2015 Spring Fine Art magazine

CLAUDIA HECHT MODERN PRIMITIVIST • CAROLYN FARB COLLECTION • SAMMOUN’S VISIONS • JULIAN LENNON • INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS & ART FAIRS • KAHLO • WOODSTOCK ARTISTS • DYLAN & CASH

SPRING 2015 • $4.95

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CLAUDIA HECHT M O DERN PRI MIT IV IST B Y V ICT OR BEN N ET T FO R BES

Claudia Hecht sculptures & paintings on view at Artexpo NY Booth #527, Art Monaco & Art Ibiza

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Latest Works By Ulivieri At Artexpo 2015

FIRENZE FORTE DEI MARMI

Art moderna e contemporanea

I Giardini Di Firenze, Acrylic On Wood 19.7 x 27.5 Inches

BOOTH #527 ARTEXPO NY FINE ART MAGAZINE GALLERY

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT info@fineartmagazine.com • (US) 631.339.0152 or (Italy) 39.055.218021 Fine Art Magazine, in cooperation with Fabrizio Faustini of Faustini Arte (with galleries in Firenze and Forte dei Marmi, Italy) are pleased to announce the premiere United States exhibition of master artist Uliviero Ulivieri at Artexpo New York, April 23-26, 2015.

“As a Maestro born in the same city of several geniuses — Michelangelo, Botticelli and others — we laugh saying ‘if they were here they would be painting bright colors and canvases of positivity with Ulivieri’, whose imagination is rife with continuous thoughts and creations,” commented Sr. Faustini, who serves as Art Director of the galleries that carry his name. “Monks, nuns, and boy scouts are the characters of his masterpieces…with Tuscan landscapes, city scenes and beaches comprising his body of work that captures moments of his upbringing in his home town of Florence. Here life takes action into fun scenes of joy fulfilling gaps with enthusiasm and positivity through his work.”

Memories and thoughts are the components of his journey that Ulivieri terms “Strafantasie” a combination of fantasies and real events that comprise the body of his creative work — full of energy, color and whimsy. At 81 years of age, the paintings indicate the artist says he is having the time of his life.

Faustini Art Galleries has held several important events and art exhibitions of national and international significance and is looking forward to the launch of Uliviero Ulivieri into the US market via Artexpo and Fine Art. 2 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

Fine Art Magazine • December 2014 • 3

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Donna Summer with her paintings at Artexpo

CARLO BUSCEMI PHOTO

By VICTOR BENNETT FORBES Ed. Note: This is the 40th year that Jamie international gathering of gallerists, painters and I have been creating this magazine. and sculptors bridging the gap from Abstract We don’t pretend to be anything other Expressionism to Pop, to the posters that than what we are, what you are holding in rocked the late 1960s, to the latter days of your hands or reading on your computer the New York School of printmakers who or device. Some say it’s a great magazine, cut their teeth at the Art Students League, one of the best. Who are we to judge our around the corner from the Coliseum on own work? We can walk into any gallery West 57th Street. In those salad days, the or art fair with our heads held high based silkscreen print was known primarily as an on the creative lives we have led. That is advertising vehicle, with Warhol, Indiana our contribution: fostering, understanding, and Lichtenstein just beginning to use it promoting and respecting the Spirit of for the purpose of multiples even as their Creativity. We have survived all these predecessors in turn-of-the-century Paris years, have weathered many a storm and (Lautrec and Mucha, et al) earned rent money produced immortal work on our printing by creating stone plate lithographs extolling presses and in our pages. We have met and the virtues of Absenthe and Job cigarette spoken with some of the greatest talents papers. I doubt if even Warhol imagined that in the world — artists, actors, writers, his primitive six color silkscreens, pulled at musicians — getting to know them on an his Factory overlooking Union Square, would intimate level of shared thought and vision. spawn an industry that in its heyday cranked How much longer we will continue only out 72” prints in editions of 300 with up to God knows but we know this: 200 individual screens. Bigger was indeed better and as Artexpo graduated from the “… all art is heroic. It’s a heroic enterprise friendly confines of the Coliseum to the from childhood, from the beginning, Javits Center, the event grew to astronomical whenever it begins.” proportions. Artists and dealers, who at one — Jasper Johns time were happy to make a few dollars per and we know this: print to cover the cost of a summer foray to Europe, now saw that a thriving American “If Israel could see India, and Japan could middle class was developing an interest in see Mexico, an international chain collecting over and above the traditional of artistic understanding might begin.”

Dali, Miro, Chagall, Picasso, Rockwell, Soyer —Robert Rauschenberg and Neiman lithographs. Laws changed and I used to wonder, many years ago — investors who funded the limited editions when it seemed as if the exhibitors at Artexpo of an ever-expanding roster of artists from were on a mission to paper the world with Will Barnet to Romare Bearden to reap tax their wares — where are the walls for these sheltered benefits were now forced to actually paintings, prints and graphics? On a larger find ways to sell what they produced. Artexpo scale, I thought, how great it would be to have was a perfect forum and there was a time a world of peaceful art buying consumers when fringe artists of the great movements in the huts of Africa, the tenements of became superstars through Artexpo. There Trenchtown, the apartments of Moscow. was a small shop in Port Washington, NY, Through art, or for the sake of art, I mused, that turned away customers for years just to the international economy would percolate produce over-size silkscreens on museum and the utopian society which, arguably, board to satisfy collectors’ needs for Tom forms the basis of all this creativity, could Wesselman’s Great American Nudes. Our then emerge. We would be buying and selling own print shop on Long Island experimented each other’s creative output, getting to know with positive plate mylar lithography and we each other in an entirely positive way, leaving were assigned by the Guggenhiem to print an no time for the hatreds and hostilities that image by Keith Haring for their “Learning Through Art” program. It was a five plate sadly mark so much of the world today.

When the entrepreneurial gentlemen litho and just as we were running the green, who took a chance and rented the one and we received word that the young, superstar only space in New York City large enough to artist died that morning. He never signed host perhaps 100 exhibitors — the Coliseum the print and they are extremely rare today.

W hile Jasper Johns, de Kooning, in the heart of midtown on Columbus Circle at the southern tip of Central Park Pousette-Dart, Wyeth, and so many others — the art world as we know it now did were positioned in the heady and pricey realm not exist. In the late 1970s, during the first of the Art Dealers Association of America years of the show, you could find a modest galleries and Armory show (but not the

CARLO BUSCEMI PHOTO

Artexpo New York Godfather of the International Art Fair

Peter Max

Armory show as we know it today), there were those who hadn’t quite reached those lofty heights of critical and financial acclaim who saw Artexpo as the place to be.

And then came Erté. Actually, he was here since 1892, but it wasn’t until he was rediscovered by an expatriate Brooklynite living in London and brought to the attention of an aggressive American lawyer turned art dealer that an entire industry was spawned. There were those who say the elderly gent was abused with over-commercialization, but the fact is, Erté loved every moment of his latter day attention and provided his admirers and collectors with an extraordinary body of work in many media.

We had a wonderful dinner and interview with him in 1987. While you could find Peter Max images on cereal boxes and lunch pails, Erté’s handlers took the high road and turned his brilliant gouaches executed in the early 20th century into exquisite prints and sculptures that invoked the attention of the cognoscenti, from museum curators, to Ileana Sonnabend, to Stella McCartney, to Barbra Streisand to Warhol himself. Erté was a great artist and a great man who relished the attention and in turn, played a very active role in the process of turning his original costume and set designs into graphics, sculpture, jewelry and objets d’art. He was the real article and his death marked the end of an era in more ways than one.

With the success of Erté spawning

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Jamie with the inimitable Stan Lee and Friends at Artexpo, Anaheim Erte SunStorm/Fine Art Cover 1992

NYSE traded enterprises such as Circle Fine Art and Dyansen Galleries, companies that manufactured, wholesaled and retailed, Artexpo gained even more prominence. In the mid-1980s, Marilyn Goldberg’s limited edition releases of John Lennon’s doodles on napkins into chine collé prints. It can be said, however, that his many fans were correct in gravitating to anything legitimately created by such a beloved individual and as a gallerist as well as editor, I can attest to the pleasure such items bring. Not every work of art has to be created in an atelier, a basement or by a tortured soul in a setting out of La Boheme, or Rent.

The mid-1980s, some would say, were the heyday of Artexpo. I can tell you that the opening bell on Thursday morning caused nothing short of a feeding frenzy of legitimate dealers from the four corners of the earth besieging their favorite booths so as not to get closed out of limited editions that were selling out as quickly as they were produced, and in some cases, even before they were produced. Smart New Yorkers made up their own business cards to get themselves admitted on days that were supposed to be trade only, at which they could claim their 50% discount!

There are many beautiful homes and estates in Hawaii, Connecticut, California and Florida that have been paid in full from the proceeds of those halcyon days. Thousands, if not tens of thousands of artists, and billions, if not tens of billions of dollars have passed through the velvet gates of Artexpo. Styles have changed, home decor has changed, love has bloomed and evaporated, exhibitors have prospered and been incarcerated; fortunes made, lost and sometimes reclaimed. One minute, an artist is burning his night’s work before sunrise so that the Red Chinese Army wouldn’t imprison him for not painting the party line; a few years later, he is living in a $34 million mansion in Beverly Hills. That was Ting Shao Kuang.

world’s tallest building or burn in an inferno hotter than hell. Zukerman had to cancel his Dali show scheduled for that Thursday, but Anne’s was set for a month later. October 11th. He insisted on carrying on, despite the fact that most of the streets near his Soho gallery were closed to traffic and international travel was highly curtailed. His statement was this: the only way to show them they haven’t won was to simpy live our lives. Paint on! Act on! Write on! Last but not least, ROCK ON!

Victor Forbes, Artexpo Anaheim

That is our American Dream, which is so vigorously under attack. This country has never inhibited anyone from worshiping their god of choice and now we are in a wicked battle against those who wouldn’t have a moment’s remorse about destroying our world and themselves with the flick of a remote controlled nuclear bomb or a box-cutter used to hijack an airplane, wreaking unimaginable destruction. In these times, we must remember that our former home of Artexpo, the oft-denigrated Javits Center, stood tallest the weeks after September 11, 2001, when it served as staging ground and rest area for the many who came to Ground Zero to offer their services. When we attend Artexpo at the Pier, we take note of the proximity to the catastrophe, and we must remember to appreciate the fact that we are still alive to wage the battle not only for our lifestyle, but for our creativity and artistic freedom despite these troubling times. Clearly, we are in World War III minus the nukes, for now.

We were in our print shop, producing a book for Neil Zukerman, 256 pages on Anne Bachelier, when those planes hit the towers and all those lives were lost. People forced to make decisions whether to jump from the

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PUBLISHER JAMIE ELLIN FORBES info@fineartmagazine.com

(631) 339-0152 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF VICTOR BENNETT FORBES victor@fineartmagazine.com 518-593-6470

SPECIAL THANKS To so many in the art and printing area who helped us to stay in the game for 40 years!

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Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 5

New-York Historical Society Unveils Conserved Picasso Curtain – A Legendary Artwork With New York City Pedigree

T

his spring, the New-York Historical Society will unveil a recently acquired and conserved masterpiece by the Spanish born, French artist Pablo Picasso – the painted theater curtain for the ballet Le Tricorne (1919). Donated by the Landmarks Conservancy to New-York Historical, the Le Tricorne curtain was installed like a tapestry for 55 years at the iconic Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building in New York City. Believed to be the largest painting

by Picasso in the United States, the 20 x 19 foot theater curtain is the first work by the artist in New-York Historical’s collection.

The curtain will be on long-term view at New-York Historical beginning May 29, 2015. From May 29 through summer 2016, an exhibition with related highlights from New-York Historical’s collection and special loans will complement the monumental artwork. Curated by Dr. Roberta J.M. Olson, New-York Historical’s Curator of Drawings, the exhibition will illustrate the European tradition―with works by artists that inspired Picasso or, alternatively, works representing trends that he rebelled against―and showcase American art of the era. Among the artists represented are George Bellows, El Greco, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Francisco de Goya, Childe Hassam, Elie Nadelman, Maurice Prendergast, John Sloan, Adriaen van Utrecht, Judocus de Vos, and others.

“Le Tricorne has been an icon of New York for more than half a century, embodying both an influential social milieu and an important moment in the city’s cultural development,” said Louise Mirrer, President and CEO of the New-York Historical Society. “As an institution that preserves, studies, and exhibits the artifacts of a continually changing city, we are proud to welcome the work into our permanent collection.”

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was commissioned to design and paint the stage curtain for the two-act ballet The Three-Cornered Hat (“Le Tricorne” or “El sombrero de tres picos”) by the impresario Serge Diaghilev for his avant-garde, Paris-based Ballets Russes, the most influential ballet company of the early 20th century and a crucible of experimental modernism. Picasso was most intensely involved with the Ballets Russes while married to Olga Khokhlova, a dancer with the troupe. Choreographed by Léonide Massine who was also the principal male dancer, with music by the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla, Le Tricorne was based on a Spanish romantic novella and featured fiery flamenco and folkloric dances.

6 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

Picasso painted theater curtain for the ballet Le Tricorne (1919)

Picasso created the curtain for Le Tricorne over a period of three weeks in 1919 in London with Diaghilev’s scene painter Vladimir Polunin and his wife Elizabeth Violet. Working with paintbrushes affixed to broom-handles and toothbrushes, Picasso and the Polunins wore slippers to stand on the canvas as they painted. The ballet which premiered on July 22, 1919, at the Alhambra Theatre in London, with sets, costumes and the monumental stage curtain

by Picasso was a resounding critical success.

Shown during Le Tricorne’s overture, Picasso’s curtain signaled a quintessentially Spanish vignette: a bullfight. In the foreground of the painting, five spectators and a young fruit vendor are watching the bullfight from a classicizing colonnaded balcony. In the background, a slain bull is dragged out of the arena, the violent image partially concealed by spectators. The scene is painted in ochre yellow and reddish orange, the traditional colors of the bullring, and the figures are outlined in black, in the bold style of posters then in vogue. Although unrelated to the libretto’s plot, Pi-

casso’s curtain clearly set the Iberian mood for the ballet.

In 1928, in need of money to finance new shows, Diaghilev cut out the center of the large curtain and sold it to a private collector. In 1957, it was first acquired by Phyllis Lambert, architectural historian and daughter of Samuel Bronfman, CEO of the Seagram Company Ltd. (now Vivendi), who displayed it in the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building from 1959-2014. Vivendi gifted Picasso’s Le Tricorne curtain to the New York Landmarks Conservancy in 2005 as a “Gift to the City.”

The Conservancy has now entrusted the New-York Historical Society with this New York City landmark.

Inspired by Picasso’s painting for Le Tricorne, the exhibition will explore stylistic and thematic connections between the curtain and artworks and objects in NewYork Historical’s holdings, supplemented by three special loans. Among the collection highlights are two large, recently-conserved tapestries that have not been displayed for decades – Judocus de Vos’ The Triumph of

Apollo (ca. 1715), which dates to the end of the reign of the French “Sun King” Louis XIV, and the Art Deco Belgian Settlers Landing on Manhattan Island in 1623 (1939), created by Floris Jespers for the New York World’s Fair of 1939. Masterworks by El Greco and Goya, on loan from the Hispanic Society of America, will showcase Picasso’s artistic influences.

