Creative Thresholds

by Ashley Sauder Miller

These Two, 10 X 10″

At the End, 50 X 35″

But this Belongs to Us, 5 X 8″

Pulling Things Together 1, 11 X 14″

Bind and Separate, 48 X 50″

Quick Fix, Under the Rug, 56 X 60″

Cover/Veil (Blue), 30 X 40″

Here Again, 12 X 12″

Little Yellow, 4 X 4″

Pink Rug and Chair, 28 X 60″

Interior Spaces (My Memory is Fuzzy), 30 X 50″

Interior Spaces (Cover/Hide), 48 X 50″

Ashley Sauder Miller holds an MFA from James Madison University (2007) with an emphasis in painting and drawing.  She actively exhibits her work, maintains a regular practice  from her home studio, works as the director at local art center, and is the primary caregiver for her four children.

In my most recent work, I am particularly aware of the demands of motherhood, preservation of memory, and repetitious patterns of thought and behavior. Consistent in my work throughout the past number of years are my children’s mark making, textile design, Biblical text and stories, and a deep rooted passion for painting, drawing, and making.

Website: http://www.ashleysaudermiller.com/

Instagram: @ashleysaudermiller

Facebook: Ashley Sauder Miller Art

In November 2011, I began talking about the Arab Spring in my classes and found myself looking out at blank stares. I asked my students to raise their hands if they had not heard of the term Arab Spring. Surprisingly, all the students’ hands in two classes went up, except for one, a member of the military. As he sat there looking down shaking his head, I realized that my students were completely unaware of the current global political and economic unrest almost a full year after it had started. Most, at that point, were also oblivious of the three-month-old Occupy Movement that was spreading across the U.S.

Because of this, I began to ask why it was, in the age of social media and instant information, that many people in this country, not just my students, were unaware of current global events — events that included economic collapses, toppled governments, mass civilian deaths, and the overwhelming use of force against civilians. I observed that American mass media, specifically the network news shows, provides a minimal, glossed-over account of world conflicts, restricting the viewer’s knowledge and understanding of events beyond their television screen.

Focusing on the conflicts and uprisings of the past year in Greece, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Bahrain and New York, PreOccupied brings to the forefront how consumers of American mass media are distracted by entertainment and disconnected from empathy.

These particular images were appropriated from first person videos that were shared via YouTube and social media outlets in order to serve as eyewitness accounts of the conflicts occurring in their respective countries.

The installation features live, broadcast television in which the viewer is free to “channel surf”.  The sound projected in the space is a mash-up of the audio that accompanied the selected YouTube videos.  The viewer’s experience of watching American television is challenged by the gunshots and screams that play on a continuous loop.

PreOccupied will be featured at the Rebecca Randall Bryan Art Gallery at Coastal Carolina University May 19 – June 28, 2014.   http://www.coastal.edu/bryanartgallery/

“Greece 2011”, 48”x48”, pastel, graphite, charcoal, oil pastel

“Bahrain 2011”, 48”x48”, pastel, graphite, charcoal, oil pastel

“New York 2011”, 48”x48”, pastel, graphite, charcoal, oil pastel

“Syria 2011”, 48”x48”, pastel, graphite, charcoal, oil pastel

“Egypt 2011”, 48”x48”, pastel, graphite, charcoal, oil pastel

“Libya 2011”, 48”x48”, pastel, graphite, charcoal, oil pastel

Michael Dickins is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is created with a variety of media including photography, printmaking, drawing, installation, sound and video. His balance of both digital and material processes allows him to create pieces that are both expressive and engaging.

Dickins is interested in the impact that the technological advances of photography has had, and is having, on our visual culture. His current work focuses on the importance of the snapshot and vernacular video both as art and as an influential medium in historical and contemporary societies.

