An Idea of Order Exhibition
Mitchell Anolik
Trees, 24” x 44”, archival pigment print under acrylic glass, 2019
Location: Wynnewood, Pennsylvania
Website: http://mitchellanolikphoto.com
Statement:
There are limitless images in the world. I am very selective in my photographic vision. The image I choose must evoke an emotion in me. I try to eliminate non-essential elements distilling the image down to lines, light and angles. Minimalism applied to art creates powerful images.
Hannah Barnes
X Current, 22” x 30”, watercolor and gouache, 2018
Location: Indianapolis, Indianna
Website: http://www.hannahbarnesart.com
Statement:
My work approaches abstraction through the lens of non-hierarchical and process-based image making. My practice stems from a wish to reimagine abstract painting’s history and its capacity to express marginalized experiences. The two main critical and historical trajectories of significance to my work are feminist theory and contemplative practice traditions, both of which insist on giving space to that which exceeds language and resists codification. Engaging the interplay of drawing, painting, and architecture, my work explores ideas of structure and fragmentation, surface and depth, process and ritual, and the indeterminacy of meaning in images. In my practice I conceive of abstraction as a site for the integration of interior and exterior experience.
My recent projects consist of investigations in watercolor and oil on paper, wall, and fabric. In these works, geometric pattern is used to organize, fragment and reconnect adjacent planar surfaces within pictorial and architectural spaces. My images emerge from a process of repeated layering and erasure. Through transparent layering, structures overlap to produce new interference patterns. Accumulated layers begin to evoke space, gravity, and weight. The resulting paintings are full of spatial fluctuation, contradiction, and conflict, tethered to forces of space and illusion yet not fully cohering.
The visual elements of my work draw on a familiar vocabulary of abstract forms and tropes, such as triangles, circles, spots, stripes, and planes. I use these motifs like ,assisted ready-mades and found forms that are filtered through a personal sensibility and fashioned to address specific painting problems. My recent work is dominated by hard-edged geometry, repetition, and grid-based arrangements. This work draws inspiration from ritual-based drawing traditions such as Indian Kolam, in which site-specificity, ritual, and impermanence form the basis for image making. These ideas inform my recent wall- and floor-based drawings, which employ ephemeral materials and pattern-based structures to connect fragmented points in time and space.
Eldon Benz
Merry Pops in Line Balanced Series, 18” x 23” x 27”, up-cycled mixed media, 2019
Location: Carbondale, Illinois
Website: http://www.eldonbenz.com
Statement:
Art - Fun - Whimsy - Process.
Balance is lacking in our world today. Making otherwise discardable materials into something interesting, fun, and balanced is my challenge.
There is no one process. A large part of the art is selecting and manipulating the media to fulfill the fleeting vision of the day. Can the vision and the materials at hand generate enough internal interest to become a complete tangible object, just bits and pieces on the work bench, or just a figment?
Jill Beyder
Be Home Before The Street Lights Come On, 13” x 23”, digital photo on photographic paper, 2019
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Website: jillbeyderphotography.com
Statement:
As a photographer, I feel compelled to capture the world around me as I see it. My work typically focuses on people or what our environment says about people. I often incorporate various non-traditional filters and photo pairing to tell those stories.
Robert Bolla
Tango by the Sea, 24” x 28”, digital photo painting composit, 2019
Location: Chesterfield, Missouri
Website: https://robertbolla.smugmug.com/
Statement:
A photograph should not only ask a question but it should attempt to find an answer to that question in such a way as to entice the viewer to examine the photograph. Thus the photo should tell a story or create an image in such a way as to urge the viewer to use his or her imagination to garner both experience the image and learn from it. A photograph should entice the viewer draw his or her own story from what he or she sees. When working with wildlife photography the photograph should depict animals in their natural habitat and should express some aspect of the ecology of the animal, i.e. how does it live, where does it live, how does it survive, what is life about for the animal, how has it evolved to fit into its environment? A bird lifting off from the water makes one ask what is the strength of a wing, how does it work, and where is the bird going. Working as a street photographer the shots should be candid and provide an image that describes the person to the viewer telling a story. The photographer in asking permission for the photo has the opportunity to gain information about the individual as for example after taking a photograph of a woman looking similar to Nelson Mandela and talking with this woman I found that she was Mandela's niece also being related to Tutu. This being said the photographer may find one answer from the photo and the viewer another, thus opening a discussion and a knowledge base.
Marilynne Bradley
Crowded Harbor, 15” x 22”, watercolor on paper, 2019
Location: Webster Groves, Missouri
Website: http://www.marilynnebradley.com
Statement:
My painting requires endless change, experimentation, and variation both in content and technique. I begin blocking out the darks and details of the composition. The action of the brushwork is part of my energy to establish the movement of the subject matter. Color, contrast and composition are the key elements to any of my paintings.
Bill Brookover
Stunning Tension, 18” x 24”, acrylic ink on paper, 2019
Location: Cherry Hill, New Jersey
Website: http://billbrookover.com
Statement:
Printmaking satisfies my love for process and planning; and it has taught me to incorporate spontaneity, surprise, and happy accidents into my practice. I trained in architecture and design, which are the inspiration for my printmaking. I learned early on that creativity thrives within set boundaries, so I set rules for myself: a pattern, a color palette, a strategy for action. As I explore, I look for as many variations/combinations as possible. I’m interested in pushing the boundaries of my rules, looking for unexpected juxtapositions, playfulness, and variety within the system I’ve set in motion. I pursue variety, diversity, options, possibilities and surprise. My work explores joy in daily life through design, color, texture, and geometric structure. I use pattern and geometry as generators of form to explore new paths in printmaking.
Aimee Clinger
Location: Edwardsville, Illinois
Website: http://www.artwithmetal.com
Statement:
When illness or disease permeates our lives, these advancements in science, technology, and medicine become seemingly incomplete. Even with volumes of medical information the most primal of questions, such as why?, are too complicated and unanswerable even for science. Although such situations are out-rightly marked with a state of confusion, eventually a new form of understanding can arise, one that is marked with an incredible reverence for the human body and spirit.
This series of work is comprised of diagrams of the body?s most vital organs cut into medical books. Each organ is intended to be like that of a contour map, becoming more and more discernible with each sequential layer. I choose to use medical books as a metaphor for the body; paper is also fragile and temporal nature, while a book itself is an attempt to preserve something of importance.
These pieces acknowledge the lack of understanding that comes with disease as well as an obeisance for life through idealized facsimiles of the body in a healthy state. The delicate, repetitive process of cutting and coloring the medical books is important in that it represents time as a necessary means for understanding something more fully. Just as a surgeon understands the innermost workings of the body with time and experience, when someone spends a period of time with illness, they begin to comprehend the context and meaning of this earthly existence. These close experiences with illness bring a new intimacy and significance to life.
Jerry Cox
Rocket Car, 12” x 39” x 7”, various woods, plastics, metal, poseable action figures with Sculpey, turned, carved, painted, 2018
Location: Hillsboro, Missouri
Website: http://coxstl.com
Statement:
I let classic original concepts evolve into stylized designs that give a narrative. In my sculpture I usually invoke some Sci-fi theme, sometimes subtlety and sometimes blatant. I work mostly in wood, combining turning, carving, construction, and assemblies. My work is highly refined and finished to the best of my woodworking abilities. I choose subjects for their challenges to learn some new technique.
Stephen Da Lay
GBHH4, 20” x 24”, Mokulito print on paper, Edition: 2/5, 2019
Location: Shrewsbury, Missouri
Website: http://www.blackandwhitepress.org
Statement:
My inspiration to design and build polyhedrons came from my childhood letter and number blocks. The work has been focused on the construction of polyhedrons using printmaking that incorporates visual mathematics using asymmetrical patterns. This involves the visual deconstruction and the reassembling of the object. The flat paper pattern is cut and folded to become a three-dimensional object.
James Daniels
Rotation, 6”x6”, charcoal on paper, 2019
Location: St. Charles, Missouri
Statement:
My current work focuses on the relationship between positive and negative shapes and spaces as metaphor for symbiosis. I am interested in pattern and the manipulation of repetition.
Miguel de Aguero
Monifold Series-Albertine, 18”x 24”, watercolor on paper, 2019
Location: Sullivan, Missouri
Statement:
The pattern embodies a set of rules, principles and assumptions.
The pattern provides the skeleton that supports the rest of the image. The pattern evokes a certain time, a certain flavor, or a certain memory. The pattern sets the eye?s clock as it ticks around the image.
The pattern defines a very small world, but it contains everything.
Elizabeth Desrosiers
Mesa Verde Ladder, 16” x 24”, digital print, 2018
Location: Chesterfield, Missouri
Statement:
Combining sculpture, photography, and furniture making, my artwork explores themes of collection, memory, and security in American culture. Rescuing and transforming old objects into something new is symbolic for my journey to become an artist later in life.