Picasso’s “Le Tricorne” also will present works by American artists who were Picasso’s contemporaries, many of who participated in the 1913 Armory Show that introduced modernism to U.S. audiences. The Circus (1912) by George Bellows, on loan from the Addison Gallery of American Art, will underline the importance of the Armory Show, where Picasso also showed his work. Elie Nadelman, who also exhibited at the Armory Show, met Picasso in Paris in 1908 and whose terracotta sculpture The Four Seasons (ca.

1912) shows a similar classical inspiration, sometimes claimed that in fact he – not Picasso – had invented Cubism. On the other hand, Russian immigrant artist Abraham Manievich’s The Bronx (1924) applied a Cubist-Futurist style to the New York cityscape.

Elie Nadelman, The Four Seasons, ca. 1912. Terracotta, 31½ inches (tallest). New-York Historical Society, 2001. Like Picasso, Elie Nadelman harnessed classical forms to forge his modernist art.

Although none of Nadelman’s sculptures have their traditional attributes, each is true to its respective season: Spring twists her hair (like classical representations of Venus, born from the sea in Spring), while Winter is swathed in heavy fabric, Summer removes her drapery, and Autumn gathers her cloak to warm herself. In 1908 Picasso and Nadelman met in Paris, introduced by Gertrude Stein’s brother, Leo.

The exhibition also will note the craze for Spanish culture inspired by the success of Le Tricorne, showcasing ivory and lace

Abraham Manievich, The Bronx, 1924. Oil on canvas, 51 ½ x 49 inches. New-York Historical Society, 2001.50. This painting is reminiscent of the abstract and folkloric paintings of Manievich’s native Russia.

During the 1920s, the Bronx became a haven for Jewish artists, musicians, and writers, including Manievich, who fled his homeland to escape the pogroms. Members of the Ballets Russes and other Russian dancers performed in New York and a number settled in the City, forming ballet companies.

fans and a lace shawl that echo the fashions of Picasso’s painted figures, as well as dance-related objects from the collection that relate to New York City, such as Malvina Hoffman’s bust of acclaimed Russian dancer Anna Pavlova (1924). It also will feature a video of the 1994 performance of Le Tricorne by the Paris Opera Ballet.

The New-York Historical Society, one of America’s pre-eminent cultural institutions, is dedicated to fostering research and presenting history and art exhibitions and public programs that reveal the dynamism of history and its influence on the world of today. Founded in 1804, NewYork Historical has a mission to explore the richly layered history of New York City and State and the country, and to serve as a national forum for the discussion of issues surrounding the making and meaning of history.

New-York Historical is recognized for engaging the public with deeply researched and far-ranging exhibitions, such as Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America; Slavery in New York; Lincoln and New York; Audubon’s Aviary; WWII & NYC, The Armory Show at 100: Modern Art and Revolution; and Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion. Supporting these exhibitions and related education programs is one of the world’s greatest collections of historical artifacts, works of American art, and other materials documenting the history of the United States and New York.

To Connect with the New-York Historical Society and read their blog, visit: http://behindthescenes.nyhistory.org/ Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 7

HEIDI FOSLI

The Call of the Wild, The Allure of Metropolis When I first came across Heidi Fosli’s work at a New York art She will also receive the Nelson Mandela 2014 Human Rights Spefair a few short years ago, I was immediately struck by the depth of cial Award, be named an honorary member of the Association Culemotion that could be seen and felt turale “Italia in Arte”, and have her in a small collection of paintings. art work in a virtual museum. Heidi The combination of deep hues and sent this note in September as she restrained elegance were cause for was packing for a trip to Monaco for reflection in an environment where the prize-giving ceremony for the thousands of boisterous images were Goldpalm of Art. all clamoring for attention. There was Born in 1961 in Sandefjord, a combination of inner strength and Norway and residing and working confidence in these canvases along mostly in Oslo, Heidi has been called with a subtle longing, a very Romana “daughter of Ibsen and Munch” by tic desire for perfection.

Italian author and art critic Costanzo We recently caught up with HeiCostantini. She was educated at the di at another New York City exhibiAcademy of Art in San Francisco tion, at the Artifact Gallery on Orand also earned a degree in Psycholchard Street. From there she was off ogy from the University of Oslo with to Paris and has since been on a tour Sociology and Social Anthropology. of European art capitals to pick up a She has visited over 70 countries in handful of internationally important her world travels. prizes beginning with the Raffaello Working with what she terms Sanzio Award for 2014, which allows “sculptural” shapes in the abstract, Heidi to be titled Maestro or Master Heidi Fosli conveys the wonder of for the first time. “This is a big mileour existence in highly personalized stone for me,” she said and is invitexpressions combining symbolism ed to Italy for a Gala evening to be and the figurative in her very perhonored with the award on Dec 14th.

—VICTOR FORBES sonal vision.

Empathy, 31” x 31” (80 x 80 cm), Oil On canvas, 2013 8 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

Serendipity, 16” x 31” (40 x 80 cm), oil on canvas, 2013

Serendipity, Faith and Expectant Joy are not just the titles of a trio of her paintings, but the way she conducts herself with heart and mind focused on life’s next adventure.

Birch, Oil on Canvas, 100 x 100 cm (or 39⅜ x 39⅜ inches)

“This is the last day of my stay in the wilderness where I have had residency for 2 weeks. Working in tranquil surroundings with close proximity to nature right outside the huge floor-to-ceiling windows of the studio, I have been practically at one with the beautiful surroundings.

Nature meets culture so to speak. There is a warm atmosphere here, and the weeks have passed by quite rapidly. Not had I dreamt of being able to complete all six large sized canvases that I brought up here. I have been fortunate enough to be blessed with a great amount of inspiration during the stay — completing all — and I am grateful for that. A bonus is that I have already sold most of the works before leaving the premises, and the paint has not even dried on the canvas yet.”

Portrait, oil on canvas

https://www.facebook.com/heidifosli & www.heidifosli.com Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 9

M o n e t and th e S e in e

Claude Monet, Morning on the Seine, Giverny, 1897, oil on canvas, Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Bequest of Miss Susan Dwight Bliss

Impressions of a River

“I have painted the Seine throughout my life, at every hour, at every season. I have never tired of it: for me the Seine is always new.”

—Claude Monet

Monet and the Seine: Impressions of a River examines Claude Monet’s abiding fascination with the Seine by tracing his life along the iconic French waterway, both chronologically and geographically. Monet (1840–1926) used the river from an early point in his career to explore many of the artistic concerns that define his oeuvre, such as the transformative effects of light and atmosphere.

This beautiful exhibition brings together more than 50 paintings on loan from locations around the world. Beginning with scenes of leisure activities, modern life, and cityscapes along the Seine, the presentation culminates in the ethereal works from the Impressionist painter’s famous Mornings on the Seine series.

The canvases provide an intimate look at the Seine, a subject essential to Monet’s identity as an artist. The celebrated river captivated Monet more than any other theme, inspiring a vast number of paintings and surpassing even his defining series of water lilies by more than 100 works.

This exhibition is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa. An indemnity has been granted by the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

10 • Fine Art Magazine • December 2014

CLAUDIA HECHT

Finding the Transcendent In architecture and in art, few attempt and even fewer accomplish the transcendent; works that become iconic images that the people in the cities and countries in which they exist identify with and treasure as their own cultural heritage.

GUADALAJARA. One of the most beautiful cities in the world, even the name speaks of music, art and dreams. “Plus,” says artist/resident Claudia Hecht, “the weather is fantastic and it is famous for beautiful women. You see them all over — in the streets, restaurants…everywhere.”

Such pulchritude, while prevalent, is not restricted to the female form in Guadalajara.

Art abounds in the city, the capital of Jalisco, which has been called the “Florence of Mexico.”

Its rich artistic history dates back to the 17th century and began to take modern shape after the Mexican Revolution when the country was in turmoil in the 1920s. While born in Mexico City, the beauty that emanates from Claudia’s art is a poetic paean to her heritage and home where colorful and powerful murals grace the walls of many of Guadalajara’s public buildings.

Beyond functioning as decoration, these murals depict the founding of modern Mexican identity, exploring the centuries-old struggle between indigenous and European factions.

With elegance, delicacy and no shortage of internal combustion, Claudia Hecht — dedicated to tradition — continues and expands upon the paths carved by Mexico’s iconic heroes of creativity led by Jose Clemente Orozco whose works grace several locations in Guadalajara, including the Government Palace and the University of Guadalajara and the Hospicio Cabañas, the interior walls of which contain some of Claudia standing before The Ocean Watchman, Mosaic Orozco’s best work. Two hun(50,000 pieces), 36” x 49½”, 2006 dred feet above the floor at vating imagery are awe-inspiring. the center of the nave in the Claudia began her career in 1988 creating Terracotbuildings main chapel, a man ta (baked earth) works in high relief under the training of wreathed in flames ascends sculptor Blanca Göens, completing a large collection of into the cupola. This is Man wood sculptures in cooperation with many of the reof Fire, Orozco’s masterpiece. nowned artists of Guadalajara. In 1993, she went Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro on to study with Italian master artist Giulio Siquieros are the other compoD’Arolio with whom she delved deeply into nents of “The Big Three.” the 18th century technique of relief painting Internationally acclaimed and on a gilded background in which gold and silwinner of prestigious international ver leaf are applied to surfaces and painted with awards, Claudia’s vibrant paintings and oils and varnish.

In these works, Claudia evocative sculptures combine Shaman, bronze, 2014 combines images inspired by archaeological, themes from ancient Inca, indigenous, mythological, oriental, tribal, exotic and modern eleMayan and other primitive cultures with modern interpretation ments. Embellishing the initial layers with engraved sculptures of and materials. Her work evokes spiritual rituals from the legends of wood and stone, Claudia transforms the mundane into new vibrant these civilizations presented in a contemporary style that captures forms of expression in an artistic movement she christened “Pictothe wonder of this mythology. Her impeccable designs and captiFine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 11

The Divine Path, 2002, mixed media gold leaf and oil, 63” ht. x 119” wide

rial Sculpture Art.” Few styles present such originality, as there are no planned sequences or inflexible rules. “I do make some basic sketches, but they have little in common with the final.”

These works have evolved into an exploration of the infinite possibilities offered of interactivity designed into her new larger-than-life sculptures. These pieces are colorful and elegant and do not belong, she says, “to any existing school. Their intention is to be original, harmonious, beautiful and different.”

Based on her love and appreciation of Mexican primitive art, these stainless steel sculptures evoke an organic sense of place, designed to blend into their surroundings, whether natural or man-made. They range in height from five to 18 feet or more and are created to be site specific, drawing on the artistic heritage of her homeland. “Interactive means people are invited into the works, to stand next to them with the building or beautiful scenery in the background so that a memory is made there.”

Those designs caught the eye of Christina Cox who proffered on her The National Museum of Catholic Art and Library’s International Artist of the Year Award in 2014. Another of her major accomplishments was being accepted as one of the finalists for the World Trade Center Memorial Competition. Her 2003 design 12 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

concept for the “Ground Zero Memorial” in New York City made it through the first three rounds of consideration. Of 3,000 artists entered, there were but 30 finalists with ten chosen for exhibition. “I love to work with architects,” said Claudia from a café in Guadalajara. “In creating the space for the World Trade Center, I designed a place of introspection, where people could come and quietly think about those they lost in that tragedy. I designed an entrance with symbols representing the religions of the world.

The doors would open only one day a year for people to come in and communicate… an annual pilgrimage as a way of remembering those who were lost and to have some kind of a dialogue with those souls.”

Another of Claudia’s major accomplishments is Feminalia 2000, a traveling exhibition that Claudia initiated and financed.

“I was very conscious that there were not many opportunities to support feminine art in Mexico so I decided to make a foundation to promote female artists. I started looking at different artists with positive attitudes who would be good ambassadors for Mexico and Mexican culture. All the artists were from my state, either born or living in Guadalajara.” The well-received exhibition opened in Rome in 2000, and traveled to Washington, DC where it was shown at the Mexican Consulate, before heading home to Guadalajara. “We had a lot of support

from the Mexican Embassy and created a major catalog. In Italy, radio and television was extremely supportive and while I was there, the Director of the Fine Art Academy of Rome invited me to stay on and study.

I trained in Ravena, Italy for mosaic art, and refined my painting techniques in Rome.”

Claudia returned to Mexico two years later, met her future husband, David Ne-

Sitting Shaman #2, from the Council of Shamans series, mahogany, second piece, 29” ht, 18” wide, 23” deep

Yin Yang and The Origins of Life, mixed media, acid-etched marble with mahogany base depicting The Creator holding the world. 88” ht. x 51” wide, 2008

The National Museum of Catholic Art and Library honored Claudia Hecht with International Artist of the Year Award at the 3rd Annual Roman Gala La Primavera on April 2, 2014 in the Embassy of Italy. Her NMCAL's award was presented by Prince Lorenzo de Medici, Patron of the Arts (right) as Christina Cox, NMCAL Founder and Timothy Barton NMCAL Chairman look on.

collectors and the general public. For many, they become a source of inspiration — treasured masterpieces that combine beauty, distinctiveness of design and purity of form with unique materials and unparalleled creativity. The result is in-depth communication — powerful and original — which is the basis of the interaction she seeks. They crystallize Mexico’s artistic and cultural values and are technically brilliant above reproach — works of a modern master, magnificently expressed.

Christina Cox, Director of the National Museum of Catholic Art and Library, concurs.

wren at an Artexpo and married in 2004.

Currently, Claudia is in the midst of completing a commission for the stunning new cultural facility Palcco in Guadalajara where, in addition to an interactive stainless steel installation of larger-than-life sculptures that rise from a garden at the entrance, she is also producing a granite medallion Claudia with her painting Ancestral Philosophy.

(Medallon Rojo, pictured below) to be embedded in the floor of the grand rotunda, “Our museum art committee chose Claudia and a 10’ x 50’ mural. Her hope is that this Hecht’s mixed media sculpture Our Lady of is the first of many future installations to Guadalupe for the 2014 NMCAL International be placed in prominent places around the Award. Our Lady of Guadalupe is the “Patroness world where they will become part of the of the Americas” who appeared to Juan Diego in identity of the city in which they are placed.

Mexico in 1531. Claudia painted a magnificent Each of Claudia’s works have what she royal blue color with golden stars on the calls “a back story” with historical, philOur Lady’s sacred cape. The wooden rays osophical or spiritual truths behind of the sun standing in back of her are each. Personal tragedy, triumph and beautiful and striking. The Our Lady awakening are her major themes, is sweet and strong with her delicate executed in such a way that they hands in prayer. The fit for a Virgin’s become, as she states, “Harmonigolden crown is one fit for a Queen ous and happy resulting in a much of the Heavens and Earth. At the more fulfilling experience. Not all base we see an Angel guarding Our my art is colorful. Some are somber, Lady wearing a gold armor breast but all are elegant. I don’t paint with plate. This is truly one of the most a purpose of making people underbeautiful sculptures we have ever seen.” stand a particular message. Rather, the — VICTOR BENNETT FORBES creation talks to me and tells me what it wants. The outcome is very much related to REPRESENTED BY my emotional space at that moment.”

Davidnewren@artdivine.com Cl audia’s “em oti ona l 801-234-9330 spaces” resonate equally with MADALLON ROJO, mixed media, granite, bronze and stainless steel, 96” x 70” Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 13

Dynamic Duo’s Extraordinary Exhibit: Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit

Diego Rivera, Portrait of Ruth

Detroit Industry - south wall detail

Frida (Frieda) Kahlo, Frieda and Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera, Soviet Harvest Scene

The exhibition will explore the tumultuous and highly productive year that Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo spent in Detroit, a pivotal turning point in each artist’s career. Along with approximately 70 works of art, the exhibition examines the economic conditions of the era, the industrial life of Detroit and its workers, and the controversy that surrounded the murals.

Between April 1932 and March 1933, Rivera created one of his most accomplished mural cycles – Detroit Industry – on the four walls of a centrally located courtyard at the DIA. At the same time and largely unnoticed, Kahlo developed her now-celebrated artistic identity. By including works before, during

and after their time in Detroit, the exhibition also looks at the evolution of each artist’s career in relation to one another.

Rivera’s epic preparatory drawings for Detroit Industry is the centerpiece of the exhibition. Not shown for almost 30 years, these magnificent works demonstrate Rivera’s sweeping narrative ambition, envisioned as a synthesis between Mexico’s spiritual values and United States industrial might. The works Kahlo created in Detroit will be shown for the first time in this city and will reveal the emergence of Kahlo’s shockingly personal, self-revelatory art style.

A convergence of dramatic energy and ideas existed between Rivera’s grand con-

14 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

Frida Kahlo, Self Portrait with Monkey

ception and Kahlo’s tortured personal testimonies. They were both fascinated with the enterprises of Henry Ford. Ford Motor Company’s then state-of-the-art River Rouge plant is the subject of Rivera’s Detroit Industry frescos, and one of Kahlo’s most poignant paintings, Henry Ford Hospital, portrays a deeply emotional event she experienced there.

The period prior to artists’ time in Detroit is anchored by Frieda and Diego Rivera, Kahlo’s great double portrait of the newlywed couple, and Rivera’s ravishing Flowered Barge that reveals his adoration of Mexican life. Further details are at http://www.dia.org

Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 15

FAVIO’S FRACTALS BEAMING FROM INFINITY Frank Milordi's (aka FAVIO) images stimulate an individual's thoughts, emotions, beliefs and ideas.

FAVIO explores the mathematical Fractal space of infinite structure and complexity. The more chaotic the mathematical “space”, the richer are the image possibilities. FAVIO images have themes that are related to the sciences.

The mathematical based art created is challenging to one’s mind as viewers strain to understand the complexity of image patterns, with some complex Fractal patterns embedded in abstract forms.

The non-traditional Fractal images which are abstract in form are called Annihilated (or Fractured) Fractals™.

Key FAVIO Museum displays have been at the Orlando Museum of Art Shop Gallery and the Brevard Art Museum. Extended duration displays were at the Orange County Commissioners Office Building, the Florida Institute of Technology and the Florida State Capitol Gallery of Inovative Art. FAVIO's most prominent commission is an 8 ft x 12 ft “Fractured Worlds” installation at NASA's Space Life Sciences Lab Conference Room. Contact fmilordi@cfl. rr.com for details.

Stargate

Beam From Infinity

FAVIO (center) with his 8’ x 12’ “Fractured Worlds: installation at NASA’s Space Life Sciences Lab Conference Room

Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 15

OXAFE

COSMIC AWAKENING www.cosmoartbyoxana.com

O

XANA FESIK — who paints by the name OXAFE — was born in Siberia and graduated from the classical art school Surikov. From an early age she loved to observe nature and spoke to her as a close friend, tuning into some “higher power,” the presence of which she clearly felt in her whole being. “I love Monet and Cezanne,” she told me in a recent interview from Miami where she was exhibiting during Art Basel week, “but I know I will never be like them.” Her intent, she says, is to deliver a message that there exists a higher energy, a higher Divine being, a higher self. “Everybody calls it something different, but to me it is simply the Divine.” The result is a tangible evidence of something special with an open forum for viewers to decide for themselves. “When I ask people to tell me what they see, often I haven’t even thought about what they are telling me.” Her work is created, at times, with her eyes closed so that the subconscious realm readily manifests. Coming from a tough Siberian climate and oppressive Soviet reality, Oxana found joy and strength in this deeply personal communication. Her quest took her to India, to the Oneness University where, after a month with the Guru, the Avatar, she understood that she had two choices: “Either I have to be awakened or I have to die. In my life, I experienced so much suffering that I wanted to run away but I found there is no exit. After the Oneness experience, I feel like I am a different human being with no limitations, truly experiencing unconditional love. I saw many forms of Divine energy, 16 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

Oxana Fesik, The Cosmic Consciousness, 56” x 74”, acrylic intermix, 2012

My Inspiration / The Oneness Temple, 54” x 40”,acrylic intermix, 2012

which in essence is formless. I have no words to express it, but am able to touch it in my paintings. I found a Higher state of consciousness in India that may pave the way to changes on the planet, and changes in the consciousness of human beings.

I understood that paintings and music can be vehicles for such growth.” Continues the artist, who is on her way to exhibit in Dubai and Monaco, “I spent my childhood with the feeling that I was born at the wrong time and in the wrong place…and like any child, I sought

At the Oneness Temple, at the foothills of the Vellikonda range on the eastern coast of South India

to share the joy of seeing the world. In search of the means of expression, I instinctively turned to painting and this process overtook me completely. Painting has become my salvation. As an adult I began a deliberate internal search which helped me realize my spiritual need.

Going through the various processes there, I had the unique experience of higher states of consciousness that I have tried to show in my milieu.” — VICTOR FORBES Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 17

GARS OT

“FOREVER OPTIMISTIC”

Galloping On Water, Acrylic on canvas, 48” x 60”

“Galloping on Water is a painting that has a special message: If we continue to pollute the water in the oceans, rivers and lakes, life will disappear. The same thing will happen if we continue to create pollution for the air we are breathing. This is a problem for all humanity. If we as humans continue to pollute the environment — waters, atmosphere, even outer space — our future will be the same.

We’ll be galloping on water. So it is very important to take care of this problem and enjoy the ride before it is too late.” Garsot’s missive resonates through much of his work. His vision, engaging energy and smile light up art exhibitions with the creative force of a solar flare.

Style and form, content and message are delivered in a series of paintings developed over a lifetime of love and respect for the natural beauty and heritage of his homeland, Greece. Each of his works are masterfully rendered with wit, style and a nod not only to Dali and Picasso but also to the cave painters of ancient times. He brings it all into the now with consummate professionalism and a genuine concern for the state of the earth that is modern yet timeless in style, subject matter and palette. Visual, of course, Garsot’s paintings reach other senses.

The music (aural), the depths of the ocean (touch), natural and thought-provoking images (soul/mind) — Garsot blends an always new, always evolving body of work as he reaches for the stars. Says Nina Torres, gallerist in Miami who is exhibiting his paintings: “When I saw his work for the first time, I was taken with the brilliant colors and subject matter. He creates a very fresh and clean communication that is what the viewers love. In 2015, I will be showing his work this year at art fairs in Dubai, Monaco and Singapore as well as at my gallery.”

18 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

Melodica, Acrylic on canvas, 48”x 36”

“I look forward to meeting friends old and new at future exhibitions. Stay forever optimistic!” – GARSOT Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 19

“My personal work and community art artwork tries to connect people to an interior spiritual beauty which often goes unrecognized and unappreciated.”

— Gilda Oliver

G

ilda Oliver’s portfolio is disarmingly impressive. The artist’s aspiration to invite the viewer to participate in her affirmative brand of creativity has translated to a worldwide fascination with this remarkably generous person whose projects integrate children and adults for community building. Her recent collection, The Path, continues her journey in art – drawing inspiration from the great masters to physically and mentally challenged children.

20 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

Path, acrylic on linen, 6’ x 6’, 2014

GILDA OLIVER

By BRENDA HAROUTUNIAN Her tactile brand of creativity in transformational and engaging multi-media productions has been well-received and appreciated by collectors at art fairs and galleries in Manhattan, Moscow, and Miami, as well as glittering places in- between; it

also flourishes in local neighborhoods like yours and mine. Beyond that, Oliver is an award-winning teacher in an era in which art funding is not a national priority.

In her work, Oliver weaves her traditional themes of transcendence, nature and history in a gesture that reaffirms the spiritual value of art. The artist’s new series is informed by the mysticism of Kandinsky, Malevich, and Mondrian to explode in a jolt of power. For Gilda, abstraction recapitulates multiculturalism. Furthermore, Gilda addresses climate change and humanity’s troubling relation with nature, in Purple Halo Melt where souls melt into the dark and also explores larger notions of history to uncover power in past wisdom.

PHOTO BT MIKE DeROSE

Mosaic Mural Frame, 9’ x 25’, built by Pierce Steel, Oleana, New York, 2015

Prisms of Color, 9’ x 25’ mosaic and clay tile mural, 2015, moments before being picked up to be shipped to Baltimore’s Port Discovery Children’s Museum where it will be permanently installed. “Since I’ve been a small child I’ve been fascinated by other people’s art work. By putting their work together into one large piece the completed murals radiate an incredible energy like a giant mandala so when you see them live andn in person they just glow, radiating energy and power. I see every mosaic in my mind. I draw the design and the contributors add their own ideas. I draw it up small on a grid and it’s kind of like filling in the numbers it’s a very elaborate process and the contrast of all the people’s work is incredible. A true collaboration.

“My hope is that this most recent oversized mosaic mural is just one flower in a garden of arts and culture that will continue to flourish and enrich our communities.”

Pink Halo Angel, acrylic on linen, 6’ x 6’, 2014

Elusive Cure, Acrylic and Fabric, 6’ x 6’, 2014

Pink Halo Angel, for example, represents a creature flying into a re-imagined future.

Finally, Oliver’s community projects are stunning in concept, and practice. For starters, the artist designs projects in neighborhoods without arts funding. She then enlists sponsors and volunteers of every age and ilk to create public work close to home. As a result, individuals are able to express their love for the world around them, and realize a communal sense of creativity in their world.

Visit the author’s blog: http://www.artcopyblog.com/?p=504 Purple Halo Melt, acrylic on linen, 6’ x 6’, 2014

Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 21

KEN KEELEY

The Artist As Historian

Ken Keeley signing his book, Is It Real?, at Artexpo. “Each day offers something new, presenting new possibilities.”

BY VICTOR BENNETT FORBES

K

EN KEELEY’ faithful renditions of Born in Brooklyn, in a sense he has never New York City’s iconic images have left though he has traveled the world from made him a world famous artist.

Iwo Jima to Europe while in the Air Force.

His photorealism is unique in that while he When the family moved out to Queens, “We subscribes to that school of painting, his works would visit my grandmother every Sunday are sensual on Herkimer rather than street and of sterile rencourse, I went ditions. He to Coney gives the viewer Island as a a true sense of kid,” recalled the time and the artist place from in a recent someone who interview has been there, from his home who has lived and studio in there and who South Florida is dedicated to He spent the tradition many a day in of the art form his childhood but equally at the famous Cyclone, oil over acrylic on canvas, 30” x 40” dedicated to beach-side portraying not just the sights but the sounds, amusement park, recalling one of his first smells and even the tastes that are all part of adventures there around the same time Boris The Big Apple’s diaspora.

Karloff ’s Frankenstein was scaring people Today, at 81, Keeley is going strong in movie theaters. “I was probably six or with a wide base of collectors who have been seven and my uncle decided we were going following his work for nearly as long as he to Coney Island. There was a carnival show has been painting professionally. featuring Frankenstein and he takes me in to 22 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

see it. We go into this little hut, so to speak, with some benches for the audience and out comes this monster on stage and he looks exactly like the one in the movie, with the big boots, and all of a sudden he comes off the stage and heads down into the crowd. It was a small place, and the whole front row jumped right out the window. And guess who followed them? Me! Later on we’d go to the Steeplechase, and that was a whole day for a dollar. I don’t know how many rides there were, but there were a lot of them.”

Those memories live in Keeley’s art even today as his newly painted rendition of The Cyclone, 1928 the world’s largest wooden roller-coaster (then and now) and Great Magazine Covers attest. Keeley’s fame and fortune, however, can be traced to a chance

Great Magazine Covers, 2015 “Even though creating these paintings is very time consuming, I never get bored.”

photograph he took when he was just beginning to take his painting seriously. It was 1976 while living on Long Island and he would make forays in to the city with his 35 millimeter camera. One day he shot a few rolls of scenes that interested him and when they were developed, one in particular stood out — a newsstand in the subway. “It had,” he says, “great detail and I decided to paint it.” Before too long, Keeley found his niche and many newsstands later, at an Artexpo in The New York Coliseum, Keeley hit the jackpot in the form of a flamboyant and wealthy magazine publisher named Malcolm Forbes, who came in with his entourage after somehow hearing about Keeley’s newsstands. ‘Where is my magazine?’ he barked and fortunately it was right before

his eyes. He purchased it on the spot and off the wall for $20,000. “Malcolm Forbes put me on the map. I went from rags to riches.”

Keeley started painting when he was very young, influenced by his godfather, James P. Barbarite who was an accomplished artist, a graduate of Cooper Union.

“He went to war, met a nice Belgian girl, married and stayed there on the GI Bill.

I had a show with him in Boca Raton in 1995. He had passed away and his wife gave me 15 of his paintings. They called the exhibit From Brooklyn to New York and it was a great success.”

In 2015, Keeley returns to Artexpo with original paintings, giclees and authentic limited graphic editions in the form of 3-D lithographs, with his wife Grace Kee-

ley as the 3-D art designer. Three of his well-known original paintings, Twentieth Century Newsstand, Hollywood Newsstand and Times Square After 911 are now available personally signed and numbered by the artist in this format. Each is individually created by Grace to be “one of a kind” since no two are exactly the same. Grace recently exhibited them, along with Ken’s painting of the famous Carousel to great success at the outdoor art show in St. Augustine, Florida.

Keeley’s art has also been widely distributed in the form of jigsaw puzzles and posters.

Looking back, Ken states “I came into Photorealism a little late and all the big galleries had their stables lined up. Yet I’ve sold much work over the years to great collectors without super major representation.”

Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 23

Conversation with Basquiat, 2006. 23 min., 22 sec. ©Tamra Davis. Courtesy of the artist. By permission of the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, all rights reserved. Photo: Jonathan Dorado, Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn Museum Presents Little-Known Basquiat Notebooks

Eight rarely seen notebooks created by Jean-Michel Basquiat between 1980 and 1987 that have never before been presented to the public form the core of a new exhibition, Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks, on view at the Brooklyn Museum fthrough August 23. The exhibition features 160 unbound notebook pages, filled with the artist’s handwritten texts and sketches, along with thirty related paintings, drawings, and mixed-media works drawn from private collections and the artist’s estate.

