Internet Research Project (Martinez)

Like:

1.)    Frances Grafton

2.)    Helen Brough

3.)    Valerie Molnar

4.)    Seline Baurngartner

5.)    Lisa Lindgren

6.)    Claire Wilson

7.)    Catherine Lepp

8.)    Mira Burack

9.)    Jason Clay Lewis

10.) Ralph Bourque

Dislike:

1.)    Lilla LoCurto/Bill Outcault

2.)    Jeffrey Katreneik

3.)    Jeffrey Maron

4.)    Laurel Garcia Colvin

5.)    Tim Guthrie

6.)    Cynthia Horn

7.)    Jani Benjamins

8.)    Argentino Mauro Manuel

9.)    Susan Fraser-Hughes

10.)  Jess von der Ahe

Art that stood out:

Charcoal, graphite, conte

2005

96" x  177"

 

Frances Grafton

The reason why I liked this artist is that she seems to be into the real core of life. That life starts from the roots and develops up, and that is the only way to go is up. I like how her work really does look like a photograph and it is sometimes hard to decide if it is a drawing or a black and white photo. I think I am a huge fan of realism with drawing and I think it is amazing when an artist can pay a trick on the audience, and make them take that second look to make sure it is a drawing.

Artist Statement I draw to understand the world. Drawing takes me on an exquisite pursuit of meaning, examining and recording minute details that reveal form and history. My process takes time: I have to slow down and consider the acts of looking, remembering and perceiving. My technique also takes time: I layer a myriad of marks with pencil and charcoal on paper, partially erase and rework them. I attend the minuscule but work on a large surface to offer the viewer the features I find – magnified or emphasized. Such enormity of scale combined with the intricate, takes drawing into a new dimension for me and amplifies its meaning. I work in series. The latest “Once upon a time” comprises five drawings of trees, each 96 inches high and from 80 to 177 inches wide. The images are from photographs I took, one from each continent: Australia, Europe, North America, Asia and Africa. I chose the trees randomly, simply wanting to give testimony to their remarkable and unremarkable existence. Trees are vital to our very survival. They contribute to the basic elements of life, replenishing the atmosphere, providing food, shelter and healing. Global deforestation is endangering their continued existence. I am drawing trees because it is urgent that we consider their significance in our world, and understand that our histories are intertwined. The history of a tree is written on and within its own body. This slow, meticulous recording process is emulated by my deliberate technique: each drawing has taken nine to twelve months to produce. Each character of the tree has been shaped by another element—by the weather and by the availability or lack of water and nutrition--and by contact at various stages of its growth with objects, animals and humans. In becoming itself the tree in turn shapes the environment around it. In my drawings, the complicated interactions of the roots and limbs reflect the interdependence of matter, which is essential to the survival of our environment.

 

Mellyn

Hand Knit Acrylic Yarn and Acrylic Paint on Wall

2009

Dimensions variable

 

Valerie Molnar

I am so so so in love with all the color and the illusion this artist uses and makes come alive with the vision presented. I love how she uses the fabric to trick the audience to look in a certain direction and just by looking at the art piece she had to have drawn all of the executed art pieces out so as to see it played out right, I would love to see her sketch book and see it sketched and colored in. I like the pieces that are just black too that look like they are pouring out onto the floor. To look like the colors are coming from the darkness is another thing that I really like. Really speaks to the inner me, look for the light in the darkest times or when you never seen the color.

Artist Statement

 I engage though Post Painterly Abstractionist era via my love for Clement Greenberg’s romantically diehard calculations. Nostalgic for certain modernist principles (or the type of conviction to the principals carried out by that era’s heroes), I draw upon their formalistic values for my images. On top, I interject a friendly sense of play, or a different type of nostalgia along the same lines of sincerity, with the connotations of knitting and textures of my process and materials. My work honestly deceives, being one thing while sneakily being equally something else, object then image, sincere then ironic, underdog then champion, masculine then feminine, fluxuating back and forth with the relativity to the viewer’s physical proximity as well as previous experiences. 

The optimist in me knits for the causes of sincerity, happiness, goodness, and earnestness, while my formalist counterpart works hard and straight faced with conviction to sell my thoughts. I make these objects as a practice and a confirmation of my hopefulness while I make these images to communicate and persuade as a serious contender. 

 

Applied Landscape #66

pastel on paper

07

50" x  60"

 

Cynthia Horn

I have seen Cynthia Horns Work and I think that is is great art but I find them esthetically displeasing to myself. I don’t like how her art looks like it is, hairy. It really does give me the creeps and makes me get the shivers as my imagination starts to think about the object sprouting little hairs. I know that it isn’t much of a reason as to why I don’t like the art other then the fact that it sets off my imagination. I guess in that sense it is amazing and does touch me on an emotional level so it is great art.

Artist Statement
}Applied Landscape

 

This series of drawings is based on the notion of applied landscape.  That landscape is not simply how we find it but how it is manipulated to suit our purposes regardless of its entropic inclination.  My personal observations of exterior sites and the disappearance of open space as well as the impression of an ideal setting have influenced this work.  The drawings convey that the natural conditions do not necessarily define the scenery, but that the lay of the land is a result of augmentation to an environment.