Kevin Desrosiers
Jigsaw Puzzle, 16” x 24”, digital print, 2018
Location: Chesterfield, Missouri
Statement:
I use photography as a means to capture the amazing beauty most of us walk past every day, however rarely give a second look. Although I focus mostly on scenes found in nature, my artwork also explores the uniqueness of various shapes, forms, or events.
My hope is that when others view my art, they realize the hidden beauty in our daily lives they have missed. As a result, if they learn to slow down and take the time to appreciate these wonders as they go forward in life, my photographs will have achieved their purpose.
Time Tunnel, 16” x 24”, digital print, 2017
Jonathan Frey
Location: Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
Website: http://cargocollective.com/JonathanClydeFrey/filter/ALL/Contemporary-Totems
Statement:
My painting and drawing practice has grown out of my research into the grid?a literal symbol of order, which came to embody the Modernist ideologies of reason, purity and perfection. Where I was once interested in reaching these ideals through formal resolution, the work has largely became a critique of these ideals, subverting the structures and ideology of Modernism to explore condition such as imperfection, failure, and the individual’s place within a larger system.
Damon Gaspar
Moment of Comprehension, 40”x55”x48”, welded steel, 2018
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Statement:
This monochromatic study of a work space that has been used by several generations of our family is gradually being reclaimed by nature but is deceptively neglected or abandoned. The image explores the interconnectedness of a built 'plant', a feed mill in Alabama, the verdant foliage of the region and the landscape itself, and it's quieter, re-adapted life as a sculpture studio still in operation.
Nancy Grimes
Nine, 24”x18”, gouache, pencil, 2019
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Statement:
My recent work is about color and pattern. I am influenced by pop culture, artists such as Matisse, and the world around me. Sculptural work in wool and paintings in gouache have color and patterns in common.
John Hardecke
Location: Washington, Missouri
Website: https://www.instagram.com/hazel_mopes/
Statement:
I love the serendipitous outcomes I get from painting, starting a piece with little or no preconception and simply enjoying the process of exploration and discovery.
Jessica Hentoff
Behind the Tent, 30”x20”, digital print on aluminum, 2019
Location: Florissant, Missouri
Website: http://www.circusharmony.org
Statement:
Circus is my medium. The circus ring is my canvas. While I have been a circus performer and remain a choreographer and director, my best work is not my own, but that of my students. I have the honor and privilege of teaching them how to make the impossible look effortless in the circus ring and beyond. I am the artistic/director of Circus Harmony, St. Louis’ only social circus --- we use circus arts to motivate social change. My students defy gravity, soar with confidence and leap over social barriers. In the process, they create their own joyful juggling, awesome acrobatic, exciting equilibristic, and amazing aerial acts. They not only defy gravity but they defy labels placed on them in response to their race, religion, neighborhood or any other outside attribute. In the ring, they create their own labels and I get to capture the moment with my camera. People usually hear “youth circus” and think of cartwheels and cotton candy; the work my students do is profound, personal, universal and exceptional art that has earned them acclaim in St. Louis and around the world. My students are my masterpieces and they are my inspiration. Through our work together, we show people how capable, creative, compassionate and courageous young people can be! They help each other stand taller, fly higher and together we change people’s perceptions of what is possible!
Holland Hopson
Location: Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Website: http://www.hollandhopson.com
Statement:
Field Effects is a group of computer generated drawings created by tracing the paths of thousands of virtual particles as they interact with virtual gravitational fields. The particles leave faint traces as they move. These traces accumulate into darker lines when the gravitational fields force the particles into regular orbits.
Ruth Kolker
Coastal, 32”x24”, mixed-media, 2019
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Website: http://www.ruthkolker.com
Statement:
Combining painting and printmaking offers an exciting journey of discovery. How the two disciplines are layered help to create a strong visual texture and are often inspired by landscapes and natural forms. Pattern, texture, shape, line and color are woven together to transform the spirit of each composition. I invite you the viewer to respond.
These mixed-media paintings offer a place of escape, a space for introspection. I want you to be pulled in different directions, drawn into the real and abstract images of nature. The place where living naturally occurs can be interpreted in different ways. Incisive lines & subtle gestures and modeled forms lead you into neutral space. It is my focus to transpose the mood and spirit of each painting into a tactile fabric of paint.
