Artists Describing Their Art:
Lou Lalli - The shaping and use of stone is a vital part of the human endeavor. The fashioning of tools and implements by stone age peoples, the votive Venus figures of the Neolithic period, cycladic sculpture of the eighth millennium BC, classical sculpture of Greece and Egypt and all the sculpture to the present indicates that stone sculpture is intrinsic to human expression. Sculpting in stone directly links me to the people of the past. The subject and ideas I choose are derived from the past thus strengthening that link. The resolutions of the technical problems are the same that sculptors in the past confronted and solved. Although modern tools and implements facilitate my work I am still doing what all sculptors and stone carvers have done in the past; chipping, abrading and polishing the stone to release the form contained therein. My ideas and subjects are borrowed from antiquity with each piece telling a story. Antiquity provides a wealth of resources for my work; warriors, the myths, Venus figures, beasts, demigods and shaman/priests are the subjects I appropriate. In executing an idea, the importance of light and shadow, through the use of negative space is a primary concern in the ...
Dieter Picchio-Specht - Art, creativity and imagination have always played an important part in my life, although I have only started to fully concentrate on painting a few years ago. This passion has always been part of me. I have finally given up my work as a general manager in industry - to dedicate all my time to painting. At last I do what I have always wanted to do. It is simply that a dream has finally come true. Even during my years at secondary school my paintings were awarded prizes and I should have enrolled in art classes after I passed my A-levels. In fact, a renowned company manufacturing ceramics offered me a scholarship, which I was unable to accept at the time. I have always kept up with painting as landscapes and images, abstract and impressionist. Since some years now I am able to paint full-time and fill canvas after canvas with my ideas. My new studio is right in the centre of the village of Arcegno, surrounded by wooded hills, near to Ascona, a well-known tourist centre at the Lago Maggiore in the South of Switzerland. I apply the paints directly to the canvas with a spatula. ...
Dieter Picchio-Specht -
Janice Young - I work in multiple mediums. When I get an idea, I think, how can I express this visually. Sometimes the medium is the inspiration. I reuse materials from demolition, use leftovers from construction, gather raw materials from nature, and experiment with commercially produced materials. I have a drive to create. I would like what I create to provoke thought as to the beauty and importance of all life and the effect our massive appetites have on that life. ...
Louise Parenteau - ARTISTIC STATEMENT I studied fine arts at the University Of Quebec In Montreal (1986-1991). I was involved in various artistic activities in which I took a strong stand against injustice, poverty, and social exclusion. My work took shape using different methods of research and observation. I articulated my artistic approach inspired by existential human sufferings. I created portraits of individuals with unusual physical traits, expressions, deformities, attitudes... These characters inspired me to use colour in contrasts and splashes. My aim was to express the life animating the characters by an internal light. For my installations, I used a physical space to transpose socio-political situations and dramatic events. With the barest resources, my intention was to stimulate the interest of the viewer. My material supplies: Acrylic, rubbish, wood, metal, rust, polystyrene panels, personal objects, used clothing, etc. In 1995, I realized that I had reached limits with my artistic approach. I decided to have a period of questioning with the aim of going further in my research in terms of intention and expression. This process enabled me to explore, to experiment with different materials and to reposition myself using sculpture as my main form of expression. Ever...
Paul Carbo - I started messing round with wood in 1999 while still working as a graphic artist for the Los Angeles Times. We all worked on computers at that time and I was craving to do art with my hands like we used to back in the "dim time" before computers. I initially started to build small functional art pieces for children. Things like paper and pencil holders. I then progressed to larger caricatures of famous people I thought kids should be aware of like Abe Lincoln and Mark Twain, still intended as furniture for children. I would store the finished cabinets in my living room. They mingled well with my other furniture and and found I using them to store CD's,books ans such. At that point I said to myself " Why wouldn't grown-ups like this kinda thing"? I left my job at the newspaper, forged on and continued to build....
David Vanorbeek - Metal speaks to me. Firstly it calls to me, drawing me to it with a magnetic pull that is impossible to resist. I might be walking or driving when suddenly I know for certain that discarded and abandoned metal is nearby, waiting for me to find it. And I always do. And then, when I see the beauty of the metal, it speaks to me again, telling me how it must be worked and shaped into a piece of sculpture that everyone can enjoy and share. For me, the great joy in my work comes from turning something considered worthless into the artwork it becomes. In this way I am showing my respect for the metal. The thread that runs like red wire through all my work is recycling. If I could, I would turn all the old metal and scrap iron I find into a museum of modern art. Just thinking of this idea makes my heart beat faster. My work has developed and taken different directions over the past twenty years, but was originally inspired by insects. In the same way, I see the beauty in these tiny and delicate, but at the same time immensely strong and ...
Mark Porter - Artist webpage: www.markportersculpture.com Fusing found objects and his own custom-made creations, Mark Porter produces one-of-a-kind pieces that gradually transform themselves -- and the gallery -- as the show progresses. The mechanical-drawings-turned-sculptures in Nurture/Alter mimic the irregularity of human actions and portray narratives through a series of projected images, videos, and fluid expulsions. Porter places his project blueprints next to the sculptures to aid in the understanding of their development, which continues free of his influence for the duration of the exhibition. Check out the show sooner than later, though, so you can observe the counterproductive movements of Porter's work before it slowly self-destructs. - Morgan Phelps...
Randall Fox - I am interested in making visual statements about the interaction of time, history, cultures, memory, intellect, intuitions, experiences and the spiritual, in and on the human creative process. "inherent in all manifest in the few" Born: 1960 Education: Bachelor of Science Degree, Industrial Technology (Technical Management) California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo A.S. Degree Canada Collage, Redwood City, California (General Engineering-Pre Med.) Other: Art History/Art Studies - Stanford University, Palo Alto California Collected in: United States, Holland, Norway, Puerto Rico, Germany, Mexico, England, Brazil ...
Pim Van Der Wel - Pim van der Wel (1950) combines the art of making watercolours with his work as a business economist. After lessons in all the basic drawing techniques by two Dutch painters in the periods 1980/1987 and 1994/1996 he specialised himself in watercolours. Watercolour offers hardly any limitations, so he can show what he likes and that is light and shadow in dents, creases and gloss etc. His objects are sports (mainly football), cans, torsos, animals (cows, sheep, dogs and chicken). In the last 10 years his work has been shown at (group-)exhibitions in the Netherlands. Some galleries have his works permanently in stock. ...