Born in Brooklyn in 1960, Basquiat had a prolific career, producing some 600 paintings, 1,500 drawings, and a small group of sculptures and mixed-media work before his untimely death in 1988 at the age of twenty-seven. His life and meteoric rise to fame has become legendary, both within the art world and in popular culture—mythologized in films and referenced by hip-hop and rap artists. The child of a Haitian father and Puerto Rican mother, Basquiat was fluent in French, Spanish, and English. With his mother he made frequent visits to New York City’s museums, including the Brooklyn Museum, where he was a Junior Member. A self-taught artist, Basquiat first came to public attention in the late 1970s for the aphorisms he spray-painted around lower Manhattan under the pseudonym SAMO©. In 1978 Basquiat left Brooklyn for good and moved to Manhattan, living on the streets and with friends and selling handmade postcards. Basquiat exhibited his art publicly for the first time in 1980 at the Times Square Show, and his career as a studio artist and international celebrity followed a rapid trajectory from that point onward.

In developing a visual language aimed at undermining social hierarchies and rules, Basquiat took inspiration from comics, children’s drawings, advertising, and Pop art, from Aztec, African, Caribbean, Greek, and Roman culture, and from everyday life. In his large-scale works he engaged in an exploration of culture and society, combining historical and popular themes. His notebooks demonstrate how he began to develop these artistic strategies.

Language was an early medium for Basquiat, and words are an integral part of the notebooks and the large-scale figurative paintings for which he is best known. Handwritten texts run throughout his diverse production, blurring the lines between writing and drawing, and between drawing and painting.

The exhibition, which will tour to venues to be announced, has

been organized for the Brooklyn Museum by Dieter Buchhart, independent curator and Basquiat scholar, and Tricia Laughlin Bloom, Associate Curator of Exhibitions, Brooklyn Museum.

Support for this exhibition is provided by the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation and Christie’s. www.brooklynmuseum.org 24 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

Grimanesa Amoros (Peru/USA), portrait Bubble

Grimanesa Amoros, Miranda, Still

The International Videoart Festival of Camaguey, CUBA

Grimenesa Amoros Reflection, Still

“Every day, art breaks away from the ties that might inhibit its freedom; videocreation arises as one of the most heretics regarding this iconoclast will. Therefore, it becomes a difficult task the static and orthodox classification of genres and subgenres within the contemporary video art production, because we know, above all, how fast they can derive into theoretical obsolescence. However, videoart – as I insist to call this vast field of so diverse morphologies – is still a magnetized challenge to those of us who approach it with other intentions rather than just pleasure.”

– GrimanesaAmorós

http://videoartencamaguey.blogspot.com/

THE

INTERVIEW

BRETT LOVING

By JAMIE ELLIN FORBES Brett Loving, innovative designer and owner/ founder of EARTHWORKS, a Hamptons-based company, utilizes modern machinery to create art that reveals the beauty inherent in the world. His goal is to break the boundaries of the two dimensional world to subconsciously return to a three dimensional universe, employing a 36,000 lb. Volvo excavator to create “paintings” on canvas, wood, metal and linen.

At 27 years of age, Brett’s vibrant energy, intuition, and sense of color and form manifest as he and his machine push and pull color to create form and light.

Brett Loving called in from a mountaintop in the Rockies, in the Flathead Valley, just outside Glacier National Park.

JEF: This is where you went as a child for inspiration?

BRETT: This mountain that I am on top now of is actually close to a house I grew up in. I came up here as a child, 9 or 10 years old maybe, and would just reflect there before I knew what meditation or anything was. It’s a spot I come back to once a year. I didn’t grow up as a normal kid. I was left to go play in the woods, build forts, and so on and so forth.

How old were you when you moved to Montana Four years old.

So you’re pretty formed out of Montana.

I was four when we moved away from San Diego and I would say I’m really a “Cali” kid at heart And when did you move out of Montana?

At 17 or 18 years old.

And that’s when you started your racing career?

My racing career started when I was fifteen. I raced professional motocross and traveled all over the United States racing.

You had great success early, but then had an epiphany when you were hurt.

I did have an epiphany about a lot of different things in life, including spirituality. I always had painting and artistic creativity in my back pocket. For me racing transitioned into painting.

How long did it take you to form your painting after racing?

Lots of things happened between racing and painting, life happened, but I’ve always correlated my life with racing. Racing to

Loud, oil on canvas, 5’ x 6’

me has always applied to real life situations. Let’s say you’re sitting in second place waiting for the leader to make his mistake You have to become the world’s best student. You have to learn real life qualities and traits and be patient to be able to be on top. To learn while you are trying to be the best is something people often forget. While you are trying to be the best you always have to be willing to learn. I took from racing patience, courage and wisdom, things of that nature.

Those are pure thoughts, like pure color.

I had this vision about three years ago to implement this whole idea and it finally came to fruition in last January.

You use pure motivations and in your paintings I noticed your colors are very pure as they mix on the palette.

They do, they do. They start off in their own individual way and they all blend, mesh and start to coexist with one another. Each painting is done with the very same still attachment as in racing. In racing, you’re on the line. The gate drops and 40 guys go piling into the first turn. Nothing is within your realm anymore. You are part of the race now and things happen on the fly. Things are forever changing. Your processing speed has to be completely abnormal.

Almost hyperactive, if you will. So when completing a painting or starting a painting — within that moment — everything is based upon the temperature, the sky, the humidity, the day, my mood, the feeling… and that’s basically how the paintings are picked. The emotions that are created on the painting are all the same. I may go into it with an idea of thinking what I want to do but in the moment things may change. Entirely. They just start to happen and appear.

Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 25

A blank canvas ready for action

Vibe, oil on canvas, 5’ x 4’

And that’s the gestalt of the now of the painting Absolutely.

That’s what you’re achieving. You’re putting all your energy, all your vibration into that moment. You’re standing in the now and watching the creativity unfold.

I am. For me it speaks true as an artist to be able to do something of this nature.

Don’t get me wrong: I have complete and utter respect for people who create images on pieces that are completely mind-blowing and almost bring a tear to my eye. What I am trying to do is lay something down that is a piece of my energy as an outlet. For me it used to come in the form of the expression of how aggressively, methodically or efficiently I am riding my motorcycle. Now I am trying to speak about the moment and reflect what my energy is at that exact same time. In my Winter Series, you can really see the cold and the frigidness of the paint and maybe the energy I was feeling from the mundane day-in and day-out; the grays and the blacks of the sky. Maybe it also speaks that I am also someone who likes to be positive in these deep dark moments of winter out in the Hamptons which can be so taxing. You can see within the actual texture of the paints the temperature and the humidity of the very cold in these pieces.

I noticed that your entire persona and the entire body of work you seem to reference speed along with art. You have taken these two energy lifts and in some way they become bonded, they are one so that one is not that different from the other. The speed is not that different from playing with the color and the light in the canvas.

26 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

Right. For me, speed is not an emotion.

For some people it is. I don’t recognize speed for anything. It is a completely numb feeling to my entire soul. I do seek it and I do like to go fast. I don’t really have a thought to have fear during the moment of speed. To bond the two together — my creative side and my artistic side — is something that I do feel.

Speed and the processing of speed — of just letting things happen on the fly — all kind of conduct as one. It’s magical when the whole thing comes together Would you say that there a similarity in the abstracted feel of the energy whether you step into one or the other, whether you step into speed, or whether you step into painting mode?

There’s a total similarity. I think a racer or maybe even an artist may have common similarities and that is we’re all searching for something that maybe scares us a little bit.

For me, it’s not about how fast you go. What might scare me is showing my emotions through something and somebody maybe rejecting it. Some people’s form of being scared is jumping off a bridge or out of an airplane with just a parachute or something completely ludicrous I don’t really recognize fear. Maybe fear is more of an emotional state within my paintings, within my work. I don’t have any fear while I’m painting so I’m really screwed, I’m really just on the search.

That’s fabulous. You’re looking your fear in the face and it doesn’t have fangs, I would imagine. For many types of artists, performing or painting, it’s standing nude in front of the public you have to be fairly confident to be willing to have your discussion with them as they are viewing you before you have any idea

of what they are going to say. You can just put your thoughts out there Absolutely. You’re completely stripped down even with just putting your piece in front of people’s eyes to look at. It’s almost like somebody finding your diary and thumbing through the pages. It’s nothing too terrible that you don’t want them to read, yet it is still the fact that you let somebody in without your welcoming. I’m open arms and I’m open to this entire experience and there will be a day when I show a piece and I will show how it is done. It won’t be in the immediate future, just for the sake of suspicion.

I know from other discussions with you that what I admired, what I loved actually, was the size of the machinery you are using and the way in which you could correlate the look of the earth as you excavate it and the look of color as it goes down on the canvas.

I build race tracks all over the US so I am constantly working with different soils and shaping the earth — sculpting the earth — and while I am sculpting the earth, I come across different clays and soils that are loamy or sandy or … Caliche clay from the soils of Arizona; red dirt in Oklahoma; Georgia clay.

There is northeastern brown loam and the gray, dark, deep clay of the northwest where you have mountain rocks with brown loam soil. When soil is shaped with a machine (as I noticed when I was moving earth on race courses) I noticed they create these movements that kind of got me thinking: how can I achieve this within something else?

How can I capture this moment? Because when you dig up earth oftentimes it is moist underneath so when you go to sculpt it, by the time the sun beats it out it is completely gone so you only have this imagery for a very short amount of time. This is why painting on wood is so unique to me and how it is forever changing. The painting would be forced to change with the world or with the surrounding environment due to the fact that the oils will absorb within the wood.

Squeegee manipulation on Vibe

You have a natural organic quality to all the things you are touching. There seems to be a synergy or a synthesis between what you are doing and how you are organizing your energy in life. It is very grounded, full of light and color.

You are touching upon the beautiful of what is around us.

Yes. I’ve lived by a little motto: ‘Tomorrow is great but today is better.’

For me, looking around even where I am standing right now, just the fact that I am able to stand up on this mountain top and look upon these beautiful green trees and smell this pure, fresh air… I’ve been to a lot of places, seen a lot of things where some people’s idea of being fortunate is just having a pair of shoes on their feet. Just recognizing what we have in front of us, making the best of our situation, not that it has to be keeping up with the Joneses, or anything in social media or your immediate two-D life…maybe it’s family. To me, it is very empowering and very important to focus on the positive. I am literally waking up every morning and the feeling is just there and it feels great…and it’s not because of where I am in my life. I’ve always had this enlightened feeling about trying to make the best out of every single situation I possibly could.

I think that’s unique because I don’t see a lot of people in today’s world promoting the absolute positive.

Let’s be honest: in the world we live in, it’s very easy to get caught up in the aspect of thinking otherwise, as we get beaten down by certain things. Don’t get me wrong, there are things that definitely get me around the neck. At the end of the day I almost see it like a puzzle, or a test. OK, I’m rolling with whatever comes my way. I’m going through

Infinite, oil on wood, 4’ x 3’

the motions and making the best out of every situation. It’s kind of like one big chess match – life.

You are working with a new medium, taking your energy putting it into a new form to make a different statement. Your statement is malleable. You look at it under one light, the colors change. You look at it in another way, your colors change again. You are going to be changing your mediums too. You’re going to be working in metal and aluminum?

Right now I am on canvas. For me, canvas was all part of the image initially, just because canvas is delicate in the sense of having a 36,000 pound machine behind it. I did a piece with wood, recently, and I am extremely happy with how it turned out.

Furniture birch with a mahogany frame, it’s a three panel piece. From there I am going to play around on some linen and then I’m going to get back on to aluminum, which I am extremely excited about. This is where I am really breaking out of parameters of what I have been thinking. I have to continuously remind myself to not to stay within any parameters, to just to explore everything.

We didn’t come into this world and explore one little piece of land — we’ve explored the entire planet and now we are trying to get onto other planets as well. For me, there is no limit, no expectations, only what I can create in my mind and portray onto whatever piece it may be, — wood, metal or anything else.

What are some of your future plans?

An evening event in the Hamptons is one of them. We spoke earlier about the lighting out in the Hamptons and how unique it is. I’ve seen sunsets all over the world and it’s right there with New Mexico

or Arizona sunsets in some sense but there’s just something about the East End of Long Island that has this reflection, these different colors that you won’t find anywhere else.

They’re so soothing. The blues, the light and the earthy colors are unique here and magnificent. We’re blessed to have this special show. Every single night we have a different painting the sky. I think it would be great if everyone was there to be part of that energy that happens out here, to be able to reflect and look at some artwork at the same time.

Your brother will be there?

My little brother will be there And you work alongside of him?

I do and this would not be possible without him. I’m very fortunate to be embarking on many different endeavors with my younger brother and it’s a very special thing because as brothers we’re also best friends and we share a lot of very common interests. We race motorcycles together, we travel together we’ve seen so many things.

To be part of this immediate life together right now and be doing what we’re doing is very special, and for him to kind of share the image and work on this project with me and see the things I see and even the insight that he has…there aren’t a lot of people who can really give me that. I listen. When my brother speaks there is usually a good thing to be heard. I like to hear what he has to say. I would hate to say that he is my assistant with this entire thing because he is so much better than that. He is a great teammate in life a great friend and he is a big part of it as well.

You’re very warm and generous. www.brettloving.com

Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 27

SONYA FE TODAY What’s going on with artist Sonya Fe theses days? She says, “even a train stops!” Not her. She is hooked on to a comet and traveling at the speed of light.

Ambidextrous, she can work on several projects at the same time; one painting is drying, another just washed, while painting on another. To further illustrate this characteristic, Sonya has completed a series of drawings for a book with a focus on women. “The subject matter.” she says, “is real familiar to women, and perhaps a little disturbing for some weak men.” From her travels, emerged a lighter side of Sonya, Barrio Girl Goes to Europe, a story about an artist visiting art galleries. Her recent trip to Guatemala, inspired several masterpieces, i.e. Triqui Women, No Difference, and Not Ready.

Sonya is also working on art for a wing at the Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, CA. Sonya Fe’s art is on video, Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, at the Crocker Museum, Sacramento, CA Is there no end to this woman’s energy, drive and skills?!!!

Website: www.artistsonyafe.com email: vasquetzal@aol.com Not Ready

BRUSHES OF FIRE One of eight children born to Jewish-American mother Ruth Goldfein and father Joseph Williams who was Narragansett and Mexican-American, Sonya was raised in downtown Los Angeles, encouraged by her parents to draw on the cement floors of their home.

At age 13, she won a scholarship to participate in a summer program at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles.

She earned her B.A. degree from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

Fe’s work reflects social and cultural issues with themes centering around child abuse/ neglect and the woman’s place in society. “My main concern is clearly with the relationships among these women’s varying physical presence and at the same time bringing into equilibrium the active lines, and the colors that define them.”

28 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

Florida Song Book Butterfly, 2013, inkjet Print, 13” x 9”

Theresa Segal Photos Explore Historic Lightner Museum

Marble Statue No 2, 2014, inkjet print, 21” x 14”

Women in Room Five No 1, 2014, inkjet print, 21” x 14” 30 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

Joe & The

For two years I made photographs in the storage areas of Saint Augustine’s Lightner Museum. The museum exhibits relics from America’s Gilded Age and is housed in the grand Flagler-era building of what was the Alcazar Hotel. The unexhibited collections are stored on the restricted fourth floor in 44 small rooms that once served as staff quarters for the old hotel. She has received numerous grants for her work including a 2013 Artist Individual Artist Grant by the Community Foundation of Northeast Florida to help fund an exhibition of her current project, a photographic exploration of the Lightner Museum’s stored collections.

