The Medici of Florence

Pele' as a Mandala-mixed media photograph

 After viewing a documentary on   the Medici family of medieval
 Florence, I can’t help think about the enormous contributions
 the period has made to western art. It was a heady time for
 painting during which artists such as Michelangelo, Da Vinci,
 and Botticelli rose to prominence.  Some of our most revered
 names gained recognition under the protection and patronage of
 the ruling Medici family. The cocktail for success seemed to be
 a mix of tolerance and patronage and it gave rise to one of the
 most productive and influential periods in all of art history. 

The Medicis were a merchant family that rose to prominence
over successive generations. They gained power in the city
of Florence and were able to hold onto their ruling status with
two family members eventually becoming popes (albeit bad ones).
The medici popes were so corrupt that Martin Luther, after visiting
Rome and viewing their excesses first hand, began his prolific
demands for reform eventually resulting in the sack of Rome.

Intrigue and corruptions aside, the Medicis loved and nurtured
art, extending their patronage to artists throughout successive
generations of their rule.  Artists were feted and coddled and
it was through this financial stability that some of our most
beloved masterpieces were born.

Another factor in the genesis of these works was the tolerance
that the Medicis showed their artists. Artist were allowed to
depart from the prevailing religious topics of the period and
works such as Botticcelli’s Birth of Venus were created. Without
the strict dictations of the church, artists were freer to unleash
secular creativity.

Interestingly, Machaveli’s novel The Prince was also created
during the time as a treatise and commentary on the ruthless,
cruel and cutthroat governing style of the Medici family. From
a vipers nest came some of the most sublime and tender works
of art the world has known.

I’m not sure we today could ever reach the standards and output
of the artists of the Medici period. In our country we have the
freedom but not the governing patronage, in other countries
there may be the patronage but not the freedom.

Australian Aboriginal Art in Prescott

The Vigraha Gallery in downtown Prescot

 The Vigraha Gallery in Prescott, located at 115 E. Goodwin St.,

Suite E, is showing contemporary Aboriginal works in their 

exhibition space. Tucked back from the street and cloistered 

within a Spanish styled courtyard, the gallery shows Asian,

Indian and Himalayan antique art. Visiting the gallery is like 

stumbling upon a luminous jewel and one is stuck by the 

profound sense of peace and quiet within the gallery confines.

Sculptures and painted works abound and the gallery is packed 

with quality Eastern Art treasures large and small. Works are
shown in stone, wood and metal, fabric and furniture. Elegant

figures from Hindu and Buddhist pantheons are arrayed in quiet 

splendor, greeting visitors with their serene countenance and 

infectious grace.

Inside the Vigraha Gallery

The Aboriginal Art being shown is from contemporary Aboriginal
artists Paddy Fordham Wainburranga, William Sandy, Yinarupa
Nungala and Kudditji Kngwarreye. Both traditional and interesting
new takes on Aboriginal style are shown, with some contemporary
pieces in the show rivaling western style works.  Delicate but
powerful, the work will remain on exhibition through May 6th.

Contemporary Aboriginal Art at the Vigraha Gallery

La Frontera

Thicket Ensconced in Snakes-mixed media photograph

Painting (I use the term painting to represent all fine art practices) is a wonderful thing because   it diminishes boundaries. The practice of painting widens and unifies my world concept, knocking down distinctions and their attendant distractions. Painting makes me more humane. A world of distinctions creates boundaries between myself and others, and boundaries further the sense of other which opens the doors of objectification. When there are racial distinctions, ethnic distinctions, gender distinctions, age distinctions et. all, a delineation between self and other is drawn and when the other is seen as outside of the self, the doors of inhumane treatment are opened. The other is now an external object and is party to a world of abuses. We begin to lose our humanity when we make distinctions. We parley away our freedoms when we create boundaries. We are no longer free to roam the wide open frontiers of existence, but are instead bound fast and held tight to the tiny hamlets of our tepid imaginations. Our minds begin to create the world rather than experience it, and we become lost in the rigid, totalitarian constructs of our corporeal templates.

As I've said before, what I like about painting is that it changes my mind. Painting unscrews the lid from the jar of world unity and allows passage to vast new territories unbridled by boundaries, borders or check points. My best work seems to be not my work at all, but rather the product of letting go of my control and letting the paint lead me. The paint undoes my judgments and makes use of things I've rejected. The paint is always teaching.

Images of Granite Mountain

 

I took an early evening walk at Granite Mountain today and was taken by the moody light and shadow-fall. A storm is incoming and the extra moisture in the air diffused the remaining daylight. The earth looked heavy and solid, a dark underling beneath the whitewashed sky, reminiscent of Italian landscapes. The Southwest skies here are extraordinary, endlessly shifting and bending the light.

