Creative Thresholds

by Rachel Troutman

I curl up on the sofa, grab my iPad, and begin to draw….

Rachel Troutman is an abstract artist living and working in rural Central Pennsylvania.  She earned her degree in Sport Management from Slippery Rock University but after a few years decided to focus on her passion for creating bold artwork on recycled wood, thereby helping the environment.  Rachel has a studio in Lykens, PA, where she also lives with her 4 furry kitties.  Her website is Staunch Studio. Check out more of her work at Etsy and Big Cartel or follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

by Peter Ciccariello

ABOUT THE SERIES

Works in Textual artifacts are created using an array of 2-D and 3-D software programs and take their inspiration from common methods of archeological excavation. Just as ancient artifacts are deciphered through the recovery and examination of the remains of a culture, environmental data and detritus that they leave behind, these image artifacts represent the remains of poems and writings that have been eroded and battered in a digital process. That process attempts to dissect and deconstruct a text and then reconstruct that text as an evolutionary image. The final visual is created by digitally mapping the image with a copy of itself, in a sense, forming an archeological topography of the material essence of the image. This visual topography, created from the value scale of the image, is excavated from within the process revealing the remains, historical marks and gestures from the original source data. In this way, these images become metaphors of themselves, just as the incidental evidence of our human ancestors provide a reflective metaphor for our own lives.

A NOTE ABOUT PROCESS

This art is defined by process, a hybrid of the essential elements of painting, photography and writing. The digital matrix that is created is at the core of this work, provides a new form of plate printing, a virtual digital matrix that functions as the film negative in photography or the copper plate that is the basis of etching, intaglio and engraving printmaking processes. This digital image matrix now provides the possibility to be output from 3-D printers and realized as free-standing sculptures or in this case, sculptured wall hangings. This unprecedented freedom of instantiation provides the artist with the ability to output multiple types of art realized from the same original matrix.

In this sense, every instantiation of the matrix is an original with the unique aura of the artists’ conception. In an age of ever more sophisticated reproductive technologies the image matrix becomes the postmodern link to the artist’s hand. The abstract schema that becomes an imprint is akin to personal writing, instantiated as a new private language – part sign, part symbol and part code, this image surface becomes a non-navigational road map of fragmented and disassembled narratives, disruptive and de-centering yet at the same time oddly imbued with an inner, familiar, and abstracted order.

Peter Ciccariello finds his inspiration in the fields and forests of Northeastern Connecticut.

His work explores the fine lines between image and text, and is in constant inquiry about what is and what is not poetry.

Ciccariello’s work has appeared in print & online, in amongst other places, Poetry Magazine, Fogged Clarity, Hesa inprint, Leonardo On-Line, National Gallery of Writing, and also appeared  in the 2013 issue of MAINTENANT 7, A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art.

New work gallery – http://invisiblenotes.blogspot.com/
Poetry and writing – http://poemsfromprovidence.blogspot.com/

You can find my art and writing updates on Twitter
https://twitter.com/ciccariello On Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/peter.ciccariello

by Seana Reilly

Approximately seven years ago Seana Reilly decided to call it quits on her previous architectural career and move back to the east coast to make a go of it as an artist. She spent a couple years figuring out what she should be making, experimenting mostly. A visiting artist from the UK showed her something new he’d developed in his studio – liquid graphite. She likens it to hearing a song for the very first time that she somehow already knew. This medium expressed the way nature moves and it needed precise measurements, but it also imposed a distinct lack of control over the final product. Using this built-in framework, she started making drawings/paintings that simultaneously addressed both western science and eastern philosophy, two ways of seeing that she had been trying to align for most of her life.

Seana lives in Atlanta and currently has a studio at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. She has work in the High Museum’s Drawing Inside the Perimeter show and at Stanley Beaman Sears both until late September 2013. You can also see her work at Hartsfield Jackson International Airport’s T-Concourse until January 2014.

You can view more of her work at www.sreilly.com and contact her at info@sreilly.com.

by Brent Houzenga

In 2006 Brent Houzenga stumbled across a discarded photo album with portraits from the 1890s. This set off a surge of inspiration. Since then Brent has amassed an extensive body of work, attempting to breathe new life into the individuals in the photographs through vibrantly colored abstract paintings that incorporate stencil work and spray paint. His graffiti style brings a bold contemporary touch to the “old-timey” figures.

Later, Brent extended this style to contemporary portraits. He frequently uses one image over and over again, casting each subject in a new light by layering a new design on top. This allows him endless opportunities to explore the various facets of an individual’s character. His paintings are bright and bold. They draw interesting links between the past and the present, and between what we perceive and what is real.

Check out more of Brent’s work at his website. Contact him at BrentHouzenga@hotmail.com.

By Christopher Hutchinson

Every year during Black History Month, there are lists of galleries offering up a redefined, reclaimed, and rethought interpretation of the Black image in art. Most of these offerings fail to live up to these promises, and Question Bridge: Black males -represent & redefine, like most, is the latest exhibition to fail.  Question Bridge was on view at the Chastain Arts Center in Atlanta until March17 2012, part of a multi-exhibition event that included simultaneous showings of the Question Bridge project at the Brooklyn Museum, Oakland museum of California, Utah museum of Contemporary Art, and Sundance Film Festival 12. In 2013 the project has shown or will be showing at the Zora! Festival, Exploratorium, Missouri History Museum, Amistad Center for Art and Culture, Milwaukee Art Museum, Birmingham Museum of Art and the Gantt Center for African American Arts and Culture, among others. The Question Bridge (film) project intends to quell the remaining divisive practices still present amongst black men for many reasons, such as age, sex, economics, and many innate boundaries in the Black community.  The format is simple and direct. One African American male asks a question then three or four different African American males attempt to Answer.  Questions range from serious to funny and celebrities, prisoners, old, young, urban, and the well to do answer the questions of Black male identity.  While this is a very important dialogue to have, the Iconic Black image gets in the way of the film’s intent to represent & redefine.  The black male image is a sign that has become the signifier for: the primitive, violence, and evil—the binary opposite of White.

Upon entrance into the Chastain Arts Center gallery, the viewer is confronted immediately by the Black Male image.  On the left, a 5 monitor video installation of the Question Bridge film, a collaborative effort by the artists Chris Johnson and Hank Willis Thomas, who co-directed the film, and Bayete Ross Smith a co-producer. On the right, 7 large-scale prints, which are dreamy, highly digitized, and romantically charged with African American imagery. A large quote is written on the wall: “ The history of the American Negro is the history of strife-This longing to attain self conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and true self” from W.E.B Du Bois’ Souls of Black folks 1903.  The quote references Du Bois’ theory of double consciousness.  Double consciousness conceptualizes the effect of the Black image in relation to its binary White counterpart; the awareness of that Black becomes exotic to the norm. Du Bois engaged this problem in hopes that Blacks would not see themselves as exotic, but rather the norm.

Beyete Ross Smith’s 3 large-scale photographs are not a redefinition of the Black Icon; it is the reuse of the already defined, illustrating the literal depiction of Du Bois’s double consciousness.  Smith’s interpretation is more like a regurgitation of a 2-minute skim of Du Bois, a less than cliffs notes version.  The first image Shih is a mirrored digitized profile of an Asian man looking at himself, where the only significant difference between the two is the difference of dress. The next image Nomadic Rahn is an African American man with the same format, profile and different dress. Finally the third image Shih Two is the same Asian man from before in the same format, different clothes sandwiching/ bookending the African American.  Smith’s statement claims that he is exploring the “the new gaze…that make up our entire selves”.  At best Smith achieves the illustration of duality. This is not the exotic “gaze” Du bois referenced.  Du bois pronounced the differences of hair, skin, and bone as signifiers of difference of the African American-paper bag tests, pencil tests, and facial angle skull diagrams are used to define these differences for Whites.

Hank Willis Thomas’ photograph is filled with pity and contempt- contempt wrapped in the contrived iconography of the Black male.  Thomas’s Priceless photograph is a shining example of this “pity” Du Bois does not want us to engage.  Thomas uses the very familiar Master Card commercial as the base context of this piece. The large photograph of an African American funeral at its end, by the gravesite. The photograph is covered with text “3 piece suit $250…new socks $2…9mm pistol $79… gold chain $400…bullet $0.60…Picking the perfect casket for your son…Priceless”.  This work is conceptually lazy, not because of its appropriation, but because of the way Black image functions. It fits within binary perfectly, in the defined violence already signified within the American construct of Blackness.

The Question Bridge film plays the same tune, as the rest of the work presented, an emotional invitation to further diagnose the problems with the Black mentality. Looking at those faces, some incarcerated, some tearing up, invites that pity and contempt to a project based on honest dialogue. This honest dialogue is important; it should not be on display, where you may donate to save Black men.  It becomes a plea to America to solve this African American issue that African Americans cannot solve for themselves.