For over 20 years I have worked in traditional photographic processes, mostly film-based and monochromatic. My photographs are relatively “straight”, meaning that I reproduce the subject as it appears when photographed, without overt manipulation of the captured image. The compositions are critically framed and exposed with particular attention to the quality of light.

Photography connects my need for quiet contemplation with both my desire to create and love of the photographic process. It is as much an expression as it is a meditation.

I constantly challenge myself not to photograph beauty for beauty’s sake, but to create images that are thought provoking and timeless. I hope the viewer experiences a reflective stillness much like my state-ofmind when I am photographing.

- Theresa Segal, 2014

Joe Segal: A Desire For Balance and Composure

Installation at Waltman Ortega Fine Art

eresa 2014

Seam II, 2014, wood & mixed media, 73” x 13”

http://www.joesegal.com/press/

In describing his work and his process, painter/sculptor Joe Segal states: “My most recent sculptures are a departure because of the way that color is being used.

I’ve always thought of lumber as a processed material that has the energy of nature beneath its surface. I expose areas of beams to show this force but in the past, my surface treatments (burning, scraping, whitewashing) have been used to show the material’s passage through time which is an evolution from tree to lumber then to sculpture. In the new work, color is used to emphasize the power of the raw material.

“The structures of the most recent sculptures are made from different pieces of wood joined together as a reference to the harvesting and processing that transforms trees into lumber. In the Seam series the wood’s surface has been obscured with black but areas have been carved to expose the material’s core. Color is used to highlight the dynamic quality of the grain; the energy of the wood.

“The sculptures I titled Conversion are variations on the Center series. The circle is a perfect shape for my work since it’s both geometric and organic at the same time. The series studies the contrasts that exist in the symbols of this simple shape.

“In ancient Chinese art life is symbolized by tsung, a notched column and heaven is represented by pi, a disc. Tsung was the inspiration for my vertical sculptures such as those in the “Seam” series. The circular sculptures combine the symbol for life and heaven through a disc that is notched and segmented.

“I think of my work as observations of time passing and these round pieces are also statements about different concepts of time. There is a notion that time is linear: the past is somewhere behind us while the future is farther ahead. There is also a cyclical concept of time: the sun rises and sets every day, the seasons come every year.

“In all of my work I try to express a desire for balance and composure especially when dealing with contrasting ideas.”

Joe’s work will be featured at ArtMiami/ NY with Waltman Ortega Gallery May 14 - 17 and at a Flagler College alumni exhibition at Crisp Ellert Art Museum in St. Augustine May 15 - June 19. www.joesegal.com Theresa, Joe, Aliona Ortega & Laura Saladin Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 31

The Art of Collecting at The Napa Valley Museum

Out of the Vault 25 Years of Collecting Nassau County Museum of Art Marks 25th Anniversary with an Exhibition Drawn Entirely from Permanent Collection

Roy Lichtenstein, Foot and Hand, 1964, Offset lithography on white woven paper. Edition 184/300, 17¼” x 21½”, Nassau County Museum of Art Gift of Mrs. & Mrs. Samuel Dorsky, ©Estate of Roy Lichtenstein 71.1.52

Ansel Adams, Sand Dunes, Sunrise, Death Valley National Monument, 1948 gelatin silver print, 28” x 24” Courtesy of Patrick O’Dell/Humboldt Group

The Art of Collecting, the third installment of the Napa Valley Museum’s ongoing series, Napa Valley Collects, curated by Doreen Schmid, includes some gender-blending, new media, and a few Old Master works that only begin to summarize what art collectors and aficionados are calling the best group art exhibition in Napa Valley in decades.

The exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see significant work from outstanding private Napa Valley art collections. It showcases a broad range of art collecting styles. It also introduces Napa Valley residents and visitors to some new art world talent, juxtaposing classic and modern master works with contemporary, vernacular and new media art in aesthetically pleasing, provocative and humorous ways. This third Napa Valley Collects exhibition explores several themes under the broad rubric of The Art of Collecting.

Some collectors focus on a movement such as Abstract Expressionism, Bay Area figurative artists, or photography. Other collections are highly eclectic and emotionally, or narrative, based.

Identity is a sub-theme, offering investigations that occur in both medium and subject.

Blue chip and burgeoning artists include Bay Area figurative, Funk and Abstract Expressionist luminaries such as Richard Diebenkorn, David Park and Jay DeFeo. Other standout works include a piece from Deborah Oropallo’s Guise series, a Kara Walker cut-paper silhouette, one of Warhol’s Flowers, a de Kooning sculpture, a Bob Thompson mythic masterpiece, an Albrecht Dürer 1497 engraving, videos from Swiss and German artists, and contemporary and classic photography. www.napavalleymuseum.org 32 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

In celebration of its 25th anniversary, Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn Harbor, New York presents Out of the Vault: 25 Years of Collecting, its first comprehensive exhibition of works from the permanent collection. This presentation highlights patrons’ numerous gifts to the museum over the last quarter century, many of which have never, or rarely, been exhibited. Each gallery space within this multifaceted presentation will focus on different themes such as past and present portraiture, paintings and objects by Louis Comfort Tiffany, post-war prints and vintage posters of many eras.

The exhibit explores a diverse range of artists who are strongly represented in the Museum’s collections, among them naturalist John James Audubon, photographer Larry Fink and Pop art icons Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, and Robert Indiana, among others.

The dramatic changes from gallery to gallery point to the scope and diversity of the museum’s collection. Tiffany’s paintings commemorating his travels through North Africa and his American sea- and landscapes are lavishly hung three high in one gallery, reflecting a large group of Tiffanys that came into the museum’s collection in 2012. The next gallery brings the viewer into the excitement and freshness of Pop art by masters such as Rauschenberg, Indiana, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Katz and Rivers. A far gallery features black-and-white scenes of New York in the 70s and 80s—churches, hotels, and clubs, especially the fabled Studio 54. This Social Graces portfolio by photographer Larry Fink also includes some scenes of Washington, D.C. and Allentown, PA. At the opposite end of the floor, the walls are devoted to French masters—works by Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Georges Braque and lithos by Honoré Daumier.

One second floor gallery features John James Audubon’s Imperial Quadupeds of America series, a 2014 gift to the museum by Elaine and Ronald Juster. The museum’s Abstract Expressionist holdings are next door, with works by Helen Frankenthaler and Jon Schueler, among others. Entering another gallery, the visitor is struck by Tree of Life, a flame-red work by photographer Peter Lik. For further information visit www.nassaumuseum.com

SAMIR SAMMOUN’S MASTERPIECES OF LOVE In the fury of the moment I can see the Master’s hand In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.

—Bob Dylan, “Every Grain of Sand”

W

By VICTOR BENNETT FORBES

hen Elliot Blinder — that champion of accomplished artistic talent — called to make us aware of an artist who merited attention in our publication, Fine Art Magazine, little could we imagine that fifteen years hence we would be composing these words to introduce Samir Sammoun’s monograph. As a life-long friendship developed between artist and writer, the latter continues to marvel at the solid performance of Samir as he rises above the whimsies and challenges of the art world, passionately engaging the fields of creativity in which his masterful representations of the natural beauty of an unpeopled paradise in vivid and sublime Samir Sammoun portrayals have earned him honor, respect and an everexpanding corps of collectors.

The simple pleasures of life are the hallmarks of his work, color full y administered to his canvasses. Glorious waves of verdant flowers, spectacular forests with trees of heroic proportions, wheat fields pregnant with nourishment, ancient olive groves that continue to bear fr uit, grand mountains, sublime snowstorms, cityscapes and sun-drenched beaches are lovingly rendered in a singular style that can only be termed a “Sammoun.”

In today’s tumultuous times of sound-bites, 30 second attention spans and fif teen minutes of Warholian fame for all, one can legitimately pose the question of the relevance and importance of an artist whose primary concern is the pure Bekaa Valley and Mount Lebanon, oil on canvas, 8”x 10” unsullied depiction of nature.

What value, then, is there in interpreting, replicating or portraying scenery, whether realistically or via impressions? Do photographs not suffice, or a walk in a meadow or forest? For some, yes but for countless millions who are touched by a sensitive rendering of a beautiful outdoor scene — “unsullied” — there is the landscapist whose sensitivity and skill reveals elements of our home planet that could well be overlooked or missed in our oft hurried day-to-day lives. The gift that Sammoun proffers is one of timelessness, of an infinite static depiction that becomes eternal. The result stops time like a poem. When an artist dedicated to a world vision of peace and tranquility, whatever the worldly situation, as is Sammoun, opts to paint unmodified scenes of real nature, he is shining a light on what could be as well as what ought to be and what was. This Romantic concept hearkens to the very foundations of art and to man’s history on Earth. Who doesn’t long for a sweet vision, a fond remembrance of a beautiful meadow or an ancient forest — a collective memory ordinary or exceptional that is an innocent portrayal of a reachable paradise?

With a style and technique bordering somewhere between the brush strokes of the Impressionists of the late 19th century, the powerful color of the Fauves and even the subtle intensity of the Ash Can School artists (among them William Glackens and Robert Henri) that rose to fame in New York City at the turn-of-the century, Sammoun’s painterly invocations are directly descended from his personal love of and special affiliation with Vincent van Gogh.

Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 33

À la plage, oil on canvas, 60” x 48”

Sunrise on the Beach, oil on canvas, 60” x 48”

“Sammoun uses a contemporary interpretation of the post-impressionist style of strong colors, a thick impasto of paint, and distinctive brushstrokes to illustrate his subject matter.

Light and atmosphere play a major role in bringing the paintings to life.”

– Cecilia M. Esposito, Director, Plattsburgh State Art Museum

On the first of numerous trips to Montréal to visit the artist, he was still involved in his highly successful telecommunications consulting business in which he created the formula that allowed high speed cable signals to share single lines, up and down stream. His offices in the heart of the city were home to many of his paintings. What I recall most vividly about this initial exposure to the work is a conversation in which he related a brief story about one of his early collectors who had fallen on difficult times. Despite an opportunity to sell his Sammoun at a profit, the gentleman could not part with it. “It is with me when I wake up and when I go to sleep, and is of far more comfort to me than I could have ever imagined,” he said. That is the impact Samir’s work has on his collectors. You are drawn into the artists’ field of vision — a peaceful, tranquil space of color and content with soft power to transform an immutable milieu into a passion play of serene works of art that are overflowing in a concise and orderly, yet abundant, stream of life. They are stalwart tributes to the visible nature of earthly paradise, for which our consciousness as a species yearns. Living amidst his masterworks is akin to permanent meditation. Certainly the artist carries with him his visions as in a special room-full of works, collectively known as “Walking With Giants.” The double-entendre relates not just to the masters who came before him, but to the masterfully painted series of glorious primeval forests through which we all may trod or stroll, depending upon our point of view. Samir makes the walk more than the means to an end. Rather he reveals a path in which each step, each moment frozen in time, becomes an ending and 34 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

a beginning unto itself.

As the snow fell softly on the city, we closed in on the art on the walls, so that every brush stroke was visible. There were an abundance of individual units, carefully crafted and blended effortlessly into a composite whole, a distinct entity that is solely Sammoun. All these years later, the subject matter hasn’t shifted — ­ nor has the palate — yet the paintings still retain the significance of the moment compounded with memory … a memory filtered through the visions and dreams of a young boy at harvest season in the mountains of his birthplace Joun, Lebanon on his family’s 1,000 year old olive plantation. (The entirety of his biography and engineering achievements can be found in his Wikipedia entry). The spiritual yet earthly energy emanating from Samir’s work, with the added impact of layered paint upon paint, invokes a mystical aura of sacred perfectibility with child-like clarity drawing us further into the imagery and its roots. It is almost as if the paintings would be on a computer monitor, or your phone, and as you click on the link, you are transported to a magical place image by image, like a slide show. No need for a looking glass, rabbit hole or whirlwind to get you there.

Sammoun soon thereafter left the engineering area of the telecommunications world to devote himself entirely to painting as his work became increasingly in demand, not only by collectors in Montréal, but by an ever-expanding group of quality art galleries from Texas to Boston, and by a number of prestigious museums. Most recently the Museum at the State University of New York in Plattsburgh used a Sammoun painting from their

Mustard Field, oil on canvas, 30” x 40”

permanent collection as the cover of their Alumni magazine. His dramatic 2009 oil on canvas, Ticonderoga, July 30, 1609, Midnight After the Battle focuses attention on the natural beauty of the area preserved by New York State’s Wilderness Act that has, for the most part, contributed greatly to the well-being of America’s largest park, the 6 million acre Adirondack Preserve (an area roughly the size of Vermont and greater than the National Parks of Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Glacier, and Great Smoky Mountains combined).

Raised during a period of peace in his homeland (Samir’s brother, unfortunately was killed at the age of 17 in the 1976 civil war), the artist’s earliest recollections were of families from his village gathered together at harvest time in the olive groves, bringing the fruit to the press from which the oil was extracted. As a small

Olivier, oil on canvas, 48” x 60” Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 35

Samir with Olivier Sculpture, bronze

Olive Tree, oil on canvas, 12” x 16”

child, Samir was captivated by the activity, especially that of the painted early in his career, as if he and Vincent were actually clanging contraption that produced the liquid. His fascination painting side by side. Thus Samir’s work, for a time, was more than with the machinery and the process of turning olives into oil direct linear heritage of the one and only Vincent. It was a true certainly played a part in his desire to become an engineer. Years interaction with an immortal.You would have to know Samir to later he would convert those memories into works of art that understand how radical a concept this was as Sammoun is nothing stand as timeless paeans to the world in which we all abide if not steady, conservative and with the sensibility of a scientist/ — a testament to all engineer. Perhaps it is that is good… despite this process that leaves the long and more than the door open to the occasionally loathsome possibility of this matter. history of man.

After-all, the concept Because of this, it is of time and space travel a great pleasure to write has been around forever about Samir Sammoun; and just because one to tell you a bit about has a staid persona — his life and to weave strait-laced, serious and his story into his art. conventional — doesn’t Samir is like the great necessarily eliminate musician, who spent a some seemingly farsummer by the sea at an out concepts to emerge. early age, practicing his Samir told me this with craft, honing his style and such casual forthrightness walking away from his that I just tucked it away hermitage with his skills and took a closer look fully developed so that, at his paintings. While as is the case with the the application of paint great instrumentalist, his to canvas did not possess Apple Blossom, oil on canvas, 48” x 60” work from the moment of the swirling, whirling (some his epiphany decades ago is almost as it is today in the fullness of might say “tortured”) energy of van Gogh, one could readily notice a his development. This is not to say there has been no refinement continuum of a style — a veritable explosion of life and color in the or growth — he has developed magnificently — but to a keen poppy fields, apple orchards, mountains and cityscapes tempered by observer one can see the connection carried forth from his earliest the peace of the elegant olive trees and the subtle movement of the works to his latest. Getting back to our initial meeting at his offices, wheat fields, ready for harvest. perhaps the most interesting element of our conversation was his Vincent created a series of paintings of wheat fields from his casual revelation that he channeled Vincent van Gogh when he that he could see from his cell at Saint-Paul Hospital from May 36 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

Walking With Giants, oil on canvas, 48” x 60”

1879-1880, one of van Gogh’s major series from Saint-Rémy. So many of the elements of Sammoun’s paintings can be found in this group — mountains, cypress and olive trees, changing seasons. van Gogh’s lineage, an inheritance as it were, is carried on magnificently in Samir’s vision. The troubled mind and turmoil in which Vincent resided is smoothed over and extrapolated in Sammoun’s art. He has taken everything van Gogh has given us and converted it all into equally emotional radiant paintings that go deeply into the mind and heart of both artist and viewer. They challenge in their subtlety, in their painterly hues and sharp yet soft depictions of nature. One could look out a window and imagine van Gogh laying it all on the line from his room at the asylum and gaze into a Sammoun painting with many of the same elements in the tradition of Vincent, yet totally original. Sammoun inhabits and creates works of a more peaceful environment, intentionally so, that reflect his own vision.

He processes the beauty of the scene, yet in his perfect portrayals, there can be very subtle element of dread. Nothing is forever in this tenuous world. Mountains will crumble, flowers will die, wheat fields may be trampled by invaders or a storm, olive groves and cypress trees wickedly destroyed … yet a painting of lasting value will be honored through the ages. My hope, dear reader, is that as you peruse the brilliant imagery in these pages you will consider not only the beauty of the work but the intent of the artist with no limitations.

And then it happened, right there before my very eyes at the Musée des Beaux Arts in the heart of Montréal, in October,

En route to Harvard University (detail), oil on canvas, 30” x 40” Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 37

Farm House in Tuscany with Poppies, oil on canvas, 40” x 40”

2005. As fate would have it, there was a corresponding exhibition, Samir Sammoun in the street level Gallery d’Art, an annex of the Museum adjacent to the gift and bookstore, entered via the museum’s lobby. There was quite a collection of Samir’s work on display, with a top notch reception/cocktail party filled with top notch people from the government (Quebec Prime Minister Jean Charest and his wife Michelle Dionne) and the business/ social/art segment of Montréal society. But what sealed the deal for me as far as my friend’s conviction that he was harboring the soul and spirit of Vincent in his own live body was a tour we took with the museum’s chief publicist of the major exhibition, Right Under The Sun: Landscape in Provence From Classicism to Modernism 1750-1920 which was occupying the entirety of this very special building. In this exhibition of masterpieces, van Gogh’s were the center of attention. As I was on somewhat of a press junket, I had the attention of the Director of Publicity and I invited her to view Samir’s show in the Galerie d’Art. We were both stunned and startled by not just Samir’s paintings, but by 38 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

the palpable transmission of energy by both artists via their work — it was like the cable system Samir patented, with the flow of the signal going up and down from headquarters to the last house on the hill without interruption. Of course, it will be up to future generations to place Samir in the same breath as Vincent, but next time you’re at an art fair or gallery where there is a collection of Sammouns, try this out for yourself. It was amazing how he could capture the essence of van Gogh without plagiarizing his style — a tribute indeed.

In the decade hence, Samir has begun to sculpt. He has brought to life his beloved olive tree in bronze and he plans to cast life-size versions for site-specific patches of comfort to call attention to his heart-felt desire for world peace. The United Nations would be an ideal home for such a setting, as would plazas, parks, hospitals and embassies throughout the world. The elegance and strength of the olive tree lends itself perfectly to the enduring tenacity of cast bronze. Samir’s works have contributed to many charitable causes and his vision of the sculptural park as

Wheat Field, oil on canvas, 48” x 60”

a sanctuary in the midst of chaos will not be a dream deferred if the artist has his way.

Doors open to Samir. His gifts have taken him far but it is his character that keeps him there. His is a very beckoning persona backed up by the talent and track record of a world-class artist. He is consistently happy and friendly. His roots go down deep despite what is going on around him. His humble smile and softly spoken words seemed to attract even more, as if he was and is enveloped in a golden aura. Stability and consistency are manifest in him with emotions and feelings on the surface and below that are both hidden and evident in his paintings. He is the same day in and day out, extremely talented, kind and generous — you are always going to know what this man is going to be like. We live in an imperfect world with imperfect people and there are going to be disappointments.

Sammoun’s art seems to say that while this may be true, there is the possibility of perfection, not just in a landscape or a portrait, but in a way of life. Of quietude, serenity. There is a special magic, an intricate depth inherent in Samir Sammoun’s work that results in a spectacle, a spectacular portrayal of splendor. His landscapes and flowers contain an energy and brilliance

Lavande et soleil, oil on canvas, 24” x 24” Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 39

An Evening in Paris, oil on canvas, 60” x 60”

“Sammoun’s art is not diagrammatic but instead reflects the artist’s hand. It is his gesture with the brush and that injects the actual ‘process’ of art immediately into the subject matter of his paintings.”

– Constance Schwartz, Director of the Nassau Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York

conveyed as only a self-realized artist can. Soft, serene and delicate, they hold a mesmerizing power over a viewer. Whether a wheat field or a mountain range, they are elegantly composed, carefully colored, fully conceived inviting yet somewhat foreboding in their awesomeness. These paintings are done by a man who goes way beyond the surface. He sees things and he sees into things, every blade of grass, as Dylan said, “Every grain of sand.” This collection quietly states there’s a large life in front of you, a life grounded in imparting the truth and beauty of nature in its purest form, unadulterated, recognizable, perfect. These paintings — dynamic combinations of contentment and wonder — are treasures, works of great beauty. Masterpieces of love.

s

www.samirsammoun.com • e-mail: samirsammoun@gmail.com • 450-672-8705 40 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

She Flows Like Water, Consciously In Arica Hilton’s poetry and paintings, a deep exploration of beauty speaks to the wanton destruction of nature caused by consumer waste.

F

rom lessons on darkness, Chicago-based artist Arica Hilton takes us on a journey that brings to life mysterious paradises where heaven and earth mingle and where we lose the limits of our human spaces. Some of her canvases show blazing skies untouched by storms, others depict sunny landscapes, or expanses of turquoise and grey-blue waters. In all her works, she plays at confusing our thoughts and imagination. Aquatic-themed canvases with fluid textures of paint may evoke the peaceful rhythm of incoming waves on a Mediterranean beach, the shores of the Bosporus or a Michigan Lake.

Her poetic wanderings manifest in both paintings and poetry through spaces offered without explanation, where the inherent sounds of nature are stilled.

Poetry may be the springboard to her paintings, but Hilton finds the current state of the world a powerful catalyst to create something of value; to society, to individuals, to humanity in sometimes subtle, sometimes highly audible ways. Her current series, I Flow Like Water, is a commentary on the lack of consciousness of human beings discarding plastic without thought to where it will end up. States Hilton, “One thing artists have in common is their propensity to alert people to pay attention to what is right and more often, what is wrong in the world. Having said that, I have realized that I am guilty of not being as conscious of the environment as I should be.

“I had seen videos of birds dying from swallowing bottle caps and plastic in an area of the Pacific called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Each year, over one million sea birds die of asphyxiation or get tangled in plastic nets and debris. Hundreds of thousands of other marine mammals suffer the same fate. And if you don’t really care about marine life, what about those of us eating wild caught fish who ingest this plastic? How healthy are we really? I began to wonder if people knew where our discarded water bottles, containers, toys and wrappers disappear to after they have been removed from our sight?”

In exploration of this topic, Hilton decided to take matters into her own hands. With the fear that her own discarded plastic would end up in the Pacific, she searched for months to find a recycling center in Chicago that

would recycle her plastic bottles. The plastic would then be infused into her oil paintings to recreate the “water” on her canvasses. Her first series will be on view at Artexpo New York at the Fine Art Magazine booth. In addition, Hilton is currently working on a series of waterfalls for her upcoming exhibition at the Europalia Art Festival Brussels, Belgium in October of 2015.

One Day Like Rain, 30” x 30”, oil & recycled plastic on canvas

And why the theme of water? Because, continues Hilton, “Water covers more than 70% of the Earth’s surface.

When a baby is born, it is made up of 90% water. As we grow into adulthood, human water composition reduces to 60% to 70%. Water is the most perfect element that has been provided for us on this earth. If we live more consciously to take care of our planet, we are, in effect, taking care of ourselves.”

Arica Hilton’s works may be seen at www.aricahilton.com 312.852.8200 Contact Renee Pappas: renee@hiltonasmus.com International representative: QU ART, 41 Avenue LeGrand, Brussels, Belgium Director Pick Keobandith: pick@quart-brussels.com Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 41

Julian lennon, Hope, 2014

JULIAN LENNON

“Horizon” Photographs at Emmanuel Fremin Born in Liverpool, England, Julian Lennon began his artistic trajectory at a young age with an inherent talent for playing musical instruments. Those talents would soon broaden into the cinematic and visual arts. As an observer of life in all its forms, Julian developed his personal expression through music, acting and documentary filmmaking. In 2007, the door opened to yet another… photography, as Julian captured images during a musical tour for his half-brother, Sean.

Timeless, his first photo exhibition, staged in Manhattan in September 2010, debuted Julian’s considerable talents behind the camera, as seen in photographs of Sean Lennon, U2 and his painterly landscapes. The principal goal behind Julian’s latest series, Horizon, is to marry photography with philanthropy. “I have always felt that I observed life in a different 42 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

Behind Closed Doors

way than others, probably because my life has always been very different than most,” he says.

His attuned worldview recently led him to see first-hand the results as his charity, Water and The White Feather Foundation initiative, brings critically needed clean drinking water to parts of Africa. Simultaneously, his conservation and humanitarian efforts overlapped with support work being developed with Millennium Villages Project.

During these travels through Kenya and Ethiopia, Julian captured a wide variety of images, with the intention of inspiring viewers to learn about unique indigenous cultures and to help raise awareness of their plights. Its signature image, Horizon, juxtaposes man and nature in a meditative solo walk upon a majestic mountain. The beauty of landscape shots like Follow and Scopium find a complement in the humanity of others, among them: Reverence, with a group of tribal elders focused intently, during a community gathering to discuss clean water and their environment; and Hope, a bright-eyed Ethiopian child, with a wise, yet insightful vision, of life yet to come….

Empathy, says Julian Lennon, is the bond that unites the planet. “We are all in this together, and hopefully someday, the world will realize that… and photography is one way to share, learn, appreciate and understand about other cultures and empathize with other peoples lives….”

Portrait in Africa, photo by Jennifer Gross

Horizon Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 43

Richard Prince: The Figures Richard Prince arrived in NYC in August 1974. He stayed in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn with a friend of a friend for two weeks and then rented a small one bedroom sublet on Prince and West Broadway. He had saved 1,500 dollars from teaching pottery to high school students working at a private country day school south of Boston. He had read an article in the New York Times Magazine about Soho. He wanted to check it out and thought he’d come down and stay for three months. He had spent most of the summer of ’74 in southern Maine house sitting for a family, and when they returned he thought it might be a good time to go the place he always wanted to go to.

One of the first things he did after he arrived in New York was look for a drawing class. Figure drawing. He’d been going to one up in Maine for three years. He found a class on Greene St that met twice a week… maybe twenty people went… chipped in ten dollars to pay for a model, sometimes two models at the same time. The figuredrawing sessions back in Maine were organized by friends. After three hours of drawing, they would open up beer and pass around their drawings and talk to each other about what they had just drawn. This didn’t happen on Greene St. No beer. No talking about what they drew. It wasn’t AA. They didn’t share. What they did was private. Everybody was in their own worlds.

“I didn’t know anybody when I came to New York City. I was on my own and spent days where the only conversation I would have was with a bartender.”

Figure drawing class in 1974 was out of fashion. “I’m not sure when it went out but I can tell you, in 1974, it wasn’t in.” Figure drawing was something he needed to do. He felt connected to something when he did it… and the tradition of drawing the figure put him in a place where El Greco, Goya, Cezanne, Picasso, de Kooning, Sigmar Polke, and R. Crumb had already been. There was something safe about the place.

It wasn’t crazy or wild or new or different or groundbreaking or what was next. It’s where things started. And Richard wanted to be in the beginning.

Passing the hat.

“Whoever showed up and took off their clothes got whatever we could afford to put in the hat.”

This class met over on Broome and Mercer. It was a real dump. Tin ceiling. Exposed pipes. A bunch of cats would sit on the sills or pass by and rub up against you while you were trying to connect a hip to a thigh. The place belonged to some women and part of what was in the hat went toward their rent.

Drawing the nude was fundamental, unexciting… “squaresville.” Whatever every other artist was doing outside THE SQUARE had nothing to do with Richard. There was video. There was performance. There was post studio.

There was Avalanche. Richard knew about Acconci. He knew about Smithson. He knew about Nauman. He knew about Hesse. He knew about Hannah Wilke. But he also knew about Walt Kuhn and Alice Neel… Abner Dean, Gregory Gillespie, George Tooker, Whitney Darrow Jr., James Avati and William Bailey. And he knew for himself, in August ’74, there was gouache on hot press arches, a No. 4B pencil, and a naked body. “It’s what I loved to do.” And hooking into something that was so basic and old, felt genuine. It was all about continuation… and there was nothing better when it came to “continuation” than the human body.

Richard has said that he’ll never stop thinking about human flesh. He calls this never-ending thinking “second na44 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

Richard Prince, Untitled, 2013, Inkjet, acrylic, and charcoal on canvas 63¼ in. x 50 in., Courtesy the artist and Luxembourg & Dayan

ture.” Sure, the thinking gets interrupted by other ideas and mediums, but head to toe is simple. It’s always there. Right next to you. All around. “It grounds you and makes you think about posture.”

He does it alone. No assistants having to show or give instructions to. He usually makes some kind of figure study during the summer or on vacations, or makes it part of his day, like when he goes to museums and tries to find a room that’s empty, and sits and stares at the scale of the human form.

Every artist that he’s ever thought about has tried it.

Whether they admit it or not, at some time during their life, they’ve drawn an arm, a leg, a foot, a head.

Philip Guston. Perfect example.

“I’m not sure I would’ve paid much attention to him had he not given up and cartooned his way into fat one eyed faces smoking stubby cigars. When was that show? 1970? Talk about hate. The reviews were vicious. Was he mad? Lost his mind? It’s strange to think that one of the only people who came to his defense was Willem de Kooning.”

The figure.

Relevant?

Who cares?

Dinosaur?

Not to Richard.

Like he’s said, “Get it on bang a gong… T-Rex.” Richard knows the figure isn’t on everybody’s radar. Old story. Old hat. It’s all been done. Taken care of. But that’s just it. He doesn’t think it has. He likes the dead-end. “In my mind the “conventions” of the figure is what’s cool. Trying to make something different out of something that’s already been done to death makes me bend over backward, hold my breath and count to ten. I take a pulse. It’s faint. But I feel it.

It’s barely there. Flat line? Almost. But I hold on. Lay it on me.

Give me some skin. Give me some bones. It’s just like that The Mamas & the Papas song… ‘I’m in the mood for love.’”

Uruma Takezawa at the Shashin Festival

Inaugural Shashin “Photography From Japan Festival” Comes To New York City Shashin: Photography From Japan Festival has arrived in New York City.

Produced by the Tokyo-based Council for Photography from Japan (CPJ) and co-hosted by the International Center of Photography (ICP) and the New York Public Library (NYPL), the 15-day Shashin Festival presents exhibits, installations, performances, artist lectures, films and other events showcasing artists rarely seen outside Japan who represent the elusive, fast evolving culture of photography from Japan.

