings – From TED Talk by Genevieve Von Petzinger

The hashtag is getting all the fame. But before the hashtag became so celebrated with the advent of instagram, the asterisk has been used throughout the ages. The iconography of the Asterisk is deeply embedded in the human psyche. The symbol of the asterisk, ubiquitous today, used in computer language and mathematics has ancient roots going back to pre-history in cave paintings by ice age humans.

Paleoanthropologist Genevieve Von Petzinger studies the origins of graphic communications of early humans and as her list of symbols found in early human cave paintings shows, what we know today as the asterisk and the pound/number/hash symbol are from our beginnings. She says in her TED Talk Why are these 32 symbols found in ancient caves all over Europe?

Early writing systems didn’t come out of a vacuum. And that even 5,000 years ago, people were already building on something much older, with its origins stretching back tens of thousands of years, to geometric signs of Ice Age Europe and beyond, to that point deep in our collective history, when someone first came up with the idea of making a graphic mark, and forever changed the nature of how we communicate.

From there it has gone on throughout history to be used in many ways; literature, mathematics and today in the languages of computer code. And lets not forget it’s use in todays language to tone down expletives.

The digital age has encoded the asterisk symbol into the system known as the Unicode Standard. The Unicode Standard is a character coding system designed to support the worldwide interchange, processing, and display of the written texts of the diverse languages and technical disciplines of the modern world. The Unicode Standard designates all symbols, giving them coding data that can be uniformly used in technology internationally. As a starting point in my exploration of the asterisk as subject matter, I went to the Unicode Standard website and found multiple versions of asterisks with different sizes and thicknesses of lines. The symbol I used in these artworks is the Unicode Standard U+1F7BA, the designation given to the symbol named “Extremely Heavy Six Spoked Asterisk”. U+1F7BA is distinguished from other asterisks in the Unicode Standard by the thickness of its spokes versus more delicate asterisks in the code. Transforming this symbol from something of use in computer code, language, telecommunications and mathematics into the realm of geometric object is an expression of technology transformed to an aesthetic that speaks to our technological times.

ASTERISCUS III, 2021
uv cured inkjet on cnc cut acrylic mounted to composite aluminum panel
dimensions variable 54.5″h x 41.75″w, edition of 3
ASTERISCUS I, 2021
uv cured inkjet on cnc cut shaped acrylic – mounted on composite aluminum
dimensions variable (48″h x 43.25″w overall), edition of 3
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HAPPY HOLIDAYS 2021

Like all of us, as the year Two Thousand Twenty One is about to fly away into memory, Bruce and I are grateful that we made it through, though it hasn’t been an easy one. But are any years ever easy? Each of us has our challenges that live among our joys. As it looks like we have another difficult year to come as the pandemic continues to be an unwelcome companion and an existential threat to our democracy looms, we look towards the year to come with hope in our hearts and wish you and all the loved ones that touch you, joy in your hearts this holiday season and the year to come.

Andrew & Bruce