Part Curiosity, Part Vision

Cambridge School of Weston Alumni Reflect on

Ambition, Curiosity & Vision:

Did CSW help to shape your ambition as an artist? 

Do you have a specific memory of a classroom experience or a teacher that helped to shape or confirm your becomming an artist?

Do you deal with any topics, subjects or themes in your present art practice that you can trace back to something you experienced as a student here at CSW?

Regarding your studio practice, how does your curiosity lead to vision? Describe a work, or a series that somehow sheds light upon your process.

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Darcy Brennan Poor

Sleep Print 1

2011

Artist’s proof, intaglio soft ground etching on black Hahnemuhle paper

96 x 29 inches each, (group installation 96 x 145 inches)

http://darcybrennanpoor.com/home.html

 

 

 

 

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Deborah Goldman

Ballet Counting II (Encore)

2011

Digital photos, vellum, Luan

64 x 52 x 4 inches

http://www.deborahgoldman.com/#home

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Matt  Johnson

Two Orange Peels

2003

Cast bronze and oil paint

2.75 x 2.75 x 2.75 inches (installation size variable)

http://www.blumandpoe.com/artistpages/johnson/index.html

 

 

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Carmelle Safdie

Untitled (The Problem)

2010

Acrylic silkscreen, ink and ink on newsprint

36 x 24 inches

http://npiece.com/carmelle-safdie/works:all?l=en

 

 

 

 

 

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Dan Wood

Pinko Pfizer Proof

2010

Letterpress on paper

18 x 26 inches each, installation 89.75 x 66 inches

http://dwriletterpress.net/danwood/?cat=3

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To view the artist's responses, click the "Comment" link below each post title.

The Thompson Gallery Blog only posts questions by our blog visitors if they are relevant to the topic of discussion and are addressed to the overall group or are specifically directed to one of the artists or the gallery director. Please confine your posts to questions about the artist’s work or what they have contributed to the blog, and/or to one of the themes presented by each exhibition series. Thank you for your understanding.

To post your question, first select the thread you are interested in by clicking its related “COMMENTS” link, and after navigating to that page, then click either of the “Leave a Reply”  or “Leave One” links.

Thank you for your interest!

A crucial aspect that connects your respective work, as we have just discussed, is a prevalent passion for unearthing and re-exposing historical records. Despite the vastly different approach to your working methods and productivity, you all share this common foundation. However, there is another important shared affinity to discuss. You are also all connected through a respective dedication to applied collage practices.

For example, I have come to call Bo Joseph’s use of collage “uncollages,” because he often starts by stacking or puzzling together groups of cutouts, briefly fashioned to form stencils, which in turn become the frames for pigment dispersal that ultimately form the stratum of his imagery. Afterwards, he disassembles his paint encrusted stencils and returns each part to his collection of cutouts once again. Fran Forman’s collage techniques are both analog and digital, in terms of where she obtains her imagery—scanned found artifacts and gleaned internet images from the universe of digital records online—but her physical glue is always of a virtual type as she layers her imagery through the tools of Photoshop, and other software. Though her photo-collages are digitally fused, it is not only the magic of virtual glue that binds her imagery, which is always powered by the ceaseless color of imagination, memory, idea and connection as she juxtaposes past and present into seamless icons for wonder. Darryl Lauster not only finds and alters flotsam and jetsam, he also fabricates things to look like artifacts that he indistinguishably presents alongside other disenfranchised “found” objects in various museum like vitrines and displays of “archeological finds.” Despite their origins, his use of “intellectual glue” always includes a frame of reference for his combines as he places these groupings of “artifacts” within part invented, part informed contexts—that appear legitimate because of the truthful observations of current culture, supplied by his museum didactics—and thus, the glue that binds his imagery is not wholly imaginary, it’s also politically charged.  As a set of like-oriented artists, your resulting work appears vastly different to be sure, yet your shared affinities nevertheless unite you into a grouping, which exposes the need to explore such approaches to art making. That of course is where this series of exhibitions gets its impetus.

Having identified where your art overlaps—three dedicated, history-based artists who all work out imagery through collage-based practices, without utilizing collage in the same manner, let alone in the traditional sense—beckons questions about your methods and studio practices. Using specific examples of your work, please provide an example of your process. What specifics about your methods of collecting, juxtaposing and combining fragments into a fabricated whole, or a body of works are important for viewers to consider as we ponder your work?

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Darryl  Lauster

Virginia Tech Amphora

Stoneware and plaster
28 x 15 x 15″

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Fran Forman

Dreaming of a Marching Band When I Return From War

2006

Limited edition

Archival pigment ink print – 100% cotton rag luster paper

18 x 18″

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Bo Joseph

2010

slide show of painting process

00:35 seconds

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To view the artist's responses, click the "Comment" link below each post title.