Dickins holds a BFA in photography/printmaking from Georgia Southern University and an MFAIA from Goddard College.  He is currently the gallery manager of the Curtis R. Harley Art Gallery and an adjunct professor of art at the University of South Carolina Upstate in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

http://www.michaeldickins.com

https://www.facebook.com/michaeldickinsart

twitter: mdickins

by J. Adam McGalliard

“Pink Magnolias,” Oil on Linen

“Sunflower Fields,” Oil on canvas

“Troche”, Oil on canvas

“Allison,” Oil on Linen on Panel

“Antonia,” Oil on Panel

“After Arcimboldo 1,” C-Print

“After Arcimboldo 3,” C-Print

“Headless,” C-Print

“Intake,” C-Print

“The Scream,” C-Print

J. Adam McGalliard received an MFA from the New York Academy of Art with a scholarship for study and a BFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where he was the recipient of the Myrtle Reeves Scholarship. McGalliard taught painting, drawing, and printmaking as a faculty member at the Sawtooth Center for Visual Art in Winston-Salem, NC. In New York, he taught as an Adjunct Painting Professor at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York. He also worked as a Post Graduate Teaching Assistant at the New York Academy of Art, NYC.  For Five years he worked as a painter and sculptor for world-renowned artist Jeff Koons.

His latest work is a series of photographs and paintings involving the projection of images on figures. The photographs are works in and of themselves while also informing the painting process. The projected image works as a double-edged sword. It can starkly reveal something that is hidden, like the writhing tattoos of the Illustrated Man, or it can mask an individual as a concealing veil or garment that creates a protected outer hull.

Learn more about Adam and see more of his work at his Website or visit his Facebook page.

“Scintillula”
Oil paint and pencil on paper
ca. a4
2012

“Double flute”
Oil paint and pencil on paper
ca. a4
2012

“O courageous”
Photography
2011

“Birds in a tree”
Acrylic painting on canvas
size 40 cm x 30 cm
2013

“Arch brown gold”
Acrylic painting on canvas, monotype
70 cm x 50 cm
2007

“Linguistically”
Photography
2010

“Carriage”
Acrylic painting
30 cm x 40 cm
2008

“Street refuge blue pink”
Acrylic painting on canvas, monotype
50 cm x 70 cm
2006

“Sphere 4”
Acrylic painting on canvas
55 cm x 46 cm
2007

“Aureous being”
Oil paint and pencil on paper
ca. a4
2011

“The open”
Photography
2012

“All about women”
Pencil and oil paint on paper
ca. a4
2012

“Oyseaux, arbres”
Oil paint and pencil on paper
2011

“How”
Photography
2013

“Silk apple-tree”
Acrylic painting on canvas
40 cm x 30 cm
2013

Swiss visual artist, Verena Baumann, was born in 1964 and has been working for thirty years with paint, pencil, scissors and a camera. After beginning her career as a graphic designer she expanded her interests and activities towards the freedom of a more personal art form. By living a less compromised life, she began to discover and explore a more instinctive use of line, shape, color, texture, and composition. Balancing the union of harmony and fragmentation is a primary motivation in her search for artistic truth. Today she explores spontaneousness and improvisation as a transforming fuel, nurturing her love for painting. The pursuit of ordinary magic became the most valued attribute for her creations. Find out more about Verena at http://about.me/verenabaumann.

Claudio Parentela is an illustrator, painter, photographer, mail artist, cartoonist, collagist, and freelance journalist who’s been active many years in the international underground scene. During 1999 he was a guest of the BREAK 21 FESTIVAL in Ljubliana (Slovenja). His obscure & crazy artworks are featured and shown in many art galleries,  endlessly on the web, & in the real world too…. Selected galleries and publications: Furtherfield, Mysupadupa, Saatchi Online, Graphola, Virtual Shoes Museum, One Five4 Gallery, Art Setter, Aoa Collective, Rise Art, Wallery, Blue Canvas, Rojo Magazine, Nakedbutsafe, Hollow Magazine, THVUNDERMAG,Revista Metal, Lasso Magazine, Nasty Magazine.

