Catalan Vessels

Last October, I  spent almost a month at the Art Print Residence, outside of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain. 

At that time there was a lot of political activism regarding the secession of Catalonia from the rest of the country.  Catalonian flags hung on every building. There were protests, strikes and at the end battles in the center of Barcelona between the police and the protesters that set a pace of almost of a state of emergency. 

I could not stay indifferent to the general state of upheaval, yet I was there to print my woodcuts, images of  bowls and vessels, domestic elements that have little to do with politics. I realized that although I was in sunny Spain working in a great studio surrounded by a garden, a small piece of paradise, instead of using color that reflected the joi de vivre, I was working on compositions using black ink on black paper.

I was wandering why and then I realized that it was my impression of Spain, through the memory of Federico Garcia Lorca’s last play: The house of Bernarda Alba. 

It has been written at the eve of Spanish Civil war in 1936 and is a metaphor of oppressive government. The widow Bernarda Alba is running a very tight household, adhering to her strict rules without taking in consideration the desires and needs of her daughters, creating tension that culminates in tragedy. 

Printing sessions

I am a printmaker who does not own a press. For years I have created prints using alternative printing methods, until my recent residency at the Constellation Stdios, in Lincoln, NE.
Having a press all to myself 24/7 was like falling in love again to a long lost lover. Now I am totally hooked to printing, the ink preparation, the smell, the paper, the trans I get while I am composing my images. I never use sketchbooks. Before the printing session I gather my carved blocks, my tools, the ink, the paper and I compose the images upon the whim of the day. I love the double excitement of pulling a print that I have put together in an almost automatic unpremeditated way. 

Happy new vessels

Let us toast the new year with colorful wood cuts, vessels printed on Japanese Awagami paper, fruit of my residency in Constellation Studios in Nebraska .

May 2019 be a year full of inner light, warmth, creativity and adventure that nourish the soul. 

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

Embarking to a new year

First day of 2013, a year I intend to keep this blog afloat and bring to its followers lots of art news and artwork! May the wind blow into our sails!

Talisman

"Talisman", hand made necklace and earrings by Natassa Fokianidou-Theodoridou

Natassa, who is also known as Pharaona, lives and works as a fiber artist in Thessaloniki, Greece.
She says about her work:"Yarns are a very seductive adventure for me. Whenever I see any sort of weaving it always attracts my attention. A silk shawl or a cotton blouse make me instantly observe their way of construction and how they are weaved or knit, whether they are hand made or machine made. I begin immediately to make a story. How it would look in another color, with what other fabric it would go on well, where it comes from… and all this happens in a fraction of time, many years now. As a result of this craze with yarns and weavings I keep on experimenting with combining them with other materials. Wood, stones, beads, bones, dried flowers, shells, silver and gold, brass, wire, glass, leather, papier mache. What I really enjoy is when materials have a completely opposite texture, and the color combinations are daring and unusual. But what satisfies me the most and feel it deep in my heart is that: part of me is concentrated right on my work bench and my other half flies untamed on top of the sea, on mountains, volcanoes, woodlands, lakes, rivers, waterfalls that are full of the daylight, the dusk and the dawn, living alone with a rhythm full of mystery.
There, along with all these, I love, and I keep being creative." 

http://www.pharaona1.blogspot.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/natasa22455

Istanbul, Cultural capital of Europe

file:///Users/peterholtz/Desktop/IMG_0190.JPG

Waterless Slip

"Waterless Slip", mixed media print by Amy Firestone Rosen.
11''x14'', Edition of 30, 2010

Studio Escargot-photography

Nancy Exarhu, Mesta, digital print, 2010

Max Holtz, Athens, digital print, 2010

Studio Escargot is based in St. Louis, MO and promotes art prints and photography.

ex-plate...

Manolis Yannadakis, ex-plate.../prints- monoprints-installation
Greek print maker extraordinaire.
Lives in Thessaloniki and works at the School of Fine Arts of the Aristotle University where he teaches Drawing and Printmaking.
His work has been shown localy and internationally and is represented by Artis Causa Gallery in Thessaloniki.
www.artcau.gr

Tom Huck-Evil Prints

"The transformation of Brandy Baghead", by Tom Huck. Woodcut on paper, 82''x24'', 82''x45'', 82''x24''. 2007-2009. Edition of 40.

Tom Huck lives and works in St. Louis where he owns and operates Evil Prints Studio.

He says about his work:

"My work deals with personal observations about the experiences of living in a small town in south west Missouri. The often strange and humorous occurences, places, and people in these towns offer a never-ending source of inspiration for my prints. I call this work "rural satire". My work has been influenced by an array of artists, among them the woodcuts of Albrecht Durer, the etchings of Warrington Colescott, nearly all of the German Expressionists, and the late great Frank Zappa. My chosen media is printmaking, specifically woodcut. The combination of dark humor with the inherently expressive medium of the woodcut heightens the complexity of my images. Fot the past few years I have been engaged in the creation of a folio of prints entitled "2 weeks in August: 14 Rural Absurdities". Each image depicts a single day's occurence, while all the images together describe a period of two weeks. The images come from either personal accounts or local folklore from my hometown of Potosi, Missouri."

More about Toms amazing prints and activities at: www.evilprints.com

Patsy Degener (1924-2010)

Last month Patsy Degener passed away.

When I first came to St. Louis she was introduced to me as a remarkable person, a great artist and a fierce art critic. Indeed I was very happy to have met a real artist, passionate with her work, opinionated about art, outspoken and with an impeccable taste. I was very much impressed by her ceramics that are a hybrid of sculpture and painting dealing with art historical, mythological and architectural subjects.

