Ruth Asawa: Life's Work

Ruth Asawa at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, photos by N.Exarhu

I saw this very beautiful show at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. Asawa is a remarkable American artist, I had never heard of. Her experimental sculptures are totally innovative, poetic and etherial. She explores light and shadow, weight and volume, materiality and transparency and the in-between or negative space.

"I am able to take a wire line and go into the air and define the air without stealing it from anyone. A line can enclose and define space while letting the air remain air. You can see right through most of my sculpture...And I like the way the pieces overlap, because they are transparent. Transparency is very exciting to me." 

-Ruth Asawa

Pressing Matters

I am getting ready for a week long residency at Karen Kunc’s Constellation Studios in Nebraska. After a long pause of a couple of years I have not been doing printmaking, I am going to start developing my project under the name “Ikat DNA”. 
I am going to create a hybrid between photography and printmaking, exploring the visual vocabulary of Uzbek Ikat textiles and the faces of Uzbekistan’s future. 
My passion for Ikat textiles brought me to the ancient cities on the Silk Road. Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent. I have spent three weeks touring the landlocked Central Asian Country, crossing deserts, the steppes, visiting fabulous cities and monuments and taking pictures of children. 

Indictio/ Ινδικτος

On the occasion of the Indictio of September 1, 2018 I am starting a personal art blog under the ospices of Charbonnel . 

First and foremost  I should explain what indictio means. 

Since the Roman times Indictio marked the beginning of the year and the time of harvest, compulsory provisions of food and clothing in preparation of the winter, as well as the collection of taxes, the start of the fiscal year. 
In modern day Greece, Indictio marks the new year, a day that counts the time since the beginning of the creation, approximately 7980 years ago. Also Indictio/ Ινδικτος marks still in the rural Greece the first day of the new, as well as the ecclesiastical year. 

From now on, this will be the place I present and write about  my art. Monoprints, photography and ceramics. 
Stay tuned. 
Nancy Exarhu