http://www.claudioparentela.net 

http://claudioparentel.altervista.org/

https://www.facebook.com/claudio.parentela.1

http://claudioparentela.tumblr.com/

http://twitter.com/claudioparentel

by Christopher Hutchinson

Michael David is widely regarded as the one of the top encaustic artists of the 21st century. He has built his career on abstraction and an intuitive need to explore the continuity of wax as a medium, which has presently developed into dense and lush pictorial landscapes. His work is included in the permanent public collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum in New York,and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, as well as in many prominent private collections.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11310604.htm

On November 7^th 2013 Bill Lowe gallery in Atlanta exhibited “America’s Most Acclaimed Encaustic Painter, Michael David.” I was initially impressed with the scale, technique, and medium of this exhibition.  It seemed that all David’s accolades were well-deserved, but upon further investigation there are obvious questions to the validity to these claims.

Encaustic

Michael David’s encaustic paintings are certainly the best without question in comparison to what usually passes as the encaustic craft.  David is a master of the encaustic, but Postmodernism separated the labor and precision of craft from art.  The time, scale, and medium of these “masterpieces” are not to be considered as part of the rubric as to what qualifies as exemplary art.  We may no longer judge artwork based on its craftsmanship.  Only if that craftsmanship is so terrible that it interferes with the concept.  In David’s work there is an overwhelming need to compliment its technique rather than the dialogue.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11310604.htm

MICHAEL DAVID – THE  ONE-EYED TURTLE AND THE FLOATING SANDALWOOD LOG VII – ENCAUSTIC & MIXED MEDIA ON PANEL – 44 X 51 -2013

Maple Viewing at Takao (mid-16th century) by Kanō Hideyori (ja) is one of the earliest Japanese paintings to feature the lives of the common people.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukiyo-e

“Michael David may be the most innovative master of immediate surface since the Abstract Expressionists. He has acknowledged his debt to Abstract Expressionism, but he has transformed it.”-Donald Kuspit

The conversation that has been brought up readily in the David’s work is Abstract expressionism, and this comparison for most would be acceptable, but this is not completely accurate. David’s “Navigator” has a replica war airplane that appears to have crashed in the sea of wax on the surface. What is transformative about this? “Navigator” is clearly a wax illustration. The piece is static and placed the opposite of expression. This piece was the key to David’s codex. Often three-dimensional objects are placed on the surface glued in place by the encaustic medium. The proper term for these would be arranged artifacts, an impression of expression.

http://www.artnet.com/ag/fineartdetail.asp?wid=426285993&gid=76041
Michael David “The Navigator”

Surface & Sculpture

Painters with an affinity for surface manipulation often become stuck in-between painting and their aspirations to become completely three-dimensional.  These painters never accomplish more than an additive relief.   These reliefs are unsuccessful at painting and sculpture equally.   These artworks do not have the deliberation of space to become suitable sculpture, equally also do not meet the fluidity of paint. David’s is additive praxis with no other concern but to accumulate more.  More does not equal excellent.

A bas-relief at Banteay Srei in Cambodia depicts Ravana shaking Mount Kailasa, the Abode of Lord Siva.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relief#Notable_reliefs

Thornton Dial & Academia

 The best piece of the exhibition was due to David’s new muse, a Thornton Dial inspired piece called “Ophelia”.  Again here we have a second key to David’s exhibition appropriation.  A fusion of derivative influences that are not so readily apparent of which Thornton Dial is the most recent.   This exhibition had all David’s muses present, Ukiyo-e Japanese composition and color, Abstract Expressionist technique, and Southern Folk art all academically-appropriated.  David is well aware of this and has credited those influences, however should this be accepted the way Donald Kuspit intends?

“David’s abstract paintings renew immediacy; they reconstitute and strengthen, even apotheosize it. They raise it to a feverishly fresh intensity with their remarkable touch, indicating they are among the very best painterly abstractions made.”-Donald Kuspit

 Or should it be placed as cleverly disguised influences remade with encaustic mastery?  Not fresh. Not New. Well crafted.

http://www.artnet.com/ag/fineartdetail.asp?wid=426285994&gid=76041Michael David’s “Ophelia”

Christopher Hutchinson is an Assistant Professor of Art at Atlanta Metropolitan State 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 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.