The main drawback in this exhibition is the reliance on the image to adequately challenge the context of the Black male identity.  Black identity is made up of a lot of things.  Glenn Ligon Tackles it with dialectic texts.  Terry Adkins tackles it with performance.  Renee Cox with undisputed strength.  The Black male icon represented here in America, cannot be used to redefine the systemic results of the image of the Black male.  The original structure is still fully in tact, racial profiling being one of the most direct.  To tackle the issues related to Blackness, one must redefine, reimagine, rethink, and reinterpret Whiteness.  To deal with blackness alone will not change this binary structure, they are forever tied in the semiotics of race.

Christopher Hutchinson is an Assistant Professor of Art at Atlanta Metropolitan College and Archetype Art Gallery Owner in Atlanta, Ga. He received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Painting from Savannah College of art & Design, Atlanta and his Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama. He lived in Alabama for 10 years before moving to Atlanta in 2008. His installations mostly consist of black folded paper airplanes.

Learn more about Christopher and his work at Black Flight 144.

by Franck Balestracci

Artist: Franck Balestracci

I am a French musician and composer. My music is an itinerary, an invitation into my world perception, my relation to things, to beings etc. In my pictures (digital collages), indirect, transformed, I try to translate modified realities as furtive snapshots. I’ve always incorporated the association and interaction of sound arts with visual arts in my concepts. Each of these visual “samples” is the expression of a view of what surrounds us.

Web Sites:
http://www.franck-balestracci.fr.nf

http://www.franck-balestracci.infos.st

by Jenny Wantuch

Jenny M.L. Wantuch is an artist creating figurative art using traditional media as well as digital media. Inspired by the complexity and beauty of life and nature, and her own imagination, she enjoys exploring her inner and outer world.  In her art, she seeks to find visual harmony and yet allow dynamic movement.  Jenny was born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden.  From an early age, she loved to draw, paint and create stories. Her family has for generations worked as farmers, and since the 1600’s lived in the area around Uppsala. During her childhood in Sweden, Jenny spent most of her summers at the farm. She developed a deep interest and appreciation for the beauty of nature. Early influences were her grandfather, a storyteller and draftsman, her aunt, a portrait sculptor and painter, and both her grandmothers whose talents for various crafts seemed to be endless.

Jenny moved to Northern California in 2001. Jenny is a full time artist, working from her studio in Burlingame.  Jenny regularly exhibits her work in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has private collectors in USA and in Europe.

For more information please visit: http://jennywantuch.com. You can also follow Jenny on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JMLWantuchArt.

By Hilary Yarbrough

Artist: Hilary Yarbrough
I began drawing at a young age as a way to break down what I was taking in and to understand every moving part. As an adult, I am still breaking the world down into pieces, as a means to stop it for a moment and give an image to every story. I am self-taught, and my favorite mediums are those which are more volatile–the watercolors and inks and gouaches–because they do what they want, as opposed to the final outcome being entirely in my hands. I try to be playful–if dark–when I paint, to lessen the weight of reality, but also to remind myself that I am small and everything is fine.

Check out more of Hilary’s work at Anti Illustrator.

Artist: Matías Sierra

I was born in Argentina and my first contact with art was at school when I was six years old. At nine I began to work at an art studio with various media: paint, ink, charcoal, clay, etc. I developed a surreal style from the beginning. At thirteen or fourteen years old I worked almost exclusively with clay and I continue to do so. My artwork centers around the body and its parts. In several of my sculptures, the hands are the main subject. I can’t give a reason for this. People always ask me why and I never have a response. Some ideas for my work are born from my own life experience or feeling. Others are simple ideas.

For the past seven years, I have lived in Montreal, Canada, developing my artistic career. I did my first solo exhibition two years ago and two others with my studio colleagues. I am self-taught. I don’t have a background in art studies.

You can view more of Matías’s work at Devianart as well as his “Esculturas” and “Under the Skin” albums on Google+.  Contact him at matias.sierra@gmail.com.

by Ilisa M. Millermoon

When I began painting female figures I chose to title the series “More Than.”

We are Divine creatures with many facets. The physical is only one facet.

We are physical, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, passionate. We are “More Than.”

The moment we embrace ourselves as Divine creatures we know no limits to our creative expression.