These photos were taken as prototypes for drawings and watercolors, and I was able to pull out the aspects that I wanted with my computer photo program. I increased shadow and highlights while decreasing contrast, and the results are moody and smolder like the diffused light in the early Dutch master's works. During the Monsoons, I've seen light run along the ground the way a flood of water would move. As the clouds travel swiftly across the sky under the sun, waves of light and shadow pass over the earths terrain in quick succession.

I like these images because much of the detail is lost and the crispness is blunted. They look like portals to another world, like dreams in passing. They have a quiet sense, like the vesper hour that is swiftly approaching.

On a more humorous note, I also found a dog poop enso. A perfect little ring of dog poop bleached white under the Arizona sun. Enso is a common circle form seen in Japanese calligraphy. Enso's origins appear to come from Zen Buddhism, symbolizing enlightened mind. It's said that the internal state of the calligrapher is revealed in the way they paint the enso, and I suppose that, in turn, it could be said that the internal state of the dog is revealed by the way they poop the enso. And it's back to the proverbial question " does a dog have Buddha nature?"

When I Began the Vacancy Series,

 

Circus Motel-mixed media photograph

I had no idea how poignant it would be to the future unforeseen economic collapse, and subsequent mass foreclosures of American real estate. I was instead concerned with the psychological ramifications of violence, in particular dissociation, and the dissociative episodes which often occur during and after violent experiences. In these images, I used vacant dwellings as a visual metaphor for dissociative processes in which individuals disconnect, or dissociate from the current moment in time and space.

Circus Motel II-mixed media photograph

This process is often used as a defensive posture when confronted with uncontrollable and overwhelming experiences of natural or human engendered violence and can include a range of differing responses, from severe loss of attention to place, to loss of memory, to out of body experiences. Experiencing a dissociative episode during a violent or traumatic experience makes an individual more likely to develop a trauma related anxiety disorder called PTSD, or post traumatic stress disorder.

Vacant Structure-mixed media photograph

According to the National Center for PTSD, over 5 million individuals will suffer from the disorder during any given year in the United States. Though the public often associates PTSD with combat veterans, victims of natural disasters and domestic violence and even small children can be affected by it. Ultimately, violence can create crippling maladies in its victims that disorder their thinking abilities, and inhibit their daily capacity to function.

Bricks and Bones Exhibition at the Prescott College Gallery.

 

San Francisco artist Tamara Albaitis is exhibiting a conceptual work at the Prescott College Art Gallery in the historic Sam Hill Warehouse, located at 232 N. Granite St. in Prescott. According to their statement, the Prescott College Art Gallery seeks to provide the Northern Arizona region with art exhibitions that aesthetically stimulate and critically engage viewers, as well as provide a diverse array of artists, emphasizing the domains of environment and social justice.

The show, titled Bricks and Bones, will run through March 24^thand features an interactive sound installation. The gallery area is entangled with wires, the wires of technology, and they enmesh the space with cobweb-like profusion. Above, in the gallery rafters, clots of black wires are massed about the timbers in a stuffed, hap hazardous way as though they were carried and deposited there by flood waters, and bodies of wires hang from the ceiling in disembodied masses.

Wires hang off the walls from disengaged stereo speakers and wires protrude through the walls, their tips uncoiled like metal root systems splayed open to the air and attached to nothing. The artist has randomly pounded small nails into white walls and then serendipitously connected some of the nails together with black wire. In the center of the gallery, a black, stereo speaker issues the sound of a heart beat and an audio track plays throughout the space. Various sounds of industry are heard, train whistles, cattle, the pounding of hammers, squeaking machinery, voices, crowds and murmurs.

The result is haunting and a bit unhinged. It's a perilous, disjointed world, well worth viewing, that aptly articulates the artists statement "I am interested in exemplifying a holistic understanding of our relationship to nature, not only on the biological and physical level, but also through complex socio-political stances that permeate the psychosis of who we are."

During the summer of 2011, my work went completely to the dogs.

 

Pele' Maps-mixed media photograph

That is to say that I began what has proven to be a relatively large and continuous body of work that presents my dogs in various attitudes and incarnations. The works on these pages represent this project, and were created by topically manipulating photographs of the subjects.

Tattooed Thicket-mixed media photograph

It's a process in which I physically add elements such as paint, or graphite to a hard copy photograph, or reduce elements from the photograph by pulling off layers of its surface. I found that I could present my pets in various, and sometimes comical ways that allowed a creative free play with the subject matter, and with the continued exploration of the transmutation themes that interest me.

Pele' as Leviathan-mixed media photographs

I often use the same photograph and alter it in different ways. Using image repeat with variation reminds me of a moving film where each frame is slightly modified from the one before it, and it bespeaks change and the passage of time, and indeed this work has become yet another manifestation of the endless play of life in change.