The word Shashin simply means photograph in Japanese. Yet the art of making photographs in Japan has centuries old roots in the country’s traditions of graphic art and design. Shashin is a visual language informed by cultural extremes: strict protocols and unconventional attitudes, ancient detachment and futuristic enterprise, teasing innocence and hyper consumerism.

Japanese Shashin artists articulate photography in and through installations, dance, film, writing and other art forms.

The Shashin Festival showcases and explores this provocative, experimental genre through more than a dozen site-specific events, most free to the public including: • 10x10’s Shashin Zine Fest NYC, at Resobox in Long Island City, Saturday, April 18 through Sunday, April 26, features a broad selection of recent Japanese Zines.

• An invitation-only party at the Aperture Foundation, Saturday, April 25 celebrating the launch of “Tokyo,” the May 2015 edition of Aperture Magazine.

• A two day Shashin Symposium bringing together the world’s leading scholars and curators of Japanese photography from major art institutions for a series of presentations and panel discussions at the New York Public Library, Friday April 24 and SatEikoh Hosoe at the Shashin Festival urday, April 25.

• bookshop M, a Japanese bookseller and day, Takashi Homma, renowned for his porpublisher of high-quality Photobooks from traits of urban Tokyo, will construct a giant Japan will host a pop-up shop, Saturday, camera obscura that participants may enter.

April 26th at the International Center of Stephen C. Pinson, The Robert B. Photography School.

Menschel Curator of Photography at • A screening of two documentaries the New York Public Library, says: “The about the enigmatic, legendary photogNYPL is well known for our collection rapher Takuma Nakahira at the School of of ehon, or Japanese picture books, which Visual Arts, Monday, April 27. were featured in a landmark exhibition in • Shashin Festival Director Ivan Var2006 and included many of the best photanian will give a slide-show presentation tobooks produced in Japan. We continue hosted by the Harvard Business School of to build our collections in this area and are New York, Tuesday, April 28, introducing thrilled to co-host the Shashin Festival. many of the young, dynamic artists in conLike the Council for Photography from temporary Japanese photography. Two of Japan, we are eager to share our Japanese these young photographers, Daisuke Yomaterial, and our photography collections kota and Mayumi Hosokura will join the in general, with a broader audience. Right discussion in person. now is an especially good time to visit the • A performance-based, outdoor event Library to take advantage of our first-evSaturday, May 2 with emerging artist/phoer historical retrospective, Public Eye: 175 tographer Daisuke Yokota. Also on SaturYears of Sharing Photography.

Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 45

Zanzibar Film Festival Hosts Kenny Mann’s “Love Song to Africa”

Escape: A sketch by my mother, Erica Mann, of the truck convoy that carried her, my father and other refugees into the heart of Northern Rhodesia to a camp at Fort Jameson in 1941.

Multiple interwoven stories bring alive the complex relationships forged by “white African” filmmaker Kenny Mann’s remarkable parents, Igor and Erika Mann. Wide-ranging and informative, “Beautiful Tree, Severed Roots” chronicles their escape from Nazi-infested Europe to assume new identities in Kenya during the tumultuous pre-Independence years. Told with a whimsical sense of humor and enlivened with original graphics, the film depicts the challenging, confusing, but never boring journeys of a highly colorful husband and wife team and the daughter who tries to make sense of their lives, solving a few mysteries about her own life along the way.”

Kathy Eldon, Founder and Chairman, Creative Visions Foundation

Kenny Mann was born and raised in Kenya. She attended the Kenya Girls High School and Nairobi University, and left in 1968 to study film production at Bristol University in England. Since then, Ms. Mann has held many jobs in the documentary film world, ranging from researcher and writer to producer and director of her own films. Now she brings her latest production back home.

BEAUTIFUL TREE, SEVERED ROOTS explores issues of personal identity based on the extraordinary lives led by her parents, Erica and Igor Mann, who arrived in Kenya as Jewish refugees in 1942. “I grew up as a white woman in an African country, an anti-colonialist in a British Colony, and a Jew who didn’t know how to be Jewish,” Ms. Mann says. “Living so near to the Equator, which one could straddle with one foot in each hemisphere, made me nuts,” she continues. “From the earliest age, I wondered in which hemisphere I belonged and whether I had to choose between them.”

46 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

Nile, Zora Mann’s work Nile is influenced by her years as a high school student in Kenya.

Set against the backdrop of Kenya’s Colonial history between the Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s and Independence in 1963, “The film admirably addresses the constant need to call into question one’s place in history in times of sweeping change,” stated Kathleen Modrowski, Assistant Dean, Global College, Long Island University. Taking viewers on a poetic, metaphorical journey through memories of a childhood spent on a cattle farm at Athi River and later as a school girl in Nairobi. Delving into her parents’ lives in Poland and Romania, Ms. Mann sets the stage for their escape from the Holocaust and ultimate destination: Africa. “It wasn’t just an escape,” notes the fimmaker. My mother had always dreamed of coming to Africa — just not under those circumstances!” Also explored is her father’s involvement in Kenyan politics as her family’ life weaves through the intricate political atmosphere of pre- and post-Independence Kenya. Many questions

Sophie Mann, Horse, acrylic on wood. Both my daughter Sophie and my niece Zora are artists who represent their feelings of identity in their work.

about identity, assimilation and the universal immigrant status are posed.

Dr. Igor Mann was the Director of Animal Husbandry for the Kenya Veterinary Department for many years, and the Founder of the Animal Health and Training Institute at Kabete. He was also the Founder and Co-Chairman of Freedom from Hunger, and a consultant for WHO, UNEP and UNDP. Erica Mann worked for the Town Planning Department for many years, was the Kenya representative for Habitat for Humanity and contributed many articles to various architectural magazines. Their home on Milimani Road, formerly known as Crawford Road, was one of the few places in Kenya where people of all races, including prominent leaders such as Tom Mboya and Bruce McKenzie, were welcomed.

“It’s simultaneously a coming-of-age story for Kenya and myself as I turned 17 in 1963, just as Kenya became Independent,” says Ms. Mann. “I left Kenya when I was 22 years old because I saw no future for me there,” Mann admits. “But with the exploding film industry in East Africa, I’ve found a niche where I can be useful and give film students everything that I’ve learned.”

Ms. Mann’s brother, Oscar Mann, who lives at Kitengela, was the cinematographer.

Ms. Mann’s previous documentary film, WALKING WITH LIFE – The Birth of a Human Rights Movement in Africa, has screened at seven festivals and won two awards. Ms. Mann has made several other documentary films and has also authored a series of six books for younger readers titled African Kingdoms of the Past (Simon & Schuster). Ms. Mann teaches documentary film at Manhattan’s Digital Film Academy.

A trailer for BEAU TIF UL TREE, SEVERED ROOTS may be viewed at www. rafikiproductions.com For further information, please contact Kenny Mann directly at ikimann@ earthlink.net; or Storymoja Festival directly.

ArtHamptons new home “Behind the Hedges”

Opening Night Preview of ArtHamptons Prelude to Long Independence Day Weekend, Summer Art Season The 2015 edition has strategically moved up one weekend on the calendar to coincide with the popular three day July 4th weekend, traditionally the most highly visited weekend of the year in the Hamptons.

It marks the official opening of the 2015 summer season. Opening Night Preview is presented by Beach Modern Luxury.

The 8th annual ArtHamptons sets the pace and tone of the weekend with excitement and anticipation, offering an international selection of important post-war and contemporary art treasures for immediate acquisition. Opening Night Preview on Thursday, July 2nd, serves as a trendy prelude for the upcoming July 4th festivities.

This year, ArtHamptons moves one mile east on Scuttle Hole Road to on the grounds of an opulent private estate located on the corner of Lumber Lane in Bridgehampton.

ArtHamptons’ Opening Night Preview traditionally attracts 3,500 arts enthusiasts. The July 2nd Opening Night Preview benefits two high profile organizations, Guild Hall in East Hampton and the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation in NYC (which is graciously hosted by Beach Magazine).

“The Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation is delighted to be a beneficiary of ArtHamptons’ generosity this year,” said Samuel Waxman, M.D., founder and CEO of the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation. “Our annual Hamptons Happening Fundraiser and ArtHamptons are two of the Hamptons’ most anticipated summer events and we’re appreciative of the exposure ArtHamptons is providing our forthcoming event among

Crowd at ArtHamptons

its upscale audience of 15,000 fine art lovers. The worlds of art and philanthropy are intertwined and we believe this collaboration will greatly support our fundraising for breakthrough cancer research.”

“Guild Hall is also pleased to continue to be a beneficiary of ArtHamptons,” says Executive Director Ruth Appelhof. “This local art fair, that has blossomed in the past 8 years, is a vital catalyst for inspiring many Hamptonites to become more active in art acquisition and collecting and more engaged in arts related activities on the east end. Over the past 80 years, Guild Hall has been a leader in championing and showcas-

ing local artists and arts patronage and we are delighted to join forces with ArtHamptons for this year’s exciting Art Fair.”

Now in its 8th successful year, ArtHamptons is a celebration of visual arts in the Hamptons. It brings together local galleries with galleries from around the world in showcasing the finest in postwar and contemporary art. Over 14,000 Hamptonites attend the fair annually. The 8th edition will be held July 2-5, 2015, at a private estate on Lumber Lane in Bridgehampton, NY. For more information, contact Rick Friedman by calling 631.283.5505, or e-mail at rick@hegshows.com.

Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 47

Art Miami Launches Art Miami New York Contemporary & Post War Blue Chip Works from 100 International Galleries On the eve of the VIP opening of the 25th edition of Art Miami, Art Miami LLC, the ownership team of the fair announced the launch of Art Miami New York, a new world-class contemporary and modern art fair.

Art Miami New York will open its doors on May 14, 2015 in New York City at the world renowned Pier 94, site of the annual Armory Show each March. The fair will debut during Frieze Week, one of the busiest and most exciting weeks of the New York 2015 art and cultural season, alongside the highly-anticipated post-war and contemporary art sales at the major auction houses. Art Miami New York will commence with an elegant invitation-only VIP Preview on Thursday, May 14 from 2–5 PM which will provide collectors, art advisors, curators, and members of the press with a the first look and opportunity to acquire the finest works available in the market before the fair opens to the public that evening through Sunday, May 17.

“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to bring the Art Miami quality, brand, style and ambience to New York City during this important week for the acquisition of contemporary & modern art. Art Miami New York promises to be a world-class fair and we look forward to welcoming the world’s leading art collectors, art advisors, curators, institutions, designers, artists and art enthusiasts to this new annual springtime event at a fantastic venue,” said Nick Korniloff, Art Miami New York Founder, Fair Director, and Partner.

Art Miami New York will provide a fresh opportunity to acquire important never-beforeexhibited works from both the primary and secondary markets in an intimate light. The fair will cater to both seasoned and new art collectors who are looking to experience the best of what the global contemporary art market has to offer in New York City. The versatile and rich selection of works on display will have a strong focus on emergent talent, as well as mid-career cutting-edge artists, anchored by a fresh selection ofsecondary market works by top name artists from the Modern & Post-War eras. It is estimated that nearly 1,200 artists from over 60 countries will be on display at the fair.

The top 100 international galleries will be carefully selected by a Dealer Selection & Advisory Committee, which will work closely with Korniloff, as well as participating galleries, to ensure a carefully-curated, rich-in-content, quality presentation, allowing collectors, institutions, curators and art advisors to buy with confidence.

These prestigious galleries will exhibit within the intimate and modern setting of Pier 94, set against the dramatic backdrop of the Hudson River in a 133,000 squarefoot exhibition hall.

48 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

Frank Stella (American, 1923-1994), Then Water Came and Quenched the Fire, 1986 Hand colored & collaged with lithographic, linoleum block & silkscreen printings, heightened by the artist using oil paint and oil stick, 53.2 x 52 inches Signed on front: paint over reject print F. Stella ’86, Gerald Peters Gallery

Ren Hang, 2013-15, Photography, 26’’ x 39’’, courtesy of Ren Hang / Galerie Paris Beijing

For more information, visit www.artmiaminewyork.com or email info@artmiaminewyork.com.

Art Market Hamptons Evolves into MARKET ART + DESIGN Market Art + Design launches in July of 2015 as the evolution of Art Market Hamptons, the East End’s premier modern and contemporary art fair. Taking place in an exclusive new waterfront venue at the stunning Fairview Farm at Mecox, Market Art + Design will showcase presentations by top galleries enhanced by a striking and tightly curated Design component pulling from dealers and designers from around the world.

The proceeds of an exclusive opening night celebration featuring great food, local bands, and fantastic art will support Benefit Partner Peconic Land Trust. Founded in 1983, Peconic Land Trust works with landowners, municipalities, and communities to conserve Long Island’s working farms, natural lands, and heritage.

Morris Sandwich Shop will offer their famously decadent, local & seasonal grilled cheeses, speciality appetizers, and house-made cocktails to Preview Benefit guests. The beloved food truck’s brick and mortar Crown Heights spot may be new to the scene, but it’s already an institution, hitting Eater’s Brooklyn Heatmap this win-

Market Art + Design, July 9 - 12, 2015, Fairview Farm at Mecox, Bridgehampton

ter. Long Island and New York City’s high profile art world luminaries, including top collectors, curators, museum directors, and artists, will be in attendance to support Peconic Land Trust and to have first look at Market Art + Design presentations and special project installations. www.artmarkethamptons.com

BEIRUT

ART FAIR

Art Brussels 2015 Artists’ Music, mauroworld.net Ratzinger Art Brussels artistic programming for its 33rd edition features 191 galleries from 33 countries, represented in three main sections PRIME, YOUNG and a new section, DISCOVERY. The fair also places emphasis on individual presentation by artists with 30 galleries presenting SOLO projects. A full list of participating galleries can be found on the website.

Talking about the fair’s programme, Artistic Director Katerina Gregos says: ‘Artistic programming is what permits an art fair to innovate and is what differentiates one fair from another. Art fairs are an enormous force in terms of audience outreach and for this reason, are an ideal platform for both emerging and experimental art. It is in the details of its artistic programme where Art Brussels truly reveals its identity as fair in which to discover the surprising, the unusual, and the adventurous.’

Replacing the talks programme on THE STAGE this year is ARTISTS’ MUSIC, a must-see daily line-up of live musical performances by contemporary artists and their bands. The newly launched series, organised in collaboration with Brussels-based arts centre Beursschouwburg, is located outdoors on the Zinneke Terrace, that has been specially designed by B-ILD the architects for Art Brussels 2015. www.artbrussels.com

Beirut Art Fair team: Pascal Odille, Artistic Director; Yasser Akkaoui, Strategic Partner; Laura d’Hauteville, Founder and Fair Director; Rania Tabbara, VIP Relations Manager; Fadi Mogabgab, Rania Halawi, Event Managers; Fabrice Bosteau, Curator

Since its inception in 2010, BEIRUT ART FAIR established itself on the international artistic scene with the vision of a ME. NA.SA.-labeled art (Middle East, North Africa, South & South East Asia) which shaped its identity and power of attraction. In tune with the centers of interest of international collectors, the fair displays the creation of this region which stretches from Morocco to Indonesia, in its wide diversity.

