The next time you’re in Italy, make sure you swing into The Pinacoteca Nationale in Siena to see Beccafumi‘s massive cartoons. I’m posting a few images of them below, photos I took while visiting Italy in 2005 – click on each for a large view.
Siena’s Pinacoteca has a number of other great Beccafumi works as well. His strange use of color and idiosyncratic figuration set him apart – they’re well worth the time to see them in person.
I graduated from SAIC nearly 10 years ago, and I’ve got a lot of memories from there. At first, right after I graduated, I was pretty negative about my experience. I felt as if they’d denied me some aspect of my education necessary to my future, that they’d tried to indoctrinate me, that they’d treated me like a number, not an artist.
In ways I was right, but in a lot of ways I was wrong. I’ve since gotten over it and look back with fondness, thankful that I grew so much during those years. One of the ways in which I grew was in my attention to the things that drew my eye. I began to document heavily, shooting thousands of photographs in the last couple years of my undergraduate career. Below I’ve posted some of those images. These are all from SAIC hallways and environs circa 1999/2000. I was obsessed with the angles, passages of light, and transitioning spaces in the places I saw every day.
Above, looking through the peep hole of my dorm door, 112 South Michigan Ave, 9th floor. This space no longer exists. Below, the elevator I took so many times.
Dead birds (they constantly flew headlong into the bank of windows on that facade, then fell, in droves, into the water below), dead leaves, and my shadow in a pool outside the lake side of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Two stairwell views on the way to the Advanced Painting studios (above and below).
Another stairwell view, light on the landing.
Glass and light, looking up toward the Advanced Painting studios.
Sunlight glances through the shades of my 13th floor (the smoking floor) dorm at 162 North State Street.
My work, titled Galaxy (Shell, Fecundity, Emanation), will be seen at the 6th annual MAGNITUDE 7 exhibition at Manifest coming up at the end of this month. The piece is a mezzotint print that has been embossed with a unique collograph print.
And here’s my statement about the work for the show:
Over the last two years I have become increasingly enamored with the mezzotint printmaking process. I have used mezzotint as a way to find new and different access to some of the subject matter I have used for years in my paintings and drawings. Bricks, shells, geometric forms, and bodies have all become part of my mezzotint repertoire. Those geometric forms – specifically the Platonic solid called the dodecahedron – have begun to inform my mezzotints beyond simple representation; I have started using the angles of the dodecahedron and its constituent, the pentagon, as dimensional embossments upon the mezzotint prints.
In the work I present here at MAGNITUDE 7, titled Galaxy (Shell, Fecundity, Emanation), the beautiful gradients and milky consistency mezzotint is known for are used to display a shell, spinning in an amorphous space. Yet a fine tracery of lines and angular counterpoints shifts the surface level of the image itself, creating a bas-relief. The angles are formed using a collograph print over the final mezzotint. This collograph is a unique, one-time embossment; though the edition of mezzotints is all the same, the embossment seen in each print is one of a kind.
By embedding these angles (taken directly from the dodecahedron) onto the image of the spiral form shell, I reintegrate their inherent relationship, since both the spiraling of the shell and the angles of the quintessential Platonic solid display the natural mathematical beauty of Phi, the golden ratio. While the depiction of the shell can be a visual entry point for contemplation, the angles of the subtle embossment encode a physical reality into the artifice of the image. This duality is something I am hoping to develop more and more. I want the image and the icon, the depiction and the object, the picture of the idea and the idea itself, to become manifest in these prints as I continue them.
A year ago I started teaching all levels of Color Drawing (Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced) at the University of Missouri. While I really enjoy all of my classes, the Color Drawing sections have been particularly special to me.
So here’s just a review of some of the great work from this semester…
Danielle Moser, Beginning Color Drawing: Reflection Project Drawing, Oil Pastel, 24 by 18 inches.
Jillian Blanck, Beginning Color Drawing: Master Copy Drawing (after Dali’s The Hallucinogenic Toreador), Chalk Pastel, 30 by 22 inches.
Scott Fisher, Beginning Color Drawing: Master Copy Drawing (after Michelangelo’s Libyan Sibyl from the Sistine Chapel), Chalk Pastel, 30 by 22 inches.
Holly Meador, Intermediate Color Drawing: Head Planes Model Drawing, Chalk Pastel, 44 by 30 inches.
Holly Meador, Intermediate Color Drawing: Self Portrait as Flaming June (after Lord Frederic Leighton’s Flaming June), Chalk Pastel, 30 by 36 inches. (Unfortunately, this drawing was stolen from my flat files at the University – I’m actually pretty pissed off about it. How can we expect our students to be willing to put forth their best efforts when their peers don’t respect that work? Really unbelievable.)
Roxanne Kueser, Advanced Color Drawing: Courtney, Chalk Pastel, 24 by 18 inches.
Brittany Carney, Advanced Color Drawing: Neil (The Proper Posture), Chalk Pastel, 24 by 18 inches.
Marcus Miers, Advanced Color Drawing: Untitled Composition, Chalk Pastel, 60 by 45 inches.
I want to thank all of my Color Drawing students for making the class so enjoyable. I could have easily had 100 drawings to show from the production of my 24 students; I don’t mean any disrespect to those I’ve not displayed here. These works do show the overall quality and worth ethic I’ve seen throughout all of the students this semester. I’m so glad I got to work with them. Here’s to setting the bar high for next semester!
My most recent completed work is an oil painting, 48 inches in diameter, titled Certainty. Because of the nature of the ideas involved in this piece, it was constructed in a manner that did not allow for an “up” orientation. I actually never painted it from the same picture-plane position twice. I frequently moved my model and altered my position of observation with each session.
The work has any number of “correct” reading orientations, but I’d like to settle on one or find a way to spin the work slowly so that many possible positions are presented to different viewers. Click the image below to see a large GIF of the piece. The GIF shows 14 different “stations” of the painting (give it a few minutes to load fully). What’s the best way to view it?
I love this Group Project we do together. Click to enlarge.
It’s 8 feet tall by 6 feet wide (or thereabouts).
“How are you gonna remake that in another art?” – Francis Bacon, 1985.
“What modern man wants is sensation without the boredom of its conveyance.” – Bacon, quoting Valery, 1985.
“I’m optimistic about nothing. Absolutely nothing.” – Bacon, 1985.
“CHEEERIO!” – Bacon, to Melvyn Bragg, 1985.
The South Bank Show profile of Francis Bacon, filmed in 1985, is a classic document of 20th century art.
You should watch it right now.
I think this (and some other stuff) has been influencing me in various ways…
In the forms I make for students to work from (drawing above, painting below)…
…and in the forms that make their way into my own work. Below, an experimental brick-based sculpture and a mezzotint featuring an invented pentagonally-based structure.
Sloane Snure Paullus: making Texas proud with glitter since 2007. Click on the above image for a more full-screen experience. See her work here.
eikonktizo 