Andrew Leicht
Synchromy No. 3, 14”x11”, oil on canvas, 2019
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Statement:
I am a mostly self-taught artist who began my career as a member of the Lemp Studio Artists and participated in several Inform shows in the early 1990’s at the Lemp Brewery Complex. My awards include an Excellence in Painting distinction at Laumeier Sculpture Park Art Fair in 1990, a Member Select of the Missouri 50 show at the Missouri State Fair, and selection in several juried shows at Art St. Louis and Truman State University. My abstract paintings are strongly influenced by my surroundings, especially the Tower Grove neighborhood where I have lived most of my life.
Roger McCarthy
It’s A God Damn Wall!, 27”x20”, photographic print, 2018
Location: St. Charles, Missouri
Statement:
I am drawn to the beauty that surrounds us - both natural and man-made. Many times, it is the everyday objects that we pass by with barely a glance; a cityscape, or an architectural detail; the open landscape, or the single tree; the field of flowers or the morning dew on a flower petal. I go out to photograph with no preconceived vision.
Like an explorer, searching, always searching; searching for that special something that catches my eye. Looking to capture a small piece of what is there I sometimes fall in love with the texture and patterns or the colors, shapes, or the juxtaposition of lines. I tend to generate images that are somewhat abstract in nature and I enjoy creating composite images, in an effort to create something unique.
Beth McCoy
Location: Berkeley, California
Website: http://www.Lenabethe.com
Statement:
I have always had a soft spot for misfits, outcasts and eccentrics. I like to take things that have been rejected in some way, whether in the last chance clearance bead bin, or in a pile of tossed out records at urban ore, and give them a new life and purpose. Over the years, I have had the opportunity to explore many art forms, and to also find a way to use the throw away scraps from each form. While foraging through thrift stores and junk yards for treasures, I always feel I have helped give a discarded object a new lease on life, and it makes me feel human. Using old photographs or photos of old things serves a similar purpose. I am forever inspired by the variation that exists in nature, and am trying to capture it's beauty when I can. I find inspiration in the Figurative arts movement, which sought, through its representational qualities, to explore the nature of art. I also like to give a perpetual nod the anti-bourgeois Dada movement, which used photos and collage (not considered real art materials or techniques 100 years ago) to create social commentary and to redefine the meaning of 'Art'.
Albert Nation
Location: Glendale, California
Statement:
Cosmologist Max Tegmark has postulated that 'all structures that exist mathematically exist also physically'. This postulate, if true, has the beyond-all-measures implication that everything is nothing but mathematics, whether or not we perceive it to be so, even including the very human experience of whether or not we perceive it to be so. Every idea, every bit of a moat, every galactic phenomenon, one and all, is mathematics! Art, possibly and deservedly, stands tall at the forefront of this view of reality!
Larry Page
Location: Ballwin, Missouri
Website: https://m.facebook.com/Larry-Page-Mixed-Media-Artist-684577181600052/
Statement:
I am a Mixed-Media Artist working with fiber, colored wire, Rope, dyed string and reed, wooden and clay beads and other found and re-purposed material to create objects that reflect my Whimsical, Spiritual Personality and Interests.
Alex Paradowski
Gemini Crouching, 36”x52”, hand cast paper cubes, acrylic, 2019
Location: Granite City, Illinois Website: www.alexparadowski.com
Statement:
The satisfaction of being a multi-media artist is the freedom to explore and combine the endless possibilities available to create an image.
Bradley Phillips
Location: Cape Girardeau, Missouri
Website: http://bradley-phillips.com
Statement:
In Laugarvatn Iceland the seasons are constantly shifting between long nights and long days. During late spring and into summer that balance shifts into nights that never fully get dark. These photographs were taken near midnight while exploring the village during that liminal time in which it is neither fully night or day.
John Puffer
Location: Vincennes, Indiana
Website: http://www.jpuffer.com
Statement:
My photography is all about being a human on the earth and my response to what’s around me.
Bob Rickert
Location: Chesterfield, Missouri
Website: http://www.bobrickertphotography.com
Statement:
The convergence of photography and digital imaging has created opportunities for images which no one really considered possible several years ago. It has also created more photographers than ever before. What separates photographers with various ability levels and training is their ability to see the various dimensions of the subjects. Being able to use a camera is not enough, one has to be able to see things differently in a way that viewers of images will find interesting or at least thought provoking. Hopefully, the way I see things differentiates my work from others and provides the viewer with a new and interesting perspective of everyday images.