She started out to be a painter, but chose ceramics when she lived in the Riverdale section of the Bronx early in her marriage.

''After my second child was born,” she told a reporter, “I decided that I was becoming a vegetable. I was trained to paint and I tried to paint, but that was entirely too intellectual with babies around, so I took up ceramics.''

She moved with her family to St. Louis in the '50s and lived here since. Patsy had a rich and productive life and left us her art and her impact in the St. Louis art scene. She was a member of the faculty of People's Art Center, a progressive inner-city program founded by the WPA in 1942. It was the first racially integrated arts program in the city.

She also was responsible for running MECA, the Metropolitan Educational Center for the Arts, a federally funded arts program.

She taught art in the St. Louis public schools, too, in the famous program initiated and run by the late Dr. Marie Larkin.

She influenced and formed the art scene of St. Louis as a founding member of Craft Alliance Gallery and the First Street Forum now the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis and from 1980 till 1990 as an art critic for the St. Louis-Post Dispatch.

Franco Ionda

		Mistake 3 by Franco Ionda
		Mixed Media and Acrylic on paper
		23.6 x 31.5 in. / 60 x 80 cm.
		Franco lives and works in Florence, Italy. He has been collaborating for almost 20 years with Centro per l’ arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci di Prato and with numerous international museums. He started showing his work first in Belgium in 1986 and since his work has been exposed in Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and USA. He studied painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence. More about Franco at www.francoionda.com

First

"First",mixed media on paper by Lauren Bakoian. Lauren lives and works in NY

She says about her work: "First is 12 x 20 inches, white gouache, ink and black gesso on paper. I begin by making a grid on the paper and I have a general idea about how to divide the space. The process brings about change. The image emerges, and synthesis happens between idea and process. Many of the works are based on Armenian miniatures in their structure. First is the first piece in this body of work. Like First, many of the works are set up like two pages in a book.The gouache is from the paint maker Robert Doak at robertdoakcolors.com. It is actually a white watercolor. His colors are beautiful and on a whim I bought white. The gesso is Golden and the paper I think is Rives BFK, but it was a couple of years ago. Oh, the date on the work is 2006."

Hot House

"Hot House", painting by Barbara Holtz who lives and works in St. Louis, MO

Barbara says about her painting: "Hot House is the result of several arrangements and palettes. Once I felt there was some depth I began the process of spacial arrangement and then the addition of sharp accents to give the plane some punch. I was also involved in making a variety of markings. Going over and over the negative spaces with a range of reds created a surface I hoped would make the painting bristle. At first of course I thought of Matisse. However, I wanted to move to my own rhythm. If the painting had not been framed I would probably keep dabbing at it. In the end, I did decide to include the Matisse cat in homage to him."

More about Barbara at

www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile/Barbara+Holtz/25220.html

Small Talk Interlude

Small Talk Interlude, Collage by Pam Anderson who lives and works in Richmond, VA.

33''x30''

Pencil, thread, gesso, charcoal, paper napkin

Pam says about her art: "I am interested in the space between sentiment and pure formalism. I find a pleasing coupling is struck between the external world collage evokes and the more meditative and internal rhythms of drawing and sewing. Emptiness matters, and if clutter or crowding occurs, it is deliberate. Everything here is deliberate, usually surgical in its precision. Precious is an essential adjective in describing this work (I'm holding on, the work is holding on). I'm a collector of minutes and hours, even days, but also of the petty thesaurus scrap that would otherwise end up on the floor. I'm an arranger, an organizer of mostly flat space, though sometimes I tease with an illusion. My pieces are meant to be read, not just seen. They are syntactical and intimate. The work likes being caught between divisions, pairing opposites: keeping together/falling apart; past/present; top/bottom: fast/slow; written/imaged; actual/simulated; present/absent. Sometimes it is hard to tell which is which. In the last couple of years I have experienced death often and profoundly, losing people I cared about far too soon. If people are not yet dead, they are sick. Waiting. Underneath everything is this. Art, this art, is a way to make sense of the senseless. "

More about Pam at

www.mapanderson.com

and

http://www.markelfinearts.com/port.php?id=7

Scouting

"Scouting", a print by Julie Heller, collagiste extraordinaire.

Julie lives and works in St.Louis as a graphic designer. She uses printed images from old publications and stamps in the most unpredictable way, composing portraits of perfect strangers.

More about Julie at www.julieheller.com

Passion or the Impossible Choice

Passion or the impossible choice by Romaine Fauchère

diptych 111cmx122cm

Rembrandt oil on canvas

She says about her painting:

"The research field is the exploration of different paths, daring and frustrating the «choice » to achieve at the extreme where the antagonists meet and are confronted.

To abandon, and finally to discover the intrusive and joyful fullness.

To give up to distinguish the detail in order to discover unexpected totality.

Passion rises from this renunciation.

The blue and the red that have been opposed over centuries of painting and optics, twinkle and palpitate on the same level."

Romaine is born in Sion, Switzerland, lives in Lausanne.

She studied painting, sculpture, scenography and design at the Academia delle Belle Arti in Firenze and at the Academia delle Belle Arti of Brera, Milan (Italy) where she graduated in 1989.

Later she trained in scientific drawing and she collaborated with several archaeology institutes.

Since 1990, Romaine has created more than thirty scenographies and costumes for operas, classic and contemporary theatre in Switzerland, Germany and France.

At the same time, Romaine keeps developing her activity as a painter and she exposes individually and collectively in Switzerland and Italy.