Blog | Bourgeon

Salted Trickery by Jennifer Pizzillo

Editor

-

May 4, 2015

I’m working on a set of drawings that use some trickery with salt. I flood the surface of a really nice thick smooth piece of paper with watercolor until it almost seems too wet, and then put piles of kosher salt on the wet surface. The salt sucks up color and gives the surface a funky lichen effect. Once completely dry I scrape off the salt and start working on the surface with acrylic ink applied by a dip pen.

I love pen and ink for its sublime line making potential, but it is a risky way to work because even a slight bump or sneeze can ruin a whole piece. Oil paintings are pretty easy to fix: you just scrape up the mistake, add a layer, or paint over it, and your flub is fixed. With acrylic ink you really can’t fix the missteps, but with a steady hand and dose of good fortune you can get a slightly raised, slightly shiny, silky line quality that’s really lovely.

Artwork title and media by Jennifer Pizillo (2015) — Salt-aire (2015) by Jennifer Pizzillo 18″ x 24″ watercolor and acrylic ink on paper

I was born in Pittsburgh just as the manufacturing industry there was crumbling. When I was about 10 we moved to a small town in Western Maryland and I don’t know how well I fit in. It was the kind of place where everyone seemed to be distant cousins. No one went to dangerous places like Baltimore, or Washington, and even though I spent 8 years going to school there I still felt like an outsider when I graduated.

I went back to Pittsburgh for a year in college to attend Chatham College. I spent more time with my grandparents and made great friends and got to know the city again. I loved living there. I transferred to Towson to finish my art degree but I still visit Pittsburgh often to see family and friends, and I sort of always wished I never had moved away from there. My husband and I like to travel and even those short trips North help me remember that DC is not really the center of the universe.

I don’t make art for provocation, or to advocate for feminism, or abused victims, or the powerless, or to express political rage, or to tell my sad stories, or to exorcize demons. For me, art is exploration, itch scratching, mental maintenance and creative noodle exercise. I make things and then they pile up and I occasionally show them to other people to make money to buy more stuff so I can keep up with my art itching. Life is complicated; art really isn’t for me.

Jennifer Pizzillo is a graduate of Towson University. Her work is concentrated on assembling pleasing color palates and striking pattern in order to produce something visually stimulating. Through the practice of mark making, the effect of mixing textures and media, and the translucence of layering, she aims to create a harmonious patterned aesthetic that incorporates a wide swath of materials, surfaces, and techniques. She lives and works in Montgomery County, Maryland. More information at: https://www.wpadc.org/artist/jennifer-pizzillo

Image at the top of the post is a detail from Salt-aire (2015) by Jennifer Pizzillo.

Jennifer Pizzillo is a featured artist in “Hothouse: imPRINT”, an exhibit that will be open from May 7 – June 20, 2015 at the Capitol Skyline Hotel. This article was produced with the support of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities within a partnership between Day Eight and the Washington Project for the Arts.

Windows by Damon Arhos

Editor

-

May 4, 2015

1

One of my earliest memories is of a dense thunderstorm in my hometown of Austin, Texas. Recalling that memory motivated me to try treating my paints as rain, and my canvases as windowpanes.

For more than a year now I’ve mixed acrylic paint and water and watched – over and over again – as gravity forces the viscous substance down the surface. The process is enlivening for me as it emphasizes the intricacies that exist between background, foreground and everything in-between.

Cyan & Orange #2 by Damon Arhos, 2014 — Cyan & Orange 2 by Damon Arhos, 2014

As the paint runs down the canvas it creates puddles of pigment on the tarp I put down to protect the studio floor. I didn’t plan for these series to be an exploration of gravity, surface, and water, but they are. Each piece represents a window with paint caught like rain running down its surface.

I’m currently applying the process to works on wood. Applying both stain and paint these canvases emanate color from the wood fibers and the viscous drips that I apply. I’m also experimenting with holding everyday objects up to the surface, which forces the stain and paint into unusual trajectories down the surface of a canvas.

I’ve been interested in the confluence of the ordinary and the accidental for some time. Back in 1998 I dug through a box of family photos that my mother had collected and selected some as bases for paintings, often choosing to deconstruct figures and objects and occasionally adding in surreal elements. After my mother’s passing in 2010 I shredded documents (from her life) and integrated them into mixed media pieces as a way of exploring the meaning of physical traces. I also used family photos in some of those compositions, photocopying and layering them with paint and sections of metal screen. With those works I transitioned into abstraction – an approach that continues to be the focus of my art practice today.

