fluence
jan-feb 2010 ricco/maresca, new york
Also in this issue: Hiroyuki Doi’s Bold Art from Tiny Circles Introducing Miriam Wosk
WILLIAM HAWKINS: ARCHITECTURAL PAINTINGS
fluence A magazine about artists, art discoveries and more
FEATURES
Jan/feb 2010
1
William Hawkins: Architectural Paintings by Edward M. Gómez An exhibition of the self-taught master’s images of buildings and monuments calls attention to his vision of the urban landscape.
9
Hiroyuki Doi: A Big, Bold Art of Teeny-Tiny Circles by Edward M. Gómez A Japanese artist creates meditative compositions and voluminous forms in ink on handmade paper.
18 Technology and the Touch of the Hand by Edward Goldman For mixed-media artist Miriam Wosk, transforming her works into tapestries and prints has brought unexpected—and welcome—surprises.
On the cover: Detail of Mt. Vernon c. 1988 oil enamel on Masonite 36 ins. x 48 ins. Right: Mt. Vernon c. 1988 oil enamel on Masonite 36 ins. x 48 ins.
WILLIAM HAWKINS: ARCHITECTURAL PAINTINGS An exhibition of the self-taught master’s images of buildings and monuments calls attention to his vision of the urban landscape By Edward M. Gómez
To
make a living, the self-taught artist William Hawkins (1895-1990) tried his hand at just about everything during his long life—raising farm animals, serving in the U.S. Army in World War I, working as a plumber, driving a truck and even running a bordello. Similarly, when it came to making art, very little escaped the eager grasp and transformative power of his imagination. At Hawkins’ home in Columbus, Ohio, in the early 1980s, the young artist Lee Garrett, a recent graduate of Ohio State University, discovered the older man’s artwork. He also learned that he had been a pack rat for a very long time. In Hawkins’ apartment, located one floor above a barber shop, Garrett found that, over the years, the eighty-something art-maker had amassed an astonishing array of cast-offs, including old pipes, appliances, motors, wheels, pieces of sheet metal, cans of house paint and weathered boards. 1
fluence jan-feb 2010
Parliamentary Buildings with Three Girls, c. 1986, oil enamel and collage on Masonite, 39 1/2 ins. x 48 ins. Hawkins found inspiration for his paintings in the photos of buildings and monuments he clipped from magazones and stored in a suitcase. 2
fluence jan-feb 2010
In a 1997 monograph, the author and researcher Gary Schwindler recalled that Hawkins “never stopped collecting” all kinds of materials that could be turned into works of art “even when he didn’t need to.” (See Schwindler’s int, “You Want to See Somethin’ Pretty?”, in Frank Maresca and Roger Ricco, eds., William Hawkins Paintings (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), page ix.) The artist told Schwindler: “You’re steppin’ over money if you don’t pick them up....I’m nothing but a junk man.” In fact, as critical recognition of Hawkins’ richly expressive painting style and inventive ideas has grown since his work’s first-ever public showing in an exhibition at the Ohio State Fair in 1982, so, too, has appreciation among art lovers in the U.S. and abroad of the energy and enthusiasm—call it magic—with which Hawkins turned his funky finds into enduring emblems of an unbridled creative spirit. As the big block letters with which he inscribed his name and often identified his subject matter, right across the bottoms or the sides of his paintings, routinely indicate, Hawkins was born in eastern Kentucky on July 27, 1895. He was known to have been proud of his mixed white, black and Native American ancestry. Brought up on a farm by his maternal grandparents, he became fluence jan-feb 2010
Ohio Statehouse No. 2, c. 1985, oil enamel on Masonite, 39 1/2 ins. x 48 ins. skilled at caring for animals, constructing and repairing fences, and operating special tools and equipment. Once, during his teenage years, after hitching a team of horses to a plow as an ominous-looking storm rolled in, Hawkins was struck by lightning as it bounced off a nearby fence. He survived that near-death experience, an alarming encounter with the forces of nature that convinced the youth that the life that lay before him would be a special one. By the time he was 21 years old, Hawkins had fathered a child, but at the insistence of a shotgun-toting aunt, he left 3
