Inspirations, Eighth Annual Juried Exhibition at Off the Wall Gallery in Dirty Franks
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Vivant Art Collection 5 Year Anniversary, Hussain Saidi, mixed media on wood panel
Read DoN‘s review of the Vivant Art Collection five year anniversary party at the new DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog.
Written and photographed by DoN Brewer.
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Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery
October 13th, 2012 artist Hiro Sakaguchi presented an artist talk to a crowd of art enthusiasts at Seraphin Gallery on Pine Street. DoN exerpted and transposed some of the lecture as best as he could.
“This photo was 2011, I think it’s after everything happened in Japan, the tsunami and everything. I had the chance to go to New Hampshire and had the chance to view this mountain. But for me I wasn’t thinking about the mountain, looking at the horizon line, like everybody else, when you have this kind of landscape in front of you. For me, I thought about the tsunami, the tragedy you know and I started thinking about it. So this is the feeling I got on the top of the mountain when I was thinking about my native country, I know what people are thinking about, it’s very meditative that way. This was the first thing I was thinking about and it starts from here. It’s how it started in my head, every artwork. ”
Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery
“Let’s start with drawing here. This drawing is called Flower Happening and as you see, there’s an image of an airplane. I think because of the apocalypse thinking in my head, documentary movies about war, natural disasters type of movies, so, one movie showed airplanes carpet bombing in Germany, Japan, everywhere. So it’s kind of like I had this it occurred to me that this violent act, I wanted to make it to something positive. Somebody told me the other day, like 60s people put flowers into the barrel of guns, you know Make Peace Not War, so putting instead of bomb, I put flowers to make it peaceful. You can see underneath is actually the town where I came from. Chiba City, Japan. This is a drawing and then a painting. The drawing was different, conversation wise, was fast but the painting was next.”
Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery
Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery
Table top battle field with toy soldiers whose guns are replaced with flowers, tanks made from thread spools and hills made from Art Forum magazines on a soccer field of fake grass. “I was thinking about this one when I was making it, first of all, as a kid I didn’t have the technique to do this, but if I was ten years old and I did this I would be so happy. But, it came back to me know that I can make a child’s toy on this battle field. And also a toy I kind of think represents society, how our society functions, how we always build a toy, you know? Kids love their toys. It’s a questioning of functional toys and our society. And also a question of human violence.”
“I just got a FaceBook advertisement for a video game saying, “Peace is Not An Option!”. It’s really a violent way we have these games, war as a game. It’s kind of interesting because we don’t have to do it in real life. I always kind of question those things. So this has three things going on here: the field is a soccer field, a game field and also a battle field. And like I said about the question of human violence, soccer is one of the most popular sports in the world but supposedly started from an eighth century England people started kicking someone’s skull. So, it’s a violent game. And yet as a child we crave something like that. Of course, this is artwork, so you’re questioning the function of art. See how thick this Art Forum is?”
Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery
“I enjoy doing splashing, throwing paint, my technique is actually air rifle used to splash the paint. This one is similar, a picture of a battle ship, the idea is a 21st Century Noah’s Ark. So, it’s a lot of bad things have happened in the world, somehow I saw this World War II Japanese battle ship, so similar (to the drawing) I wanted to make something peaceful. So I take all the weapons out and change and added trees, a green roof, and also solar and wind power, and then far away you can see the big tsunami coming in. It’s like like combining a History Channel program with recent events. I think if you go to Japan or Europe, you’ll see these mangled concrete, to stop the force of the waves.”
Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery
“These sculptures, I don’t know if you know this, this whole show is about Love and Peace. This is a toy from when I was a kid, this is a simple toy made from a spool, chop stick and candle. And when you wind it up it moves. And because of the cuts, it can climb over the landscape.”
Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery
“This big painting first I started from that rapid drawing. I imagined one theory of how wars end, a kind of imagined myself, start from that one (the drawing) then expand to that one (the battle ship) to this one. It’s kind of three different stages of my thinking. You have to start from somewhere. For this painting I was thinking of a color field painting with the splash, kind of more of an abstraction. The painting started from a floor splash, paint and let dry, paint and let dry, then I out the drawing. So it is horizontal and vertical where it came together, a combination of drawing and painting.”
Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery
“There is an animation by Takaji Matsudo, he made an animation about a space ship based on WWII battle ship and then in the future aliens attacking it, so people on earth decommissioned this battle ship and made it into a space ship…I never grew up drawing comics but for me I enjoyed history stories, but I thought now it’s kind of funny for me to make a comic image here, right now.”
Hiro Sakaguchi, Two Zero One Two at Seraphin Gallery
This last drawing combines the photograph of Hiro Sakaguchi on the mountain top staring at the moon surrounded by swirls made from another child’s toy, the Spirograph. Today is the last day for this inspiring show at Seraphin Gallery, so while you’re out visiting POST shows take some time to visit and remember your childhood.
Make Love, Not War 2012.
Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer
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Robert Bohne at Artists’ House Gallery
Robert Bohne at Artists’ House Gallery
Painter, Robert Bohne has exhibited his oil paintings at Artists’ House Gallery in Old City, Philadelphia four times now. His collection of recent and quite exquisite plein air paintings is a subtle yet sublime interpretation of landscapes and still life subjects. Each of the paintings has an immediacy and atmospheric naturalism that identifies the artist’s painting style. The small scale oils are richly narrative with information design and skilled brushwork. The artist’s eye is apparent in each piece especially with technical virtuosity of color and depth of field, drawing the viewer deep into the landscape or experiencing the delightful wetness of an object with expert application of paint.
