Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Artist Statements: Spring Show

Artists showing Spring '09 at Ink Studios in Los Angeles, opening March 1st.

Lynn Bridget


Over the past 10 years, I have created dozens of geometric designs. While appearing perfectly symmetrical, each piece is actually hand drawn adding an organic feeling to the work.
With the launch of Bridget Imagines, I aim to create artwork and products for the home which are as beautiful on the surface as they are in their contribution to society. A lover of technology, design, spirituality, art, and science, I take interest in any convergence of those subjects.


Sofia Harrison


I create because I have to; story telling under broken shards of glass amuses and placates the inner sprites. My work embodies the collective thought patterns of our society: fractured but connected, expressing the combat of individuality, encompassing desire, spirit and reason. I am mixed. Media: paper, words, glass, paint, discarded and found objects, glue and grout.

The Materials & Process
I mainly cover old sash windowpanes, mannequin sculptures and furniture. Recently I have started working on wood boards. Truth is I will cover almost anything in glass and words if it’s not nailed down. I really enjoy using found objects, and I am a frequent ‘dumpster-diver’ and visitor to scrap yards --I like the idea of keeping things out of the landfills. I love glass, the feel the color and movement and I use a variety; stained, clear, dichrotic and mirror. I use oil pastels and or acrylics to paint out my piece first and then scrounge through magazines to clip out the words that will tell my stories. Each word is glued onto the hand cut glass and affixed to my ‘canvas’. I hand sand and grout the piece and then paint the grout. It is very much like traditional mosaic work but I have created my own twist through the incorporation of the word. When light shines from behind my windowpanes they become a different piece all together; I rather like the way the light can affect the piece.


Bren Bataclan

In the summer of 2003, I began my street art installation,
“The Smile Boston Project.” The project involves me leaving my cartoon-inspired acrylic paintings for people to take for “free” all over Boston (park benches, trains, schools, malls, etc.).
Attached to each painting is a note saying, “This painting is yours if you promise to smile at random people more often.” I have since gone worldwide with my “Smile Boston Project” and I have begun to exhibit my paintings across the country. The documentary about my street art project premiered at the Woods Hole Film Festival (Best Short Documentary winner) and a book about my artwork will be published by Gingko Press.
Goals:
- To bring art to people who typically do not visit art galleries and museums.
- Give paintings to folks who may not be able to afford original artwork.
- Just to see more smiles around the globe.
In a nutshell... I’ve always been a big fan of graffiti but I never had the guts to spray paint a wall. And so, I use different cities across the country and around the world as my exhibit spaces.

Artist site www.bataclan.com

Scott Kildall


I work at the intersection of media culture and human memory.

My artwork depicts collapse: between producer and consumer, viewer and viewed and simulated and real. I appropriate material, bend rules of consent, restage events and invite viewers to alter my exhibited pieces. These acts and products reflect a shift in cultural production — where ownership dips into a zone of ambiguity and image and sound is widely recycled. I use video, installation, prints, sculpture and performance to express desires for connection through a changing media landscape. In a recent project, I approached people at public events and asked them for a photograph. Instead, I took video.
From these hundreds of clips, I compiled a 40-minute edit of strangers waiting in anticipation and smiling towards the unknown.

Lately, I have been using Second Life — an online world with simulated physical space — as a site for artistic inquiry. Here, I remediate iconic performances and realize “imaginary objects” as paper sculptures. Traditional and new media collide then recombine into a hybrid form. The notion of the original form sinks in wake of these acts. My work reveals how humans express emotions in this new topography.
www.kildall.com



Robyn Holmes

Robyn Holmes is a native mid-westerner, with a Bachelors in Fine Art from Rhode Island School of Design. She worked in New York as a graphic designer, and is currently working in the film industry in Los Angeles. She has continued to make art, selling to private collectors, and has shown in cities as diverse as Memphis, New Delhi, and Washington, D.C.

Abstract Landscapes is a series of assemblages on paper representing my personal experiences, thoughts, and emotions. Paint on hand-made paper with found objects from nature, telephone wire, and other objects creates meaningful textures. Torn paper and painted symbols create graphic patterns and language relating to these experiences.

The series of Etheric Faces in pastel represents different ethnicities and world cultures in history. The color within and surrounding the face represents the nature of that personality. These faces have been simplified down to their basic shape in order to focus on their etheric qualities. As some historical paintings show an aura surrounding a saint, these portraits represent ordinary people with their own particular energy levels.






J.Scott Cilmi


Originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a graduate of the prestigious Tyler School of Art, Scott Cilmi studied painting with Frank Bramblett, Martha Diamond and Sidney Greene. He moved to the Bay Area in 1989. Always drawn to abstraction, the move to the west coast provided inspiration and motivation to explore color and form which serves as the backbone of all his paintings. New Work The focus of my recent abstract paintings has been to create a sense of energy and spirit through color, composition, line and shape. The energy may be loud and powerful or quiet and subtle. I let the painting decide. I am interested in using juxtapositions of color exploring how each layer affects the other. The paintings are more about what is left over after the process is completed. I do not set out with a specific image in mind, although there are certain images that are consistent, underlying rhythms that act as a starting point for each composition.
(copyright J. Scott Cilmi)

I work on several paintings concurrently, differing in scale, over a number of sessions; therefore, each painting is not the result of a single creative output but a culmination or refinement of a number of concentrated sessions. My work is a lot about looking at and making many small decisions within the composition until the painting says it is “done” and I have learned something from the piece.

Tim Weldon
An imaginative painter, Weldon practices what might be called
“a carnival of folkloric figuration.”

Weldon’s works are created with “DUENDE”, an inspired power of scorching passion laden with poetic verse that swirls through the composition like a cool breeze and leaves the viewer with feelings of déjà vu.

As a self-taught artist, Weldon’s body of work reveals a rich variety of themes and stylistic approaches, all facilitating a fertile arena of development.

Representing the confrontation of reality, Weldon’s paintings burst with energy and blazing color which culminate in an absolute celebration of life. Just as an illustrated fable provokes an emotion, each painting by Weldon invokes the color of life.

His surfaces are coated with thickly worked pigment mixed with sand and other materials to build layers of emotional texture. Then an assortment of rescued objects, like buttons, keys, sheet music, newsprint, old records and musical instruments are playfully choreographed, and inserted as metaphors to the dialogue and cast of characters thus defining each surface in terms of the centralized figure-ground and poetic relationship.
Paul E.Meyers, Step Gallery, New York

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