Month: April 2018

Dennis Campay

Dennis Campay, “Bull”, 2018, Ink on Paper, Private Collection

“Drawing holds a central place in my work. I have spoken of its role and uses both as its own and as a key part of my paintings and sculptures but most surely in my creative process. I have explored and investigated through drawing a language of marks that communicates different narratives which creates feelings, memories of environments and elements of things that we encounter in everyday life. My images represent a period of time-a glimpse into the ongoing evolution of a body of work. This creates a kaleidoscope of stories allowing the work to grow with the viewer through the lens of the experience of life.”  -Dennis Campay

Calendar: April 27

A Year: Day to Day Men: 27th of April

Natural Extension into Space

April 27 1791 was the birthdate of Samuel Finley Breese Morse, the American painter and inventor.

In England, Morse perfected his painting techniques under the watchful eye of notable artist Washington Allston; by the end of 1811, he gained admittance to the Royal Academy. At the Academy, he was moved by the art of the Renaissance and paid close attention to the works of Michelangelo and Raphael. After observing and practicing life drawing and absorbing its anatomical demands, the young artist produced his masterpiece, “The Dying Hercules” after first making a sculpture as a study for the painting.

In 1825, Samuel Morse decided to explore a means of rapid long distance communication. While returning by ship from Europe in 1832, he encountered Charles Thomas Jackson, a man from Boston well schooled in electromagnetism. Witnessing various experiments with Jackson’s electromagnet, Morse developed the concept of a single-wire telegraph. In time the Morse code, which he developed became the primary language of telegraphy in the world. It is still the standard for rhythmic transmission of data.

Morse encountered the problem of getting a telegraphic signal to carry over more than a few hundred yards of wire. His breakthrough came from the insights of Professor Leonard Gale, who taught chemistry at New York University. With Gale’s help, Morse introduced extra circuits or relays at frequent intervals and was soon able to send a message through ten miles (16 km) of wire. This was the great breakthrough he had been seeking. Morse and Gale were soon joined by Alfred Vail, an enthusiastic young man with excellent skills, insights, and money.

At the Speedwell Ironworks in Morristown, New York,  on January 11, 1838, Morse and Vail made the first public demonstration of the electric telegraph. Although Morse and Alfred Vail had done most of the research and development in the ironworks facilities, they chose a nearby factory house as the demonstration site. The first public transmission, with the message, “A patient waiter is no loser”, was witnessed by a mostly local crowd.

On May 24, 1844, a 38 mile line financed by Congress and stretching between Washington D.C. and Baltimore,  was officially opened.  Samuel Morse sent the now-famous words, “What hath God wrought” from the Supreme Court chamber in the basement of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., to the B&O’s Mount Clare Station in Baltimore.

Sawada Shinichi

Figurative Sculptures by Sawada Shinichi

Shinichi Sawada was born in Shiga Prefecture, Japan. Diagnosed as autistic, he found employment in the hospital bakery of the Ritto Nakayoshi Sagyojo (institute for the mentally disabled, in the city of Kusatsu). In 2001, the professor directing the workshop where Sawada worked with clay, launched the construction of a small potter’s cabin: it was located a few kilometers from the institution and deep in the wilds.

Here Sawada creates his sculptures silently and with unflagging regularity. His works – demons, monsters, masks – are characterized by hundreds spikes of clay that give them an intricate and frightful beauty. He plants these one by one into the either round or cylindrical shapes constituting the central body of each piece. After shaping the bodies, he fires them in a large wood-fired kiln built of earth and ignited only twice a year. This gives them their brownish-red hue in lighter or darker shades, depending on the flames.

These monstrous and magical creatures seem to be the fruit of a personal mythology, maybe inspired by the old Japanese traditions of imaginary beasts, ghosts and spirits. We can find affinities with the masks of Nō Theatre,  manga characters, and African tribal arts.

Hiroyuki Tajima

Hiroyuki Tajima, “Unforgettable Altar B”, Color Woodblock, 1984 Edition of 50

Hiroyuki Tajima was was born in Tokyo in 1911 and graduated from Nihon University in 1932. In 1943, he graduated from the Western-style painting division of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. Tajima  created his first print in 1946, and joined the Bijutsu Bunka Kyokai’  a group dedicated to exploring and reviving the abstract and surrealist painting ideals that had been suppressed during WWII. He  also studied with Nagase Yoshi, an artist of the Sosaku Hanga school. In 1963, Tajima became a member of the Nihon Hanga Kyokai, the Japanese Print Association.

In order to create his unique woodblocks Tajima developed his own ink using powdered color mixed with the plastic medium phenol formaldehyde resin (Bakelite). He uses this ink for a pattern block and then prints again with a water-based ink or dye, which color the areas not printed by his special water-resistant ink.

“Every Tajima work seems to glow from behind, as though it incorporated a fluorescent light shielded by a mysteriously textured fabric. … Tajima’s technique consists of brushing intensely colored dyes over a dark-colored medium, imparting luminosity to the white areas while enriching the basic colors of the print. The textured areas fade off into dark planes, seeming to float on a cool liquid. Thus the fascinating, bubbly shapes are set off by simple, relaxing ground forms. In this end, this rare combination of intricacy and confident simplicity makes Tajima’s work both exciting and reassuring.” -artist, author, and art curator Francis Blakemore

The Distant Mist

Photographer Unknown, (The Distant Mist)

“I returned to the courtyard and saw that the sun had grown weaker. Beautiful and clear as it had been, the morning (as the day approached the completion of its first half) was becoming damp and misty. Heavy clouds moved from the north and were invading the top of the mountain, covering it with a light brume. It seemed to be fog, and perhaps fog was also rising from the ground, but at that altitude it was difficult to distinguish the mists that rose from below and those that come down from above. It was becoming hard to discern the bulk of the more distant buildings.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose