Tag: poetry

Art Balm

I am in the middle of working on a new CINEFIELD® and so other big works are on hold until done. There is still the nightly drawing/woodshedding. After a week or so, I find myself missing painting. I am lucky that my lyra pieces are a close approximation, it gives me the same serving the process emotional pay off.

Although the lyra pieces are also a form of woodshedding, I consider all the mediums I use of equal value, nothing is a second class citizen.. If I can get the effects i want in monochrome, especially for portraits, then when I am using my paints, it becomes “easier”.

Stateside, the news continues to be bleak. Everything has morphed into culture wars, a forced upon life or death struggles. A lot of it manages to be very serious and also absurd. It’s become too easy for one to remain amped up from a steady diet of doom scrolling, shaking their fist at the other side while veins July Fourth pop in the forehead. Even as the book banners morph more and more into (most likely) book burners, know it has to eventually pass.

In the interim, all artists have a duty to do their thing. Not to have specific political messages in their work, but to show beauty, even terrible beauty or ugly beauty. It serves as a reminder there is something bigger than oneself out there, culture. It’s a way to show that emotions besides the negative ones can be equally as strong.

If everything but the fight and thoughts of the enemy drop away, what’s the point of it all?

Two Lyra pieces 5×7

by Wayne Wolfson

Cinefield® Metal Waves

I had been about a quarter of the way through a full sized Cinefield® when my computer gave up the ghost. This meant I couldn’t use my printer, needed for components. I Switched to doing a painting. The computer I ordered taking it’s time to get to me. I missed doing Cinefield® work

I decided to use my pocket printer and do a smaller piece. Having the luxury of no deadline and no expectations of a collector, I decided to try some new things:

I inserted an In the Eights figure into the work (female figure for those not familiar with my 8’s project)

The pictures are printed on thicker, instant film like paper. When I initially was figuring out methodology with these materials, I used my regular adhesive. If that comes in contact with picture side of the film, it immediately clouds it. I Switched to glue sticks. Problem with that was that it secures the pieces only temporarily. Often times I would lay a piece down only to have a different piece fly off. For this piece I used regular adhesive, applied with a tiny brush as to control it. The tricky part was that I had to lay each piece exactly where it was meant to go because of the adhesive. A piece lain wrong I might be able to pick up but then adhesive had touched other parts.

The nature of pocket printer pieces is they are thicker and rigid so it’s an impossibility to get the pieces flat and flush. The visible seams/edge are part of the look.

The piece is 4×4 inches. All the photos are by me except the female photo which was done for me. The clock image is from photo I took of Orsay Museum clock in Paris.

by Wayne Wolfson

Gossip

Being in Paris has always been a sort of battery for my work. During this pandemic for the first time in decades I found myself cut off from my usual arrondissement and sources of inspiration. I recognize many had it far worse than I, so bare in mind I am not complaining. I needed to find a new way to work for essentially first time in my career.

I had my usual routine but mixed in with this were little challenges, explorations as to facilitate both evolution and insperation. I started several series utilizing new to me mediums, ideas and goals.

Gossip in one of them. It is not a book so much as a work of art which utilizes text. It is not only something very different for me but in general unique. I would call the art “immediate” in the same sense as some of the works by Wayne White & Ed Ruscha’s text incorporated pieces. You view it, have initial ideas but then chew upon it after the fact.

One thing I highly recommend is that you do not take a peek inside as amazon offers but rather go in completely cold with no idea what awaits you. Were it up to me, I would offer no “sneak peek” but amazon has other ideas in that department.

Rarely do i promote my works to buy. I would always rather have an audience than customers. With Gossip, it is meant to be viewed as a whole start to finish and there is simply no way to show parts of it in journals or what not without loss of effect.

All the images are created by me as is the text.

From the back cover:

At its best, the stream of life is like a great jazz standard. There is the familiar melody but with each player there are infinite variations and improvisations occurring within the known framework. Not just what the player says but the way in which it is said, the tone, make it worth revisiting. Further variation derives from our perceptions. One person’s requiem is another’s calliope.

Here is my riffing on humanity, flurries of notes darkly funny, tragic and image rich.

by Wayne Wolfson

The Jenny Three

I have always been a city-boy. I can appreciate nature and do not mind being away from the city in (very) short bursts but it’s the places which float upon the concrete that call to me non-stop.

This piece is a sort of ballet of neon. I wanted to capture the sense of rhythmic motion, the undulation of lights which shimmer in near abstraction depending upon from where one is seeing them.

The work is 11×14. There was no digital magic used, merely my trusty scissors on photos which I personally took and adhesive applied with a brush.

addendum: briefly I am accepting models for my “In the Eights” series. Email me for details.

“The Jenny Three” 11×14

by Wayne Wolfson