Thirteen Octoquads – Shaped UV inkjet on Composite Aluminum – Ohio Arts Council ADAP Grant “The Shape of Things to Come”

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Thirteen Octoquads I, 2019
UV inkjet on composite aluminum panel 
cnc router shaped perimeter w/ interior cut-outs
Ed. of 3 @ 60 x 60 inches
(note: fabrication pending)
Detail

I’m pleased that my application “The Shape of Things to Come” to the Ohio Arts Council for the Artists With Disabilities Access Program (ADAP) grant has been approved for funding. The Ohio Arts Council does amazing work for artists and the arts in the state of Ohio and I greatly appreciate their support. This is the first work I will be producing with the grant.

Below is an excerpt from my OAC ADAP Grant application:

With this grant, I will create 4 artworks, printed on rigid substrates as opposed to media of the traditional digital print (paper/canvas). Printing on rigid substrates opens up a new avenue of exploration in my work by allowing my geometric constructs to expand beyond the confines of square and rectangular formats with use of a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) Router that can cut the substrate panel to my specifications”.

This work, titled “Thirteen Octoquads”, is the first piece I’m making with the grant funding.

I’ve been working with a variety of geometric shapes, weaved with color. Putting them together in new and unexpected ways challenges me, always with the goal of the composition to elicit a visually energetic and joyful optical experience from the viewer.

I realized that I hadn’t ever worked with Octagons. Why not, I asked myself. So, while I was resting, I imagined turning the octagon into a flower with eight squares being its petals, each projecting from it’s respective segment of the octagon. The resulting arrangement, with triangular spaces left between each adjacent square, provides a link to connect them together. The space left in the middle of 4 linked octoquads provides for smaller flowers with a radiating arrangement of 8 white diamonds. 4 of these flowers surround the central pink octoquad (see detail above).

The image above is the digital file and not the final piece. I will send the file that I’m readying to printer for fabrication.

Click here to visit the Ohio Arts Council website

Video: Baumwoll Archives Presents -The Art & Healing World of Andrew Reach

My Husband Bruce Baumwoll created this wonderful video featuring my art and the many places it has gone to. My art is always about healing as making each work assists my mind and body with my challenges of coping with pain and mobility and this video expresses that beautifully. With access to all of my images, he curated a range of my work in different periods. The images go by fast; quick impressions building on each other. The speed and music captures the energy he sees in my art. In a way, it’s a love letter to me in video form. We’ve been together over 38 years now and I could not have created this work without his love and devotion.

Here’s what Bruce wrote about the video:

I hope you enjoy this extraordinary experience of the art of Andrew Reach, who happens to be my husband for almost 39 years now. No matter how many times while editing it, I have watched his images, it continually takes me away from self into a world of color, shape and wonder. For those of you who are just seeing the work of Andrew Reach for the first time, he was an architect and because of a rare debilitating spine disease, became disabled and reinvented himself as an artist.

I want to share the following quote by Andrew’s late uncle James Grossman. It was written for us as a comment on Amazon when Andrew had a 2012 Calendar “Circles”.

“The very existence of this art required the intersection of time, circumstance and events beyond normal understanding. Add the needed advances in personal technology, previous education, an overwhelming medical disability, the determination of one young man to fight and create, and the love of another determined to help, that is the story of these works. And with all that, the art still overwhelms the story. Full disclosure requires stating that Andrew and Bruce are my Nephews, and that I love them.”

I invite you to see Bruce’s other videos on youtube and his blog on an eclectic range of his interests.

Click here to go to his youtube channel

Click here to go to his blog Baumwoll Archives

Ninety One Kites in the Summa Healing Arts Collection For New Patient Tower

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Photography ©️Brad Feinknopf

click on image to enlarge (except mobile phones)

Photography ©️Brad Feinknopf

The new patient tower on the Summa Health System — Akron Campus designed by Hasenstab Architects features 90 unique pieces of art by 53 artists, all with Northeast Ohio ties.  I’m honored that my work “Ninety One Kites” is part of this collection.
From the Summa website:
“Summa Health promotes a healthcare environment that surrounds and connects patients, visitors and staff with the healing powers of the arts.”
Click here to learn more.

I’m honored to be a part of Summa Health’s new Healing Arts Collection for the new Patient Tower at the Akron campus. Special thank you to Meg Harris Stanton, curator – Summa Health Healing Arts Leadership Council, for selecting my work “Ninety One Kites” where it has been placed on the fifth floor across from the nurses station. I like it’s location. Not only do patients and visitors benefit from the arts in healthcare, staff especially does so. Also, a special thank you to Christine Havice, Chair, Summa Health Healing Arts Leadership Council. With her background as an arts educator in art history, journalist, curator and consultant, she researched and wrote about each artist, artwork and the artists process. With dedicated web page’s for each, it’s a great resource to view and study the collection. Below is excerpt of what she wrote on my page:

After viewing this print, you may also find his reflections helpful in negotiating the visual arts world of today, where both digital and the older “analogue” techniques co-exist and often, as here and in certain other works of art in the Summa Collection, interpenetrate in new and exciting ways.

Click here to learn more about the artwork “Ninety One Kites”.

Below are some great works in the collection.

New Summa Health Akron Campus New Patient Tower. Sculpture in foreground “Beacon of Well-Being” by Stephen Canneto , photo: summahealth.org
Diana Al-Hadid
A Way with Words, 2019
Materials: Polymer gypsum, fiberglass, steel, plaster, gold leaf, aluminum leaf, copper leaf, pigment, 160.5 x 96 x 5.5”.
From left: Cliff Deveny, M.D., Diana Al-Hadid and David Custodio, M.D., during Al-Hadid’s art installation in the new tower on the Summa Health System — Akron Campus
photo: summahealth.org
Shane Wynn
Pictured, from left:
Neema & Phul
Asha & Furaha
from the North Hill series, 2018
MaterialsColor digital print, 48 x 32”.
Location at Summa Health: New patient tower (141 N. Forge St.), hallway, second floor.
photo: summahealth.org
Marvin Jones
Untitled, undated
Materials: Mixed media monoprint  37 3/8 x 24 5/8”.
photo: summahealth.org

The Collection