It was the process of ordinary observation that motivated me to begin creating artwork nearly 20 years ago, and above all else I am grateful for the opportunity to pursue my passion for art each and every day. As time passes and our busy lives continue, how do we direct our attention? We see some things. We ignore others. Many appealing objects exist right before our eyes yet we often don’t see anything.

A native of Austin, Texas, Damon Arhos is a visual artist and studio art MFA candidate at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. He has shown artwork in exhibits and galleries across the United States and abroad. Exhibition venues have included Strathmore Hall Foundation (Bethesda, Maryland); Foundry Gallery (Washington, DC); City of Austin People’s Gallery (Austin, Texas); East Austin Studio Tour (E.A.S.T. | Austin, Texas); Plano Art Association (Plano, Texas); and the Barrett Art Center (Poughkeepsie, New York), among others. A frequent collaborator on artistic projects, Arhos has affiliated with DC Arts Studios and Washington Printmakers Gallery in Washington, DC, as well as Art Alliance Austin, the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum, and the Pump Project Art Complex in Austin, Texas. Arhos currently lives and works in the Washington, DC metro area. View the artist’s website here.

The image at the top of the post is a detail from the author’s artwork, ‘Cyan & Orange 2’ (2014).

This article was produced with support from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities within a partnership between Day Eight and the Washington Project for the Arts.

Little Girly Worlds by Fallon Chase

Editor

-

May 1, 2015

1

I’m fine admitting that my work most closely resembles the notebook of a middle school girl. The pink, purple and gray could be conglomerations of botanical doodles made with gel pens on seventh grade math homework. I enjoy challenging what is important enough to go into a painting and want to give space to the girly vocabulary and symbolism of hearts, stars, and flowers.

The painting I’m working on now is stretched out flat on my studio floor like a rug. Hearts, stars, and vine clusters obscure a tablet of words. Around my studio are photos cut from fashion magazines and the old cut up soda cans I use to hold my painting mixtures. A pile of glitter sits near the canvas.

things to tell uou by Chase Fallon 2015 marker and image transfer on canvas — Things to Tell You by Fallon Chase, 2015, oil, marker transfer and image transfer on canvas

My studio is the attic/loft area where I live (in Herndon, Virginia.) Although I grew up in the area I’ve only been in this studio since last May, after finishing my BFA in painting and literature at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. I love watching the sky change color through the two skylights in my studio space. At midday the sun makes bright marks on the floor that slowly crawl up the walls; I wish it could stay the rich ultramarine blue (that comes right before the pink sunrise) all day long.

I live at the end of the metro line and the commute to and from my day job is long. I frequently use the time to draw — grids and arrays of hearts, stars, or flowers. I almost always begin my paintings by working through the patterns I’ve made in transit with marker on paper – often on the white borders of glossy fashion magazines.

In my studio I transfer the patterns onto blank canvas. I always start on un-stretched raw canvas, bigger than I think I may need, and build up the image with oil paint, collage, and image transfers. The paintings grow slowly and organically as I add bits here and there and the last step is stretching the canvas for display.

I find the patterns I use in the world around me, drawing inspiration from textiles, nature and art history. I’m excited by city trees covered in sugary ice, a patterned blouse glimpsed on a train platform, soggy moss eating up an old gray stone, an exquisite, embroidered couture dress, kid’s art’s and crafts, those little lit up nooks that blur by deep in the metro tunnels… Worlds nestled inside other worlds, places made of the same stuff but dazzling with a disorienting other-ness. It’s these moments of disappearing from the known that I try to capture in my work, like little hidden pockets of garden.

As I paint the patterns become form, sometimes growing into landscapes, tablets, or tapestries. Stories begin to accidentally make their way into the work. Words too can become a sort of pattern and letters, secret messages, memories, and things I’m reading often make their way in. The paintings are my little worlds, equal parts fiction, memory, and the illogical constructions of patterns seen and imagined.

Fallon Chase, originally from Northern Virginia, graduated in May 2014 with a BFA in painting and a minor in literary studies from MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) in Baltimore, MD. Her work has been shown throughout Baltimore, DC, and VA. She now lives in the DC area, paints, reads, and works at a museum.

The artist’s work is included in the exhibit “Hothouse: imPRINT” open May 7 – June 20, 2015 at the Capitol Skyline Hotel.

View the artist’s website here – http://fallonchase.com/.

This article was produced with the support of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities within a partnership between Day Eight and the Washington Project for the Arts. The image at the top of the post is a detail from the painting “Things to Tell You”, 2015.

White Desert by Maryanne Pollock

Editor

-

April 29, 2015

1

My first creations were small and elaborate villages that I made for ants. On the Scottish side of my family I come from a line of creatives, architects and engineers… practically minded people. My Irish grandparents came over during the potato famine and I believe that lineage framed my conviction to stand up for the underdog and helps explain why my current project is important to me.

The project is an intergenerational art installation initiated by the University of Maryland and The Barrie School with an elder care facility located near the school called Winter Growth. The Barrie students and the seniors of Winter Growth are working with me to envision what a refuge means, to transform those understandings into drawings, and to print large panels of fabric that will be assembled into a tent structure. Our hope is to build awareness of global refugee-ism due to war, famine, poverty, and climate change, and to bridge some gaps between the “us” of the developed world and “them” in the underdeveloped world. We are all vulnerable in the world today.

The author, artist Maryanne Pollock, with student collaborators in Egypt

Specifically, we are constructing an 8 foot square multi-faceted, printed and painted tent. The tent represents our common human need for shelter, privacy, protection, and safety, as well as beauty and remembrance. The project will culminate in a community picnic on Barrie’s grounds, and during the picnic attendees can face-time with refugee children (here and abroad), support student-driven fundraising, and enjoy hands-on printmaking demonstrations. Hopefully we will realize an aspect of many childhood dreams, where the tent is a place for the imagination to run free.

I first envisioned a series of illuminated tents almost twenty years ago. I went to Egypt shortly after the end of my professional training, and lived and worked there for six years. Egypt was a crossroads and hotbed for international cultures, and I found a generosity of spirit and lively intellectual discourse. While I was there I travelled in the white desert, 60 miles from Libya, with a group of Bedouins. I was drawn to their collaborative and nomadic lifestyle, and something about the quieted voices in the night after long hours of feasting, singing, and dancing awakened childhood memories. I had always wanted to live in a hut or a tent somewhere in Africa and there I was actually living my dream. With the current project I’m trying to bring that feeling to Barrie, and Winter Growth.

As a teenager I used to skip school and take the train by myself to University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and spend hours studying in the octagonal shaped library there. I later studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the oldest art school in America and the Tyler School of Art. As a youngster, every time I went to the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, I dreamed of being an Egyptologist.

I’ve travelled a lot my whole life and have always had the practice of making small works on paper to capture the light and narratives of my journeys. Some of these studies are inspirations for the panels for the illuminated tent series I’m working on now.

I’ve been a full time abstract painter, printmaker, textile artist and art educator for years. By necessity I’ve made a practice of leaping, and learning to trust that the net would appear — or in this case, the tent.

Maryanne Pollock is a graduate of Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and Rome, Italy. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts and continued her studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Corcoran College of Art and Design, and through graduate studies in painting at the American University. Pollock is an international, full-time artist and art educator with many years of teaching experience, including The Phillips Collection, DC Public Libraries, and DC Public Schools. She is represented by the Ralls Collection in Washington, DC; Galerie Mourlot and SkotoGallery in NYC, and Genoma Contemporary in Venice, Italy. The artist has lived and worked in her studio in a historic building in Adams Morgan for more than a decade.

For more information please visit her website: http://www.maryannepollock.com/.

The image at the top of the post is “Crossing Over” by Maryanne Pollock (2012) mixed media on canvas.

This article was produced with the support of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities within a partnership between Day Eight and the Washington Project for the Arts.

The Ungrounded Course by Sylvie van Helden

Editor

-

April 14, 2015

1

The Ungrounded Course by Sylvie van Helden

A year ago I quit my job as a full time art teacher to focus more on being an artist. I had been working as a full time art teacher at the high school level for ten years. Prior to that I was an adjunct art professor, and I actually stopped being a professor to take a full-time job with benefits. I was motivated to reverse course and again focus on art making after my brother’s death in September 2013. His death was un-grounding for me, and I’ve been finding recovery in the studio.

I’m the oldest of 3 children, and my brother Pierre was the middle child. Our parents met in graduate school at Columbia University and as children we moved a lot – including from Canada to France and then to the United States – for my father’s job as an engineer and sales director in the automotive industry.

When he was 15 years old my brother was diagnosed with severe ulcerative colitis and an accompanying bile duct disorder called primary sclerosing cholangitis. Five years later there were signs of pre-cancerous cells in his colon and he underwent surgery to have his colon removed. For thirteen years after that he lived a relatively normal life. He managed the remaining cholangitis, worked full-time, and eventually got married and began raising a family.

Rotation 7 - Suspension by Silvie van Helden (2015) — Rotation 7 – Suspension by Sylvie van Helden (2015)

Of us three siblings Pierre was the one who could crack a joke and have everyone in the family rolling on the floor with laughter. Though my brother and I were not particularly close as kids, our relationship got closer as adults. In our thirties we had stable jobs and personal lives and were enjoying all that life had to offer.

That feeling of contentment changed when Pierre was diagnosed with bile duct cancer in November of 2011. He fought hard but succumbed in September of 2013, and his passing created a major rift in my life. I found myself turning to my art to balance my feelings of sadness, powerlessness, and uncertainty. Sometime before my brother’s death a yoga teacher told me: the feeling of being “ungrounded” is a state of freedom, with endless possibilities and choices. Since my brother’s death I’ve been meditating on that understanding in my art.

I’m inspired by the Japanese tradition of woodblock prints known as “Ukiyo-e” (which translates to “pictures from a floating world”.) Ukiyo-e prints date to the Edo period of 17-19^th century Japan. The prints often depict the leisure activities of the merchant class along with landscapes, flora and fauna. There are many things that attract me to the work of Ukiyo-e masters like Utamaro, Hokusai, and Hiroshige: the flattening of space and simplification of natural forms to their essentials, the color palette, and the abundant patterns are a few that come to mind. In my most recent work I’m drawing influence from the clothing worn by geishas and samurai in Ukiyo-e. The undulating shapes of their wardrobes convey motion and capture some of my feelings of being in flux.

Rotation 4 – Spinoff by Silvie van Helden (2014) — Rotation 4 – Spinoff by Sylvie van Helden (2014)

My newest group of pieces, The Rotation Series, all share circular shapes. The pieces often start with a spontaneous throwing or brushing of paint as I lay a loose groundwork into which I place circular shapes, which act as subjects and focal points. The pieces get more dense as I work in additional ink and paint, building up the layers as I go.

I like pieces with a lot of nuance and layering allows me to produce that. I ‘ve taken layering a step farther in the piece I just completed. Rather than have a clear subject and background, I’ve tried to create an ambiguous sense of space by having shapes recede on some edges and come forward on others and by utilizing colors with a similar saturation and value next to one another.

When I finished my MFA I went to work as an art teacher and only managed to keep making art on an inconsistent basis. Since my brother’s death I’ve spent progressively more time in the studio, and currently maintain a regular 40-hour a week studio practice. I work out of a spare bedroom at home during the day, which leaves me evenings and weekends for my part-time jobs, household chores, and personal life.

The most important lesson I learned from my brother’s passing is that I have only one go at life. Getting back into a regular studio practice over the last year and a half has been essential to my happiness. I consider myself an artist first and foremost and my dream is to eventually be able to sustain myself off of my work. Five pieces from my Rotation Series are currently in a show at Hillyer Art Space (running from April 3-25, 2015) and you can also see one of the pieces in the upcoming Hothouse: ImPRINT show which will run from May 7 to June 20, 2015 at the Capitol Skyline Hotel.

Sylvie van Helden was born in Montreal, Canada in 1974. After graduating with a Biology degree from the University of Michigan Sylvie moved to Baltimore (in 2000) to attend the Mount Royal Program at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). She graduated MICA in 2002 with her MFA, and taught both at the college and high school levels for 12 years. Her works have been shown in local, regional, and national shows at venues such as Maryland Art Place, The Elizabeth Roberts Gallery, Eastern Michigan University, and the Painting Center in NYC. She was the recipient of a Maryland States Arts Council grant for Painting in 2004. Sylvie lives and works in Baltimore, MD.

View the artist’s website here. The image at the top of the post is a detail from the author’s artwork, ‘Rotation 7 – Suspension’ (2015). This article was produced with the support of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities within a partnership between Day Eight and the Washington Project for the Arts.