Ashleigh Robb
Excrescence, 8”x8”, pyrography, acrylic on wood panel, 2019
Location: Los Angeles, California
Website: http://www.ashleighrobb.com
Statement:
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Ashleigh Robb uses markmaking as a gesture to record the passage of time. Her compositions create a kind of ?document?, composed from the accumulation of simple lines and marks to build up form. The process of marking time varies, and as such, the materials used to do so are ever changing. Each line is a faint documentation which only appears up close, fading into white as you step further away. The result is a haunting, philosophical body of work that carries forward its Minimalist lineage.
Marceline Saphian
Looking Beyond Building, 33”x22”, monotype/montage, 2019
Location: Chesterfield, Missouri
Statement:
My work is an effort to share with others feelings and responses that are difficult, if not impossible to put into words. Rather than copying nature, I use it to call on inner responses to what I observe. Subject matter is a point of departure rather than a destination. One of my interests at this time is using older work to add overlays of paint and collage. This leads me to new development as an artist, and I find it is a way of melding the past with the present and the future - a way of making time an unending continuum.
Douglas Simes
Swarm Mesh, 24”x18”, digital construction rendered in Maya software, printed on paper, 2017
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Statement:
Gesture, structure and topology are fundamental concerns of my life drawing and portraits. The pieces offered here explore these and other conceptual matters such as geometry, planes, light, the mapping of perception, and the use of digital mechanisms to generate form. The two hand drawings were executed in pen and ink, necessitating the use of line
and line systems to create shape and tone. In these pieces, analysis and activity take precedence over representation.
Mike Sonnichsen
Untitled from the 8x8 series, 8”x8”, relief printed composition from three etched, aquatinted plates, 2018
Location: Moscow, Idaho
Website: http://mikesonnichsen.com
Statement:
Order and system are central to my process, not simply because the resultant work appeals to human sensibilities, but because I see the universe underpinned by complex and numerous orders. The rotational symmetry seen in these pieces arises from a practical aspect of printmaking; square sheets of paper can be rotated and repeatedly printed for unexpected intersection and the creation of previously unseen patterns. That my works allude to quilting or textiles in no accident, yet I also hope they function as objects of contemplation or mandalas both containing and symbolically reiterating the structures of the universe.
Taro Takizawa
After a Light Rain, 17”x24”, relief print, 2018
Location: Syracuse, New York
Website: http://cargocollective.com/tarotakizawa
Statement:
My work engages in an intuitive practice, not just labor and execution, but a process of making patterns, by drawing, painting, carving, cutting, and printing. My brain is constantly spinning to make my next decision of how I want to move, looking for reactions between lines, ideas, and associations between the contemporary and personal history, perspective, thought, Japanese heritage and permanent memory.
The work is a tool to rediscovering the Japanese history and culture. I realized this after moving to the United States, where everyone asks me questions about where I came from. Since I didn’t pay much attention to my everyday life while in Japan, I had to do research about my own country, its culture and its history to show what Japan is like, from both historical and cultural viewpoints. What becomes evident in studying history is patterns. The patterns used in my work show the ripple, steam and flow of water which is important because Japan is surrounded by the ocean. I am influenced by Japanese art, especially the Japanese block prints (Ukiyo-e) from the 17th century through the 19th century; waves and rivers, how these waters are rendered fascinates me.
The way I create my work is I will try to transmit energy and emotion on to the surface, whether on a paper or a wall, by reacting and responding to the previous marks I’ve made on the surface which is usually cuts or carvings. I relate to the Zen priests practice to enhance their concentration by raking the gravel of the Zen gardens, there are similarities between my work. I find it exciting and beautiful the way I cut, carve, repeat lines pause and think for a moment, and repeat.
Darius Thompson
Squares, 36”x36”, acrylic, resin on canvas, 2019
Location: Dallas, Texas
Statement:
My introduction into fine art came via an unlikely source, my baking and pastry background. It is from this training that I have made a crossover from plate to canvas. I use the same tools on canvas as I did in the kitchen, from squeeze bottles to pastry bags.
I have always been drawn to geometric shapes for the simple beauty of them. A square is a square but how others view it depends on how I choose to present it. I make geometric abstract art that pulls viewers in but still begs to be viewed at a distance. Up close you see the small details of the individual lines, layers and textures. From afar, the strength of each line coming together to form a unified piece of art is key.
Sergei Tsvetkov
Location: Brookline, Massachusetts
Website: http://sergeitsvetkov@com
Statement:
The beauty and structure of the eroded surface, whether it belongs to a defaced fresco or rhythms of ancient architecture, becomes a metaphor of a collective memory, that which is lost and that which is newly found. I am attracted to fragments and faded remains of the past. They lead me to explore things left behind from other times and other cultures that still resonate today. They have beauty and sadness, complexity and simplicity all together. The etching plate holds the memory of each mark. Each new set of overlapping shadows and etched marks delineates the creative process and in effect, underlies the singular beauty of the etching plate as a recording mechanism. It can be manipulated yet it also brings unexpected results; a combination of things that are controlled and uncontrolled, much like time itself.
