Search results for ""author mark w. scala""

Creation Story explores parallels and intersections in the works of Dial and his fellow Alabamians, the remarkable quilters of Gee's Bend. In the tradition of African American cemetery constructions and yard art, these artists harness the tactile properties and symbolic associations of cast-off materials in creating an art of profound beauty and evocative power. Produced against a backdrop of poverty and racism, these artworks have an appeal that crosses aesthetic, social, and geographical boundaries, earning them wide recognition as being among the most compelling art of our time.The quilters of Gee's Bend, a small rural community near Selma, Alabama, use salvaged fabric in orchestrations of strong colours, dynamic patterns, and eccentric geometric shapes. While drawing from classic traditions of American quilt making, their sensitivity to the evocative power of materials and fine balance of optical tension and harmony marks their quilts as truly original. The New York Times has called them ""some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced."" Going beyond the beauty and tactile richness of the Gee's Bend quilts, the densely layered assemblages of Thornton Dial are, in his words, ""about ideas, and about life, and the experiences of the world."" A keen observer and interpreter of his times, Dial uses the technique of bricolage--the aesthetic reconfiguring of found objects--to reflect on personal memories, insights into root causes of racism and poverty, and news events and programs he sees on television. The Wall Street Journal has called Dial's works ""tough, beautiful, disturbing, seductive, improvisatory, unignorable, fierce, exhilarating, ambiguous--and much more."" While Dial's social symbolism contrasts with the inherent abstraction of the Gee's Bend quilts, the two are linked by an appreciation for the poetic and evidentiary power of raw materials, which they transform into expressions of beauty and truth. The artworks reproduced in this exhibition catalogue are drawn from the extensive collection of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation in Atlanta, Georgia. The 43 colour plates are accompanied by illustrated essays by curators Paul Arnett and Joanne Cubbs.

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A resident of Nashville whose work has been exhibited and collected internationally, Jack Spencer alters the surfaces of his photographs with techniques suggestive of painting - rich patinas and luminous colours, softly-focused or veiled forms, and traces of the artist's hand: imperfections, marks, and painterly textures. The exhibition catalog consists of an essay by Susan Edwards and 70 full-page colour plates selected from such series as ""Native Soil,"" ""Apariciones,"" ""This Land,"" and ""Portraits and Gestures"" to exemplify the relationship between these compelling surfaces and Spencer's interest in myth, mystery, and the ephemeral nature of existence that is implied by and beyond the surface. Each of six sections includes works from various series in which the language of photography is expanded to convey narratives inspired by other art forms, especially literature and painting. ""Portraits and Figures"" reveals Spencer's capacity to define the psychological complexity of the people he photographs, who often occupy the periphery of society. Further exploring the theme of hidden narratives, but as suggested by the altered face, ""Disguise/Perform"" includes photographs - primarily taken in Mexico - featuring masked and painted figures often associated with ancient rituals and alternative life styles. ""Beautiful Lies"" includes new work in which the exposed skin of subjects has been painted or otherwise altered by the artist and then photographed with luminous props and mysterious settings to underscore the sense of artifice, as if the body itself is shown to be an imaginative construction. ""Day into Night"" continues Spencer's consideration of transitions from one state of being to another, this time through the use of ephemeral plays of light and shadow, often suggesting dawn or dusk as signifiers of change. The final two sections focus on the symbolic meaning and phenomenological experiences of the landscape. Inspired by such regionalist painters as Grant Wood, ""This Land"" includes works that convey dreamlike views of rural and small-town America. ""Colour as Light"" features landscapes in which the limpid atmosphere merges land, trees, animals, and sky into a palpable gestalt - landscapes of the mind's eye that evoke the limitless quality of Mark Rothko's colour-saturated canvases.

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Ritchie locates patterns in an unpredictable universe, with garden and flood serving as metaphors for growth and destruction Renowned New York–based interdisciplinary artist Matthew Ritchie (born 1964) seeks to visualize thought, connecting such fields as philosophy and mythology, epic poetry and science fiction, and history and physics, through installations of paintings, wall drawings, light boxes, games, sculpture, films and performance works. His works challenge social fragmentation by suggesting a unified theory of everything. Published for an exhibition at the Frist Art Museum, A Garden in the Flood examines a selection of his paintings, architectural structures, elaborate diagrams and hallucinatory video animations (which notably include a collaboration with the Grammy Award–winning Fisk Jubilee Singers). Employing “garden” and “flood” as metaphors for growth and destruction, transformation and renewal, Ritchie encourages readers to “reimagine the role art could play in whatever form of society may emerge next.”

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