the infant and its mother behind and in 1916 headed to Columbus to begin what would become a long life as an urban jack-of-all-trades. Ultimately, he would also become an inventive artist whose distinctive style would earn the praise of critics, curators, collectors and other artists around the U.S. and overseas. Hawkins began making art in the 1930s. For someone who had grown up on a farm, where he had learned to hunt and trap small animals, care for livestock and breed horses, animals were among the first subjects he depicted. Hawkins’ renderings of dogs, dinosaurs and buf-
falo are among the most indelible images in all of his multi-themed oeuvre; so, too, are his pictures of various architectural subjects, including the Alamo, the construction of the Statue of Liberty and assorted banks and hotels. Hawkins often used bright colors in audacious combinations that recall the exuberance of 1960s-era pop art or even the outrageous palettes of German expressionism, with their hints of psychological tension or highpitched emotion. Whether dominated by single, large, space-filling subjects or packed with numerous figures, col-
Log Cabin, c. 1986, oil enamel on Masonite, 35 ins. x 57 ins. 4
fluence jan-feb 2010
Title Goes Here, 1980, enamel on Masonite, 40 ins.elements x 60 ins.and decorative patterns, laged
including those that serve as borders to frame each image, Hawkins’ compositions often feel animated and convey a sense of real or imagined stories unfolding. (In fact, those who knew the artist well have recalled that Hawkins was always an entertaining storyteller.) From January 7 through February 20, fluence jan-feb 2010
5
Historical Monument, c. 1986, oil enamel on Masonite, 45 ins. x 56 ins. 2010, Ricco/Maresca, the exclusive representative of the Estate of William Hawkins, is presenting “William Hawkins: Architectural Paintings.” The exhibition features a selection of emblematic images of buildings and monuments whose vivid blends of bold colors, geometric shapes and brushy pattern-making have earned Hawkins’ paintings, which he usually made with enamel on 5
fluence jan-feb 2010
William Hawkins, with an automobile he decorated himself, at his home in Columbus, Ohio, in the early 1980s. (Photo: Roger Ricco) An inveterate pack rat, who collected all kinds of cast-off materials, the artist once said: “I’m nothing but a junk man.” 6
fluence jan-feb 2010
board, the admiration of outsider art aficionados and contemporary-art collectors alike. Paintings on view in the exhibition depict such subjects as Ohio’s Statehouse, in Columbus, which Hawkins had seen many times in person, as well as the British Houses of Parliament, in London, and Hearst Castle’s Neptune Pool. The British-government buildings and that luxurious section of the 20th-century, American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst’s vast estate in California (which is now a state historic site) are subjects the artist would have known only from photos in magazines. In fact, Ricco/Maresca co-director Frank Maresca recalls, “Hawkins, who was always scavenging through the trash, used to clip photos of subjects that interested him from magazines. He would carefully fold his clippings and store them in a special suitcase that he would dip into for inspiration when thinking about what to paint. Just like many academically trained artists, in his own way, Hawkins was methodical and disciplined about doing the research that informed his art.” Hawkins once observed about his work as an artist: “I don’t copy what I see. I make it better.” (See Joanne Cubbs and Eugene W. Metcalf, “William Hawkins and the Art of Astonishment,” Folk Art, fluence jan-feb 2010
fall 1997, page 60.) In recent years, as critical attention has focused more and more on the various technical and thematic affinities the works of self-taught artists may share with those of their formally trained modern and contemporary counterparts, Hawkins’ art has earned praise for its audacious use of color and the strong sense of design that is evident in its inventive compositions. Now, with “William Hawkins: Architectural Paintings,” admirers of this definitive, American self-taught artist’s work will have an opportunity to examine in detail Hawkins’ distinctive representations of what, for him, appeared to have been iconic symbols of the built, urban environment that for much of his life had both challenged and intrigued this former Kentucky farmboy. - f -
Jordan Memorial Temple, c. 1986, oil enamel on Masonite, 35 ins. x 57 ins. 7
State Capital, o
8
fluence jan-feb 2010
left: Neptune Pool, San Simeon, c. 1986, oil enamel and collage on Masonite, 32 ins. x 49 ins.
