Art Bomb-1/9/2015 Roger Brown

Aleathia says:

This year I am going to try and represent an artist from each state in America.  I thought it would be fun to do this to learn more about different artists but to also learn more about my country.  It is fun to look at what influences people from different times in history from their part of the country.  This week we are starting with Alabama native Roger Brown.

Roger Brown was born in Hamilton, AL in 1941.  In his early childhood he took art classes during his elementary and high school days.  He was greatly influenced by the deep south, folk art and hand made functional pieces.  He loved comics, theater, architecture and the style of Art Deco.  After graduating high school he enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  It was here that he learned to love the Pre-Renaissance period, Italian art, Surrealism, and American artists Hopper, Wood, and O'Keeffe.

Brown is noted to be associated with the Chicago Imagist School of artists who were known for grotesquerie, surrealism and a complete univolvement with New York art trends.  This group was most prevalent in the mid-1960's to the early 1970's.  This school had three different factions: The Monster Roster, The Hairy Who, and The Chicago Imagists.  Brown was part of the latter.  They were not a formal group of artists but all in this faction were involved in Baum curated shows during the time period.

Roger Brown also loved to travel on road trips across the US and this influenced his work.  He also traveled to Mexico, Europe, Russia, and Asia.

Art Bomb-12/19/2014 Angela Ellsworth

Aleathia says:

My recent trip to Rochester's Memorial Art Gallery showed me many new artists which is always exciting.  There was one sculptural/fiber arts piece there by artist Angela Ellsworth from her Seer Bonnets collection that has been ongoing since 2008.

I have always been a lover of both fiber arts as well as sculpture.  I think they require such vision and tactile response.  I am always in awe of what people come up with, but also in my own life I have been creating found object art to pass the time.  Everything in the world has more than one incarnation despite their intended purpose.

Angela Ellsworth's Seer Bonnets are made of steel, pearl tipped corsage pins.  The pearls make subtle exterior patterns and are unassuming while the inside looks like a prickly torture chamber.  These bonnets were meant to stand in for Joseph Smith's estimated 35 wives.  Ellsworth looks at these bonnets as "tools of translation".

In continuation of Ellsworth investigation of Mormon, polygamous life she had an installation of collared braids and bows called Lady-Ties for a Line Dance.  These pieces were worn by her "sister-wives" as live performance pieces.  Each lady-tie was monogramed for the performer who would wear it.  These pieces again look at the idea of ancestry.  The performers would also wear plain, prairie dresses and communicate their desires and intentions through a series of hand gestures.
Ellsworth is said to be interested in the homosocial dynamics found in queer cultures and polygamous communities.

Beyond these bold social statements Angela Ellsworth also works sculpturally with paper, stitching, and motion drawing.  Her stitch portraits are done on towels, paper, and other fabrics and are made when she travels from place to place.  She stitches those that she misses and love and those she would like to meet.

Her works on paper look at the latent potential of commonly used vessels like cardboard boxes and book casings.  She deconstructs them and rubs them with graphite to change their color and texture and to show their geometrical architecture.

Lastly, Ellsworth has a collection of work she calls Walking Drawings in which she looks at the possibilities of mark making in context to the motion of a body.  Each work is a single walk in which the number of steps are recorded within the drawing.  These are journeys to people she loves.

Art Bomb-6/20/2014 Cy Twombly

Aleathia says:

Cy Twombly died in July 2011 shortly after I was able to see his sculpture collection at the Chicago Museum of Art.  He died before I even made it home.  I heard about it on the road and was stricken with sadness at his passing.

Cy was an American painter and sculptor who studied in Boston.  In his lifetime, he served several times in the Army where he was a cryptologist.  This talent would later find its way to his work and be very influential.

In the mid 90's I took an art class at North Seattle Community College just for fun.  I also took Botany and Creative Writing.  I was making attempts to create my own identity.  My professor in art was a young woman and her favorite artist was Ellsworth Kelly whose work was bright and blocky and vibrant.  The highlight of the class was a private tour she arrange for our class at the Seattle Art Museum....only it wasn't in the main gallery halls, but in the back room.  We had a private showing of pieces not on display.  One of these works was an 8 foot painting by Twombly.

The other students made fun of it and said it looked as if a kindergartner created it right before nap time.  I could see the teacher was hurt by this, but she said nothing.  I stood and examined this piece for a long time. It was mostly different shades of white with red markings, but it had texture and dimension.  The innocent scribbles meant something.  They were cryptograms, hidden messages.  He was trying to tell us something about ourselves and we weren't listening.

I never forgot that moment or what my professor shared with us.  She had passion and tried desperately to make a mark on us.  I'm not sure how many of the students cared about that private showing, but it made me feel special.  It started a love of Twombly.

Twombly had a wonderful, playful, colorful period when he did Peonies and other flowers.  His work is always recognizable and distinct.  His work is part of the permanent collections at the New York Museum of Modern Art as well as the Louvre in Paris.  If you get a chance to see his work up close and personal you should do it.  It has much more meaning when you can experience the texture and time it takes to create simplicity.