Charles Turnell
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Statement:
Growing up in Belize, Central America, I was introduced to the world of photography via the timeless articles of the National Geographic Magazine. Page by page, I explored all the hidden and seemingly inaccessible pockets of the world. I marveled at the intricate geometry of many different landscapes, the colorful exotic flora and fauna, the innovations of man, and the mystery of the unique world cultures. This greatly influenced my appreciation for this world in her infinite, yet, elusive beauty, the interest in the great world cultures and has driven my passion for photography. It is my hope that with each photograph to bring appreciation, to create awareness and to awaken curiosity of the majestic mysteries of the world. This collection as a whole, creates a brighter world, a reflection of humanity, what I like to call, a “Substance of Life!”
Andy Van Der Tuin
Location: Olivette, Missouri
Statement:
By instinct as well as by training I have always had an interest in reducing components to their most elemental form and in creating flexible kits of parts that can be assembled in a variety of configurations and sizes. These can range from individual small scale works to multiple piece, large scale, environmental installations. Ideas are frequently theme based or driven by experiments with a newly discovered material.
Maggie Van Emden
Untitled A, 12”x12”, acrylic paint on cradled wood panel, 2019
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Erin Wheary
Location: Portland, Oregon
Website: http://www.erinmonetwheary.com
Statement:
I am a researcher.
My work derives from the application of ordered systems onto various materials. This design process relies heavily on mathematical proportions, numerical sequences, and the scientific method. The circular nature of the scientific method allows for deep investigation by subtly shifting individual variables. I am motivated by the logic and control that is manifested in numbers. Concept provides a pattern which makes form. The application of these proportions to materials of organic origins such as wood, cardboard, or paper initiates an unpredictable relationship between order and chaos, geometric and organic.
In my practice, a predetermined process is established. By changing one variable with every iteration, I investigate material emerging with an insight into how far these elements can be extended to their breaking point. Process is materialized and the goal of fusing material, process, and content are realized.
Carmile Zaino
Re-Mix|Sign Series|No38 Quad|Dumpster 718|, 40”x40”, digital collage printed on archival canvas, Re-mixed 2019
Location: New York, New York
Website: Instagram: @zaino711
Statement:
The artistic process I call Re-Mixing is the combination of photography and collage which breaks down examples of mundane communication - usually printed or handwritten or hand-drawn street signs - into visual elements that are transformed into visual abstractions or Re-Mixes.
The term remixing (no caps, no hyphen) more commonly describes a musical process that breaks down a piece into elements and re-records them in a different way.
A Re-Mix (my term) is actually a digital collage. It is based on the same idea as a musical remix but uses digital techniques. Despite its modern origins, its is related to the beginning of art itself when primitive man used a few strokes - on a cave wall, perhaps to communicate information with symbols.
In time, these markings became letters, alphabets, words, numbers, all useful forms often of incredible grace and beauty. Seen from this perspective, words are symbols, a lesson that became clear to me a few years ago during trips to India and China when I became fascinated by the street signs that I could not read but which I could appreciate as visual symbols and abstractions.
After photographing these signs that were either handwritten or in the form of calligraphy, typography or graffiti, I returned home to continue to photograph and then remix the symbols that I saw around me everyday in New York City and on the roads and in the towns of Delaware County.
The art of Re-Mixing reflects my love of letterforms of all kinds, especially hand lettering, calligraphy, and typography and my fascination with collaging by which the mundane and literal is transformed into the abstract and innovative. Such is the work that is presented here for consideration.
Susan Zale
Labyrinth 5, 9.5”x10”, ink and colored pencil on Bristol, 2017
Location: Wheeling, Illinois
Website: http://www.susanzale.com
Statement: A grid and a limited palette are used in this work, allowing for variations on a theme. Lines are placed in each square, according to a numerical formula. Squares and rectangles then are placed to define areas of the grid. Four colors are used within each shape, allowing some areas within the work to come forward, and some to recede.
Maggie Zografakis
Location: Chesterfield, Missouri
Statement:
I get my inspiration for painting from my surroundings and my many travels. Shapes and vibrant color always play a vital role in my work.
I love painting outdoors and use my sketches for developing my paintings.