Hawkins always boldly painted his name and birthdate, and often the name of his subject matter, right into his compositions.
right: , Albany No. 2, c. 1986, oil enamel on Masonite, 64 ins. x 48 ins. fluence jan-feb 2010
9
Hiroyuki DOI A Big, Bold Art of Teeny-Tiny Circles by Edward M. G贸mez 10
fluence jan-feb 2010
Opposite page: Untitled (HD 0109), 2009, 59 ins. x 38.5 ins.; right: Untitled (HD H0307), 2007, 43 ins. x 31 ins.; both made with oil-based black ink on Japanese washi (handmade paper)
Consider the humble, ubiquitous, perfect form of the circle, one of the most basic shapes in nature and in art, as elegant in its simplicity as it is powerful in its symbolism, representing such resonant themes as fullness, unity, strength, vastness or even the fecundity of the protective, enveloping womb. In Japan, the circle appears frequently as the subject of the calligrapher’s art, even though, technically, it is a symbol and not one of the borrowed Chinese characters (kanji) with which the Japanese language is written. Zen Buddhism’s influence can be felt in interpretations of the circle as a symbol of the universe or, by contrast, as a symbol of the void. It can also refer to a spirit-lifting sense of enlightenment that transcends the woes and distractions of the fleeting, fickle, weary material world. fluence jan-feb 2010
11
In Zen aesthetics, the simple circle gives visible form to a moment in which the mind is free of intellectual clutter, and an artist’s unified body and spirit find expression in the making of a sure, impulsive, unencumbered mark. The painting that results is both the reflection of an enlightened state and a tangible record of a gesture that refers to and expresses that state. Such spontaneous mark-making is never modified or embellished later. Its clarity, simplicity and purity are essential aspects of its expressive power. The Japanese self-taught artist Hiroyuki Doi, who was born in Nagoya in 1946, instinctively understands—and has been deeply moved by—the communicative power of the circle as a form and as a symbol. The circle is the basic form that he uses to incrementally build up and elaborate energetic, abstract compositions.
12
Below: Untitled (HD 49Z06), no date, 25 ins. x 39 ins.; oil-based black ink on Japanese washi (handmade paper)
fluence jan-feb 2010
Doi has written that, for him, “using circles to produce
images” has “provided relief from the sadness and grief” he has felt since the death, more than 35 years ago, of his youngest brother from a brain tumor. Since that time, as Doi has observed, he has created works that simultaneously have alluded to such themes as “the transmigration of the soul, the cosmos, the coexistence of living creatures, human cells, human dialog and peace.”
Above: Untitled (HD 1-C02), 2002, 13.5 ins. x 53 ins.; oil-based black ink on Japanese washi (handmade paper)
The artist, who uses pen and ink on Japanese washi (handmade paper) has recalled: “By drawing, I started to feel calm. I started to feel that something other than myself allowed me to draw these works.” The varieties of washi Doi has used for his drawings have included those made with fibers from the bark of such shrubs or trees as the kouzo (known as the paper mulberry in English), the ganpi and the mitsumata. Doi’s untitled ink drawings in various formats include both small works depicting single, blob-like forms and larger pieces that recall ancient painted screens or hanging scrolls, and whose compositions suggest fluffy cloud formations or sprawling constellations. Doi, who today is based in Tokyo and is a retired master chef, makes his abstract drawings using only black, fine-point pens, which contain an archival-quality ink. (The pens he uses are marketed only in Japan.)
fluence jan-feb 2010
13
14
fluence jan-feb 2010
With these most basic materials, Doi creates connected, meandering clusters of circles, from random sprinklings of tiny dots to sprawling agglomerations of bubbly, bobbing cells. The visual textures of his voluminously modeled forms belie his paper’s flatness and the simplicity of each work’s constituent parts—all of the thousands of miniscule circles that make up each image. Doi has observed that the act of drawing has allowed him to “feel calm.” He never starts working on a new drawing with a particular composition in mind but instead allows each new image he creates to evolve spontaneously and to organically find its final form. The artist’s work sessions, he says, are often long and intensive, and meditative in character. Doi has recalled that, “at some point, I started to feel that something other than myself was allowing me to draw these works.”