Robert Bohne at Artists’ House Gallery
Robert Bohne described the group of paintings above to DoNArTNeWs, “On this wall are some plein air work, one piece, the middle piece, of the fountain was done in Majorca Spain. The original sketch was done in Majorca and I transferred the sketch into an oil painting. The one above that is strictly out of my head, it’s a fictitious cloud, The one on the bottom is one of the piers on the Delaware River.”
“I’m always looking for the light in a painting, a good focal point, and after I find that it’s almost like a leading actor in a movie or a play, that focal point. And then after that I look for the supporting actors, which are less significant pieces of the painting, but, they lead your eye to that focal point.”
Robert Bohne at Artists’ House Gallery
DoN thought this lobster painting looked familiar? The artist explained, “This is not the same as the one at The Plastic Club, this is the second. Actually it’s the same lobster, it’s spent a couple of months in my freezer and it came back out again and re-emmeged in another painting.”
Like impressionist masters, Bohne knows to return to his subjects repeatedly to gain the sense of realism he desires with less and less detail but infinitely more important visual information.
Robert Bohne at Artists’ House Gallery
Robert Bohne at Artists’ House Gallery, photo courtesy of the artist
“This is a painting that sat around for close to a year, I wasn’t quite sure what I didn’t like about it. And then after looking at the George Bellows show just recently, I realized that what this painting needed were a couple of areas of really dramatic contrast. And it was just a matter of putting a small dot of orange and a small dot of white for highlight. And, of course, increasing the shadow area to the left of that and it made the painting pop. And it made it work”
The sense of realism yet obvious impressionism almost makes the plate of shrimp look abstract. The oil painting displays Robert Bohne‘s mastery of the medium and certainly is desirable as a work of art, at once decorative yet with a sense of narrative liveness. Working oil on board, oil on paper or academy board, each painting delights the senses with the artist’s appreciation of artistic appropriateness and style. One aspect of Robert Bohne‘s paintings is that they look really finished, professional and accessible. The paintings are not overwhelmed by a fancy frame instead complemented by surround offering a lovely collaboration of image and frame.
“Debbie West is my framer, West End Frame Shop, she’s in Media PA. Debbie and I spend a lot of time trying to find the frames that won’t overwhelm a painting. It will just become part of the painting. Presentation is a very important aspect of showing work. Presentation and editing. What I mean by editing, there’s a certain painting on the far end which was twice the size it is now. After looking at it for quite a while, I realized that if I cropped this painting in half it would be a much more dynamic composition. And would work much better. And so, this is what I ended up with and I was very pleased with that. I’m sure I’m not the first artist to do that.”, said Robert Bohne.
Robert Bohne at Artists’ House Gallery, photo courtesy of the artist
DoN asked the artist how he knows when a painting is finished? “I don’t know. I try not to have too much of a finished look to my paintings. I want that spontaneity to remain when the piece is finished. One of the things I really dislike is photo-realism, so I want people to see the abstract qualities and some of the spontaneity in my work. I want more of my work to have a degree of life, I want it to breathe. A good example of this is the Marigolds, this is a painting that won Best Still Life in The Philadelphia Sketch Club Small Oils show last year. As you can see, it’s not a lot of detail, very quickly painted, very spontaneous, and yet you know what it is and actually has a quality of life to it.”
Robert Bohne at Artists’ House Gallery, 57 North 2nd Street, Philadelphia, PA, through October 28th, 2012.
Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer
except where noted.
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John Styner, Kerovac, digital painting, Absolutely Abstract 2012 at The Philadelphia Sketch Club
As a little DoNster, DoN dreamed of becoming an abstract artist. Stop reading if you’ve heard this story before but when Donnie was in the second grade he announced one evening at dinner he wanted to be an abstract artist when he grew up. Life magazine wrote about Jackson Pollack with color pictures of the wild action paintings seemingly anyone could do, Maynard G. Krebs was a beatnik icon on TV and American in Paris was a dream life-style for an artsy little boy. DoN‘s parents were appalled.
Kenneth Weiner, Quarks, acrylic, Absolutely Abstract 2012 at The Philadelphia Sketch Club
Abstract art is popular and accessible because it takes elements of reality and transforms them into something new allowing the viewer to see and feel whatever the image is transmitting. A mid twentieth century invention, abstraction is now everywhere in modern culture, how then do artists invigorate the style. Kenneth Weiner‘s Quarks layers colors in deep tones and lifts up through complementary films of washed on tones interjected with slashes of fire red in animistic actions and impressionistic light. This style of painting is recognizable as abstract yet has a narrative explained in color.
Su Knoll Horty, Deception in Pink, oil on canvas, Absolutely Abstract 2012 at The Philadelphia Sketch Club
Alan Fetterman, Area, oil, Absolutely Abstract 2012 at The Philadelphia Sketch Club
The Absolutely Abstract 2012 show represents a particular vision of the state of the art of abstraction in The Philadelphia region, a school of thought that permeates the show with many styles, techniques and media. Alan Fetterman‘s dense layers of color and multiple dimensions reads like a compendium of thought on the once controversial now ubiquitous style, easily drawing the viewer into an imaginary world where paint can do anything. The mastery of paint and brushwork, the illusory landscape, surreal dreamscapes still inspires the artistic memories of a little boy who wanted to grow up to be an abstract artist.
Absolutely Abstract 2012 at The Philadelphia Sketch Club – click the thumbnail
Look Mom & Dad! Little Donnie grew up to be an abstract artist after all. light being (Frank) appears to be the only photograph in the show, it is an honor to once again be included with the fantastical abstract paintings filling the historic gallery at The Philadelphia Sketch Club.
The artist reception and awards ceremony is Sunday, September 9th, 2012, 2:00-4:00pm, 235 South Camac Street, Philadelphia, The Avenue of the Artists.
Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer