CThru.com Presents Tony Ward

Posted by Anthony Wood

From Christianity I got good and bad, heaven and hell, woman as mother and temptress.

From Culture I got Cubism, Modigliani, film noir, horror movies, comic books, Heart of Darkness and Interview With a Vampire.

Image 3

From photography I got Diane Arbus, Meatyard, Joel-Peter Witkin and Bob Asman.

From meditation I got mystery and inner effulgent plays of light.

All of this strikes me as I look at my images of nude women from the past 3 years: idealized, exaggerated, absurd, deformed, decayed, darkness & shadows, unnatural, shame, innocence, desire and temptation, hidden and exposed.

To learn more about Anthony Wood’s work, log on to www.anthonywood.zenfolio.com.

The Fairy Of Pirate's Alley

Posted by Charlene Lanzel

……….I was living in New Orleans’ French Quarter for the winter season in 2007. I fell in love with the city and its past, and became curious of the history of Exchange Alley where I was living. My husband (Ronnie Magri) and I decided to do some research, and headed over to the Historical Society on Chartres Street. What we found was that the infamous painter Edgar Degas had once owned property across the alley from our building. I began studying Degas’ life and discovered he was an avid drinker of Absinthe. I had heard many tales of the mysterious wormwood elixir and longed to try it. After all, it seemed to be the official drink of some of history’s greatest artists!

The Devil Drinks Absinthe

Absinthe is said to evoke the spirit of “La Fee Verte” or “The Green Fairy”. I learned that Absinthe was being served at The Pirate’s Alley Cafe, just a few blocks away. So, my husband and I headed over for my first taste. These two painting’s, “The Devil Drinks Absinthe” and “The Fairy of Pirate’s Alley” are the documentation of that night. They are portraits of myself an my husband, sitting across the table from each other in Pirate’s Alley, experiencing the effects of the notorious drink. We have since become Absinthe snobs and enjoy trying different brands from around the world.

……….To learn more about Charlene Lanzel’s work log on to www.CharleneLanzel.com.

Triangulated Torso

……….”Unlike the artist who composes with camera in hand, Asman creates his compositions in the darkroom, excavating the desired images from chemicals and paper negatives.  As a result, his lapidary figures are awash in a sensuous and shadowy sea, their distressed, crusty textures more like weathered stone or glazed donuts than skin.  Playing with scale and himself in negative space, he deconstructs the body, freeing it from conventional readings.”

Judith Stein, Curator and Critic, PEW Fellowship

Traingulated Torso 2

“I also find the orgone energy associated with naked women and sex intriguing. I guess that is why I make pictures of nudes.” Robert Asman

………”I like the chemistry, magic, mystery, physics, materials of photography.” Robert Asman

Triangulated Hands

……….”Its really the excavation of self or the alchemical process of changing one’s self or nature with the work….its psychological and based off the neurological feeling I would get of forcing/dragging/sculpting/coercing images out of photo paper in a ritualized manner in a cavelike darkroom.” Robert Asman

The Body

……….To learn more about Robert Asman’s work log on to www.alchemy-ink.com.

Bamboozled

………Mikel has informed the Studio that Spike Lee’s film of the same name, inspired the creation of this piece.

Chucky

Posted by McFrop

…..Poor Chucky looking a little worse for wear, but he still has his sleuth hat on and is hot on the trail. I know he’s a little psycho just looking for his next victim, but every time I look at him I can’t help think if we went after the truth with as much vigor and disregard for personal safety the world would not be filled with as much shadow and deceit………..

The Prophecy

Posted By Mikel Elam

“Numbers and letters may fitly be called eyes” Alan Ginsberg

……..I have a kindred spirit in another well known artist by the name of Francesco Clemente. We share in several ideals. Words can be great inspiration for future paintings, as I have always been an avid reader. I’m fascinated with the concepts of hidden messages. In my life numbers, letters and passages have become fodder for my imagination.

In this painting, there is a woman who is in a meditative state of consciousness. A place of relaxation and exploration of her future objectives. Something unexplainable is happening to her. Perhaps it occurs in her subconscious. It’s leading her in a certain direction. She clutches a tool for choosing her fate.
This story is one I created for this painting, yet as important to me is the viewer’s interpretation which can be quite different and equally as valuable.
My work has been a constant exploration of the mind’s eye, intermixed with the conscious world.

In fact eyes are the windows to the soul. It’s the place where breathing leads to meditation and ultimately to transformation.

…….To learn more about Mikel’s work log on to www.mikelelam.com……..

Master At Work Photo: Roy Ives

……I had the pleasure of meeting Genevive Zacconi in 2006, when she curated an art exhibition entitled, “Negative Exposure” for Trinity Art Gallery in Philadelphia. Her unusual interest in the erotic as well as the macabre, forms the basis of her unique vision. A distinct persona that is reflective in her paintings. Genevive was born in Philadelphia in 1981. As an artist and curator, she has been involved in numerous art exhibitions around the globe and has been featured on MSNBC, New York Press, Coagula Arts Journal and Juxtapose magazine.

Objective Observation

In addition to creating her own art, Genevive has also worked as a painting assistant to Ron English, headed the first Philadelphia branch of “Dr. Sketchy’s Anti -Art School”, and was the founding director of Trinity Art Gallery in Philadelphia and Paul Booth’s, Last Rites Gallery in New York.

Delusions Of Candor

Disillusion

Miss Fortune

Try Walking In My Shoes

Genevive is currently curating an exhibit within “The Dirty Show” (the worlds largest art show) to take place in Detroit, February 12 to the 20th, 2010. The exhbit will include works by Michael Hussar, David Stoupakis, Shawn Barber and yours truly. To learn more about Genevive’s work, log on to www.genevive.com……..TW

Genevive Zacconi, Photo: Lithium Picnic

Nirvana By Mikel Elam

…..Guest Blogger, Patrick Breslin a professor of Speech Communication at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida; writes a commentary about Mikel Elam’s state of “Nirvana”, the studio’s Painting of the Day…….

Mikel Elam’s painting titled “Nirvana” depicts a male figure seated in meditation. The painting is a partial patchwork: the figure’s head encased in an orange square, the torso in a dark gray one. The background contains light colored disks, gold leaf squares, and dark purple 5-spoked behandled circles reminiscent of Buddhist icons, all ensconced in rectangular shapes. The dominant shade at the bottom of the painting is also purple, suggesting a base or ground, and philosophically linked to the icons; the top is adorned with swaths of blue, suggesting sky.

The meditator in the painting is a multiracial collage. The head appears African; the torso a shade of bronze; the lower abdomen and legs partake of a dark Caucasian complexion; the arms lighter—the left hinting at orange, the right bordering on pink—, and both terminating in an empty space of unpainted hands.

The title of the piece suggests several interpretations. Nirvana by definition refers to the ultimate peaceful state, and the multiracial makeup of the subject of the painting seems to propose that the blending of races, or at least their acceptance of one another, might lead to a peaceful existence. In the context of meditation as understood in popular culture, the lower abdomen whimsically lacks a navel, the historically clichéd object of meditation, causing the viewer to wonder whether the meditator in the painting is a holy incarnation not born of a woman. The viewer observes that the head of the subject does not fully connect to the body; the two are separated by a strip of the orange color from the box that surrounds the head. One could read into this that the nirvanic state of the meditator is all within the mind, disembodied, the concept of which does align with classic Buddhist perspectives.

The goal of meditation is enlightenment, whose common metaphor is light. Meditation is practiced in the mind—in the head—, yet the color scheme of the meditator’s body in the painting casts the darkest shades on the head and the lightest ones on the nonexistent hands, reversing the typical expectation and intimating that perhaps through the hands one expresses one’s degree of spiritual development, as Elam may be attempting to do in this work.

Pat Breslin Vulcan Days