Like relief maps of other-worldly surfaces—sometimes they seem to depict imaginary islands adrift in peaceful or tempestuous seas—Doi’s compositions pull a viewer’s gaze in to examine the details of the richly textured forms he brings forth; they could be lunar craters, swirling eddies, surging ridges or gently arcing bays. An enthusiastic traveler who enjoys exploring the artistic traditions and cuisines of other cultures, Doi began visiting museums in Europe in the 1970s in order to acquire a very personal understanding of Western art history. He also became familiar with the aesthetic and stylistic traditions of East Asian painting.
Opposite page: Untitled (HD 10808), 2008 18 ins. x 15 ins.; oil-based black ink on Watson paper
In his own work, though, the artist does not intentionally emulate any known technique or style. However, Doi does recognize the unabashedly hands-on quality of his creations and acknowledges that it is something unusual or rare in the contemporary-art world. In today’s “age of a computerized society,” he notes, “I believe work made using human hands has to be emphasized more.”
fluence jan-feb 2010
15
Considering the construction of his distinctive images both symbolically and philosophically, Doi notes: “Suppose every creature is a circle, which exists in this world. How many of them could I draw?” Apparently, a lot. Of his incessant drawing of tiny circles, he says: “This is my life’s work and my challenge.” If something about Doi’s circle-making feels inescapably—perhaps even irresistibly—obsessive, for artist and viewer alike, it may also, he suggests, reflect and express the life force itself.
“By drawing circles,” he says, “I feel that I am alive and existing in the cosmos.”
Untitled (HD 10308), 2008, 18 ins. x 15 ins.; oil-based black ink on Watson paper 16
fluence jan-feb 2010
Untitled (HD 48Z06), nd, 25 ins. x 32 ins., oil-based black ink on Japanese washi (handmade paper)
fluence jan-feb 2010
17
Technology and the Touch of the Hand For mixed-media artist Miriam Wosk, transforming her works into tapestries and prints has brought unexpected—and welcome—surprises
B
ased in Santa Monica, California, artist Miriam Wosk’s richly textured works combine such disparate materials as fragments of old paper, paint, metallic foils, jewels, wire and other found objects. In her mixed-media creations, these materials come together in complex, atmospheric compositions that celebrate nature and evoke a world of dreams. Some of her works are as large as murals. Buoyed by their vibrant colors and a joyful sense of life, they also suggest a heightened sense of time, mortality and the fragility of existence. 18
fluence jan-feb 2010
Ricco/Maresca is pleased to be introducing Wosk’s multifaceted art, especially at a time when many collectors, curators, critics and artists themselves are expressing a growing sense of interest in the quality—and visibility—of craftsmanship in works of contemporary art. Recently, Wosk spoke about her ideas and techniques with Edward Goldman, a Los Angeles-based art consultant whose “Art Talk” program is a popular feature on Santa Monica’s KCRW radio station. Wosk described her first-ever experience seeing one of her mixed-media designs transformed into a limited edition tapestry. That edition of eight pieces was produced by Magnolia Editions, a fine-art print-making studio in Oakland, California, which is also involved in paper-making. Edward Goldman: About your tapestry “Big Red”: John Nava, the artist, tapestry-maker and co-owner of Magnolia Editions, visited your studio and chose one of your mixed-media collages, featuring an image of a lobster and its parts, to make into a tapestry. The original image is about five feet by four feet large; the resulting tapestry measures about eight feet by five feet. It’s a more mysterious and interesting artistic product than the work on which it is based. fluence jan-feb 2010
You used metallic thread that added some kind of inner glow to the piece, and you added crystals, too. It’s a combination of what technology allows you to achieve, plus your personal touch. Miriam Wosk: I started with a collage made of tiny bits of vintage wallpapers, patterned papers and natural-history prints. The subject matter refers to nature, but what really intrigued me were these bits of patterns and the new patterns they might create, and also the interaction between the natural world and the ornamental world. It was like Antoni Gaudí’s benches in his Parque Güell in Barcelona, where all these disparate fragments [of pique assiette tile] create a new whole. EG: Why did you choose such an exotic image—that of the lobster? You’ve depicted serpents, spiders and insects before, but the lobster is such an unusual subject. MW: I think a lobster is one of the most magnificent creatures on Earth, one of the oldest. It dates back to prehistoric times, and its form is almost extraterrestrial. I’ve long been attracted to the shapes of its shell, claws and body. EG: Was it a challenge for you to transform your original image into another medium? What was required of you as an artist? 19
Big Red tapestry and beaded chair 2007-8, jacquard tapestry with metallic threads and Swarovski crystals 92 ins. x 65 1/2 ins. 20
fluence jan-feb 2010
The Golden Serpent, 2007-8, paper collage and painted metallic foils on canvas, 64 ins. x 118 ins.
MW: I’ve been looking for a way to do tapestries for years. In the past, I had had test swatches created by tapestrymakers who wove by hand, but none of them were able to recreate the detail of my work. However, in Magnolia Editions’ process, an image is translated digitally. It goes onto the finest looms that recreate it, almost like pixels, bit by bit; each thread helps create the whole image, translating it into a tapestry. It pulls the whole thing together in this very rich, lustrous material. EG: I believe they’re using more diffluence jan-feb 2010
ferently colored threads than it has ever been possible to use before. The most luxurious tapestries of the 17th and 18th centuries—fewer colors were available then. Now, with computer technology, [tapestry-makers can] reproduce the most delicate color combinations. MW: I’m sure that’s true. I livened mine up by including many metallic colors—gold, bronzes, peaches, silvers—because I wanted the whole thing to shimmer and shine. Then I gave it an extra, handmade touch of multicolored crystals, so each piece [in 21
the edition of tapestries] is unique. The beginning of the process [involved] translating the image into layers on the computer. The whole thing was done by e-mail, and each color became a layer. I had to imagine which colors might translate into the best threads in this process. EG: Did you feel sure about this tapestry-making technique or did you feel like you were entering a new territory? MW: For me, the process of making art is most joyful— and working with my hands, making something myself. That’s when I loose myself in time and feel most truly alive. This creative process was on the computer and it was fascinating, but it didn’t get to me in the same way making something by hand does. However, when the finished product came, and I saw how beautiful it was, I was enthralled. Then I put my handmade touch on it with the crystals. The finished tapestry is much more glorious, monumental and magnificent than anything I could have created with my 22
Flying Around, 2007, paper collage on canvas, 95 ins. x 57 ins fluence jan-feb 2010
Big Red, Detail 2007-8, jacquard tapestry with metallic threads and Swarovski crystals, 92 ins. x 65 1/2 ins.
own hands. EG: About your lenticular prints, in which a lenticular lens is used to produce images that have the illusion of depth... MW: I’ve loved that process from the first time I saw those kitschy, old lenticular postcards. There’s something magical about this illusion. [This printing method] had been used for commercial purposes before. Now, here was an opportunity to use it to make a limitededition print in conjunction with a master printer, and I loved it for my work. I chose a collage I had made that had the look of going back into space. I traced the image by hand on tissue paper and created about eight layers; each one was then meticulously transcribed on the computer by the printers into this world of deep, illusionary space. You can tweak the color, change the minutest detail—the computer is a magical tool. I was surprised and happy with the result, but it’s a leap of faith—you don’t know what you’ve got until you see the final printed piece. I was trying to create that illusion of outer space and inner cellular space. It’s a metaphysical outlook. I imagine I’m riding through the universe on a light wave. [I think of] Einstein’s work, quantum physics— a bizarre cosmos of my own making, which is symbolic of space, time, color, movement. 24
EG: Imagine if Joseph Cornell, years ago, had had the chance to work with this technology when he was building his small boxes, [those] small theatrical stages on which his magic was played out. This particular, interesting new work of yours made me think of Cornell’s boxes. MW: Well, this [lenticular-print] piece also started as a handmade item, as a collage, which seems like a very fluid way for me to work. I can juxtapose things that may never come together otherwise. It comes to me naturally,
The Mystic Flower of the Soul, 2003, acrylic, starfish, jewels and mixed media on panel, 58 ins. x 58 ins. fluence jan-feb 2010
working with the cut paper. But [the new] technology took it into a whole other realm. EG: These new projects of yours definitely offer surprises for people who fol-
low your work. As long as you challenge yourself, things are going in the right direction. Should we expect another tapestry or another lenticular print soon? MW: I hope so.
Bones of the Golden Serpent, 2008, paper collage, painted foils and butterflies on canvas, 41 1/2 ins. x 53 1/2 ins. fluence jan-feb 2010
25