All posts tagged with art

October 6, 2022

Bill Wolak — Digital Collage of Bygone Eras

Artist’s Statement: I make collages out of all kinds of materials. Most are made out of paper engravings. Many collages are digitally generated or enhanced. To begin a piece, I select some sources—either color or black and white. If I’m using magazines or prints or old books, I cut out some images or parts of images that interest me. Then I start working on a background or some other sort of chance construction. Much is left to fleeting insights. These are tiny miracles of inspiration. Depending on whether I’m using scissors and glue or digital images, each collage could take several hours. *** Bill Wolak has just published his eighteenth book of poetry entitled All the Wind’s Unfinished Kisses with Ekstasis Editions. His collages have appeared as cover art for such magazines as Phoebe, Harbinger Asylum, Baldhip…

Continue reading →

June 1, 2022

Aislinn Feldberg — “Dream World”

Posted by Mike Rochester in Fine Art

Artist Statement: I enjoy experimenting and creating art with a dark, bizarre flair in order to create a dreamy scene or landscape. My work demonstrates conflicting natures of human nature or of materials (flowing delicacy or brutal strokes). I attempt to include sarcastic or whimsical humor in my art whenever I can. I draw inspiration from my surroundings and artists that I admire, such as Gaugin, Max Ernst, Frida Kahlo, Banksy, Vincent van Gogh and Yayoi Kusama. *** Aislinn Feldberg is a writer and visual artist from Queens, New York. She is currently a Junior with a major in Studio Arts at Bard College. Her work interweaves with prior dreams and gothic influences. You can find her on Wrongdoing Mag or her website: www.oddityplayground.com.

Continue reading →

May 2, 2022

Carolyn Adams — Art and Poetry

Posted by Mike Rochester in Fine Art, Writing

“Epiphany” In the Absence of Red Alarms My blood sisters remember what I’ve almost forgotten, the menses that measure our time. I’ve lapsed my membership in that club, I travel free from the 30-day clock. My time is counted differently now. Days are years, years are millennia, millennia are without measure at all. There is no monthly debt; all accounts have been balanced. I spend myself as I wish now, with no child or threat of one. I’ve reached a bargain with the planets, their moons, the sky and all of its diamonds. I won’t wish on anything anymore. I have what I need. Days pass quietly here in the corner of the universe where I savor the slight air of a spring night, where my steps have taken 60 years to make sense. I…

Continue reading →

April 1, 2022

Eva Shaw — Whimsy Meets Reality in Art

Posted by Mike Rochester in Fine Art

Artist’s Statement: In my art, I attempt to share how the world conveys its impressions on me, whether in whimsy or reality. I love to study the complexities of nature, the swirls and hearts and mysterious shapes and then transfer them into how the brush meets the canvas. Sometimes that’s silly; other times it takes a few “edits,” as I can tweaking the objects and designs. There are even times when I return to a painting a month or more later knowing that a detail or a entire image needs to be changed. I enjoy painting as I do when writing books. It consumes me. *** Eva Shaw began painting a decade ago, after a year-long battle with breast cancer. She credits her late husband Joe’s comment that got her started. He said, “The shed…

Continue reading →

February 28, 2022

“Painting for Personal Joy,” by Hume Baugh

Posted by Mike Rochester in Fine Art

Artist’s Statement: I’ve been painting for five years. I am mostly self-taught. When I started painting, I decided right away that I was going to paint for my own joy, not to please other people. I wasn’t going to worry about whether the paintings were thought to be good or bad but was going to celebrate whenever someone found something in them. I have worked in other artistic contexts and there is always pressure to do well, to excel. But what this resolution regarding painting did for me was free me to simply play. Like when I was a child and I had paints. Sheer playing. This has been my method of operation since. I learn all the time, I am always experimenting, facing challenges, correcting mistakes, following unexpected paths – that is part of…

Continue reading →

January 31, 2022

“Landscapes,” Photography by Fabrice Poussin

Posted by Mike Rochester in Fine Art

Artist’s Statement: There is something grand to be said about solitude. Although it is not perhaps the ideal state most seek, it is nonetheless a privileged place in which to rest. When the noise stops and the silence of a pristine world sets in, things merely change within. Imagine inhaling the thinning air of high altitudes, of the desert, or the thicker atmosphere of one’s backyard. There is life in every particle if you take the time to slow down and abandon the humdrum of the city where it may appear everything is. It is quite unfathomable for many to understand the possibility offered by a solitary journey to where few venture. These images are an invitation to join and commune with something much larger than the daily unwanted duties of a busy human life. …

Continue reading →

December 31, 2021

“Painting with Morris,” Visual Art by Morris Wiener

Posted by Mike Rochester in Fine Art

Artist’s Statement: My seventh grade teacher, Miss Steinberg, told us that since we would be graduating into high school the following year, we should all have some idea of what we wanted to do with the rest of our lives. She informed us that the following day, each one of us would be asked to come up to the front of the classroom and briefly explain what we wanted to become and why. Well, I don’t believe that anyone was too pleased with that . . . I certainly wasn’t. Not because I didn’t know “what,” but rather, I didn’t know “how.” How am I going to explain to a group of pretty tough guys and girls (most of them played baseball, badminton or basketball) that I wanted to be an artist? Somehow, I got…

Continue reading →

November 30, 2021

“Street Close-Ups,” An Art Exhibition by Ron Hartley

Posted by Mike Rochester in Fine Art

Artist’s Statement: I like to photograph things imbedded in urban asphalt or found on the sidewalks and by-ways of city streets. I love the grungy texture of street art; grunge being an inevitable by-product of the human species that speaks to the human condition like wrinkles to an elderly face. Someone tosses an empty soda can that gets crushed and rusted with time, a fallen leaf lays like a shipwreck marooned on a strange landscape, a white traffic line cracks up in a time-lapse of years, an oil slick fades in a time-lapse of minutes and I try to find my way there. Sometimes “there” can be in the middle of heavily trafficked streets where I practically risk my life trying to photograph such things like they were pieces of the Maltese Falcon. If the…

Continue reading →

August 31, 2021

Peter Jarvis: Realism, Art and Process

Posted by Mike Rochester in Fine Art

Artist’s Statement: My inspiration lies in the topographical drawings and watercolours of the 18th and 19th centuries. My work is objective and realistic and true to the Italian term, veduta esatta meaning “exact view.” My passion for and belief in the sketchbook as a means of understanding subject matter is central to the success of my watercolours. The very nature of the sketchbook in its portability and mobility on location means it is innately suitable in this pursuit and as a precursor to more finished work: it is immediate and intimate and requires the minimum of materials. The activity of drawing on location plays an integral part in my understanding and appreciation of the notion of place: placing oneself as the central reference point during location drawing. This knowledge and experience also enables me to work from photographs alone when it is…

Continue reading →

August 17, 2021

“(UN?) HOLY ALLIANCE” — Blog by Steve Sangapore

Posted by Mike Rochester in Guest Posts

(UN?) HOLY ALLIANCE: Why the Titans of Science and Religion Continue to Clash As humankind advances into its increasingly globalized future, one of the most pressing existential issues of the modern age is the growing tension (and sometimes hostile sparring) between religious systems and the scientific enterprise. Tenants of religion would claim they have suffered blow after blow at the hands of faithless scientists with little regard for the killing of God. And that science, in its attempt to corner the market on truth and understanding, has belittled religion to a state of being little more than destructive dogma grounded in the parochial and patriarchal superstitions of iron-age peasants. Additionally, the scientific community often charges religion with being fantastical, anti-progress, radical, tribalistic, and even governmentally favored. Some would say that we need only to turn…

Continue reading →