From 17 to 20 September 2015, organizers will receive at BIEL around fifty international modern and contemporary art and design galleries. Exhibiting artists represent all of the trends of current art and express themselves through painting, drawing, sculpture, video, design or performance. Established and developing artists mingle and invite the viewer to share their visions of the world and their dreams.

BEIRUT ART FAIR confirms the position of Beirut as the cultural and intellectual capital of the Arab world, at the junction between the East and the West. It is part of the international fairs dedicated to art and serves as a window for the ME.NA.SA. creation which is open to the world. http://beirut-art-fair.com Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 49

Old Woman Eating Starch

Girl Reading The Book

MICHAEL J. SINGLETARY Michael J. Singletary’s riveting commentaries on American culture, race relations, art history and the environment are created, often in collage, with a painterly flair and a philosopher’s vision tempered with his love of music, art, chocolate, sports and women, not necessarily in that order. An art artist, filmmaker, radio and television producer, he has participated in over 300 different fine art exhibitions and is positioned to take his place among the most influential artists of our time. Inspired by Bearden, Benny Andrews, Jacob Lawrence and his boyhood heros Michelangelo and Rembrandt, Singletary is blazing hot in his scorching, ruthless and direct missives at the haters, hypocrites and ignorants roaming the earth today even as his musical and portraiture renditions reveal a warm-hearted tenderness, humor and hope. Singletary ascribes to the words of fellow Bronxite, Dion: “I’m a lover, not a fighter, but I’ll kick your ass.”

The official artist for the “New York City Basketball Hall of Fame,” his work has been featured in Spike Lee films, and, in addition to museum and gallery shows, he has exhibited with noted musicians. His jazz paintings are on many CD covers. During his tenure at CBS, Singletary produced shows for Katie Couric, Dan Rather and Charles Osgood.

–VICTOR FORBES 56 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

Water

DINO DANELLI

The Dream Lives

Fresh off his critically acclaimed reunion tour with his band, that stalwart quartet of the 60s, The (Young) Rascals, Dino Danelli, legitimate rock star, as influential a drummer as any in his day (including Ringo), and member of a group with enough hits to enshrine them in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has turned his still potent energy and attention to two art forms: painting and video.

As a visual artist, he created iconic album covers for his band when the format was 12 inches by 12 inches and the visual element of the product often was cause for as many album purchases as themusic itself. Working with the fabled Ertegun Brothers at Atlantic Records, sold as many recordings, Danelli’s sculptured box construction was featured on the Once Upon A Dream cover and his vision for a Magritte painting made it’s was to the See cover.

During the 40 years between the Rascals last recording and their 2012-2013 epic reunion, produced by the only person in the world who could get the four original members to agree to get their act together — Steven Van Zandt — Danelli was active in both music and art. His first one man exhibition was held in Saratoga, New York and he followed that up with a foray to the 2011 Artexpo with Fine Art Magazine. Just as he was beginning to create a new body of work, some of which will be shown again with Fine Art at Artexpo, Van Zandt performed his miracle and the Rascals were on the road, selling out theaters from Broadway to Toronto.

Considering the fact that we were 40 yrs older we just appreciated everfything so much more - hopefully you get a little more wisdom when you are older Appreciated the opportunity to get soomething at that level a lot of peole get second chances nut not as great as the first one we were very thankful for the opportunity and were not going to let it go down without nailing it - to make the max and most of the second chance at this levekl of connection with our fan base and with people who justy heard anput the rascals and bnever had the chance to see them the first time around, The show was a killer production, so elaborate, just magnificent, just the appreciatioon of it, spectacular. That stuff could bring you to tears sometimes.

That concert changed his life and he never forgot that, then I got to know him very well, we worked together travelled all over the world. Tragic Sublime, the loss of that love …. it dissipated into the exact opposite. It was a sad ending. Would be nice if we could sit down and have a dinner again like we used to….Steven had diplomatic chops. Things got ruthless, never saw data. What was I to do, walk away with my tail between my legs. Could have been a smooth turnover.

Entrance to big leagues — in dugout no one knew who we were, Sid producing it, the famous RASCALS ARE COMING went on s scoreboard Just watched the Beatles, couldn;t hear more than 2 notes — solid screaming, no break, started, never stopped till they were gone.

When we first heard the Beatles on the radio before they were over here. Felix and I had just met, were talkiing about, were very very impressed by what they were doing, heard all the American infkluences, LR, CB but they had theior own thing, their style was so strong, just swept us away. WSe were in lover immediately with the BEatles, everything that they did influenced us, videos, promotional films, innovative stuff. We had our eye in what was going on in ENgland very ealry on, really early ones, Love Me Do. You couldn;t escape iut if you had any sense of style or what music is…. swept. Hadn’e even met Gene, Felix and I are opn way to Vegas with the Scottish band, had us dressed up in kilts — we were hard time, big time Italian dudes, Guidos, to put a kilt on, a skirt, embarrassing but we had to do it. The Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 57

DINO DANELLI

The Dream Lives

Dino Danelli painting Voluptuous Sleep #2, mixed media on wood, 48” x 48”

F

Dino Danelli, Once Upon A Dream Tour 2013

resh off his critically acclaimed reunion tour with his band, that stalwart quartet of the 60s, The (Young) Rascals, Dino Danelli, legitimate rock star, as influential a drummer as any in his day (including Ringo), and member of a group with enough hits to enshrine them in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has turned his still potent energy and attention to two art forms: painting and video.

As a visual artist, he created iconic album covers for his band when the format was 12 inches by 12 inches and the visual element of the product often was cause for as many album purchases as the music itself.

Working with the fabled Ertegun Brothers at Atlantic Records, Danelli’s sculptured box construction was featured on the Once Upon A Dream cover and his vision for a Magritte painting made its way to the See cover.

During the 40 years between the Rascals last recording and their 2012-2013 epic reunion, produced by the only person in the world who could get the four original members to agree to get their act together — Steven Van Zandt — Danelli was active in both music and art. His first one man exhibition was held in Saratoga, New York, Mean Streets, and he followed that up with a foray to the 2011 Artexpo with Fine Art Magazine. Just as he was beginning to create a new body of work, some of which will be shown again with Fine Art at Artexpo, Van Zandt performed his miracle and the Rascals were on the road, selling out theaters from Broadway to Toronto with a multi-media extravaganza that was as much a revival meeting as it was a concert.

“Considering the fact that we were 40 years older, we just appreciDino Danelli – The Drummer as Front Man ated everything so much more,” said Danelli from his New York home where he has been putting the finishing touches on his video project memorializing the tour. “Hopefully you get a little more wisdom over the years. We all appreciated the opportunity to get something at that level. We were very thankful and were not going to let it go down without nailing it, to make the most of the second chance at this level of connection with our fan base and with people who just heard about The Rascals and never had the chance to see us the first time around. The show was a killer production, so elaborate, magnificent, spectacular. That stuff could bring you to tears sometimes.”

In 1965, Van Zandt and Bruce Springsteen caught a Rascals concert in Asbury Park, New Jersey and Little Steven, who inducted the group into the Hall of Fame, ripping off his own suit to reveal a Young Rascals pleated shirt and knickers costume underneath, said that concert changed his life and he never forgot that. He pulled the group together, wrote 28 drafts of what became Once Upon A Dream and financed it himself and with $150,000 raised on Kickstarter before the show/tour ran it’s course. Danelli’s video, which he calls Tragic Sublime addresses the highs and lows of that year, “The loss of that love. It dissipated into the exact opposite of what it started out as. It was a sad ending. It would be nice,” he muses, “if we could sit down and have a dinner again like we used to.”

Danelli is not giving up on his new dream: to have his three friends reunite once again and continue to perform together, with or without the massive production, simply as America’s greatest four man band, who young or not so young, will always be The Rascals.

— VICTOR FORBES Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 57

60 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

PAUL BUTTERFIELD BLUES BAND ELECTED TO THE ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME 2015

“In My Own Dream” The Paul B utter field S tory “He Was Music”

By VICTOR BENNETT FORBES

–VIRGINIA BUTTERFIELD

A

generation after his death, and a half century without glamour, hype or bowing to trends, Paul Butterfield since he and his eponymous blues band brought the music he loved to millions of Americans, forever changed the mosaic of the who, all these years later, still stop his surviving international musical scene, the legend of band members to reminisce about the potency, Paul Butterfield stands as an archetypal power and purity Paul Butterfield and the pillar of American folk-lore. various incarnations of his Blues Band

With a collection of collaborators brought to the concert stages, night that included, over the course of clubs and festival grounds of a young his diverse (but tragically shortnation, war-torn, reeling from the ened) career, every giant of the assassination of its president yet first wave of American Urban hopeful and full of youthful vigor.

Blues—Muddy Waters, Otis Born in Chicago in 1942, ButSpann, James Cotton and B.B. terfield’s first exposure to music King, to name but a fraction— was through his father, a successto the groundbreaking Paul ful attorney who would gather Butterfield Blues Band and the the family together to sing and brilliant interplay of members accompany themselves instruMike Bloomfield, Elvin Bishmentally on a regular basis. Paul op, Mark Naftalin, Sam Lay, would play flute and his brother Billy Davenport and Jerome clarinet at these family jam Arnold; to later recordings sessions. Some of Paul’s earliest that featured Muddy Waters, memories were of these sessions Bonnie Raitt, Levon Helm, and of the wealth of music played Maria Muldaur, Nick Gravenites, in the various neighborhoods of Amos Garret, and David Sanhis hometown by the people who born; to impromptu performances settled there from all parts of this and concerts across the country nation, and the world. In addition to with Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, the the black immigrants from the deltas Allman Brothers, Johnny Winter, Eric and cottonfields of the Deep South, Clapton, Rick Danko, Levon Helm and there were refugees from Eastern Europe, many others; to featured billing at the New“hillbillies” from the mountainous regions of port Folk Festival (1964), Monterey Pop (1967), Kentucky and Tennessee, Jews and Poles, Russians Woodstock (1969) and the Band’s Last Waltz (1973), and Puerto Ricans. As a child Paul Butterfield’s virtuoso driving with his family through harmonica playing, soulful these wards that made up one “Paul Butterfield turned sixteen the year that vocals, inspired song-writing of America’s great cities, young the Russians launched the first space ship, but and brilliant band-leadership Paul was affected by not only for Paul Butterfield the most important thing moved the burgeoning youth the variety of the music, but by culture of the mid- and latethe various tonalities. As his that happened that year was when he went 1960s to an appreciation of friend and band-mate Michael to hear Muddy Waters for the first time at blues music that transcended Bloomfield would later say, “It Smitty’s corner, 35th and Indiana, one of the racial, economic and political all sounded like it came from honky tonk’s growing out of the lines. Without the benefit the same place. Ghetto musics razor-poor soul of the Black Blues of ever coming close to a of the world are sort of related Belt on Chicago’s South Side...” hit record, without a gimto each other. Musically, even mick-laden stage show (save the scales. Suffering don’t —Alfred G. Aronowitz Mike Bloomfield’s occasional know no color, don’t know no Liner Notes, In My Own Dream, 1968 pre-KISS fire-eating act), nationality.”

Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 59

Legends All: Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, Sam Lay, Elvin Bishop, Jerome Arnold, from the album that changed the landscape of American music and American culture, Mark Naftalin missed the photo shoot as he joined the band officially shortly thereafter. The “incense and herbs” store was located in Chicago, where the band formed with Paul and Elvin and two members of Howlin’ Wolf’s band, Sam and Jerome. Bloomfield came in later, America’s first guitar hero, and the band reached major status.

MIKE BLOOMFIELD:

“W

hite, black Paul plays the blues and I’m gonna play with him.

I was there with him, I helped him open the door. A lot of the white clubs wasn’t high on blues. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band came on the scene working out of Big Johns on Wells Street.

We were originally a quartet, but we hooked up with Mike Bloomfield at Big John’s and it took off from there. There was never a racial issue. Look at Butterfield’s personnel: it was half and half. We were playing the black music “Negro Music” — we couldn’t get into white clubs. When Butterfield came on the scene, they started to hire bands. Places that didn’t even have bands were hiring blues bands. Butterfield opened the door for blues and he was the cause of a lot of blacks playing cause he swung the doors wide open for blues. Now they got places they call the House of Blues. I was there with him.

Years ago, even as late as back in the fifties when all this rock and roll came out, they were saying ‘Rock and roll has got to go’ and the djs were smashing the records right over the turntable. Just prejudiced people.

Elvis Presley took Junior Parker’s Train I Ride Is 16 Coaches Long, people hired him, though they didn’t want to.

Lightnin’ Hopkins and Muddy Waters…

Folks wouldn’t allow their kids to listen to it.

If they had a janitor or maid or housekeeper and they had a radio going, they would make them cut that radio off. ‘I don’t want my kids listening to that ni**er music.’ Somehow or another, Butterfield was playing, making the club owners happy on both sides of town. continued on next page 60 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

“I

t was just beautiful to be in that environment and to be accepted into that environment as a man on the terms of those people was a flattering thing. If you shucked you had no business being there.

You’d not only be a white kid, you’d be a fool. And Paul by that time, he was a specialty act. It was a freak show. Our White Star. Irish white guy plays the blues. Man, he had horns. He held his own, my God man, he’d walk in a place and Little Walter and Junior Wells would put down their harmonicas they’d put ’em down and say, ‘Get that cat up there.’

“I knew Paul and was scared of him because he was so so accepted, so much a part of that scene. I would sit at a table with Muddy Waters and Cotton and they’d be looking at Paul and they’d be just beaming at him. ‘That’s my boy, that’s my boy,’ that’s what their eyes were just shining out and saying.”

ELVIN BISHOP:

PHOTO BY CATE CHIRICO

SAM LAY:

MARK NAFTALIN: Moving to Chicago in 1961 and enrolling at the University of Chicago, Mark Naftalin continued his pursuit of blues piano by sitting in (from time to time) at the campus “twist parties,” where the resident band leader was blues singer and harmonica player Paul Butterfield, whose band featured guitarist Elvin Bishop.

After graduating from the University of Chicago in 1964, Naftalin moved to New York City for a year of study at the Mannes College of Music. On September 9, 1965, at a midtown-Manhattan recording studio, he sat in with Paul Butterfield and his band again — playing organ, this time, and sharing solos with Paul and the group’s new lead guitarist, Michael Bloomfield, on a session warm-up song. As the session continued, Naftalin was invited to keep playing, and then to join the band, with whom he toured for two-and-a-half years and recorded four albums, including the classic East-West. The results of that fateful session — including the warm-up song, “Thank You Mr. Poobah” — are on the Elektra album The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, continued on next page

“When I first came to Chicago, I was square as a pool table and twice as green.”

“In 1960 I came from Tulsa Oklahoma on a Fulbright Scholarship to the University of Chicago. At that time only a handful of white people were into blues and we gravitated together pretty quick. Mostly the folk thing was on then and blues was considered part of folk music and you could go and meet these people who were crazy about blues. I met Butterfield the first day I was in Chicago. Sometimes I’d see Nick (Gravenites) with Paul and we all played in different combinations before we got the Butterfield Blues Band together. Hound Dog Taylor, JT Brown, Junior Wells, Smokey Smothers all were on the scene. I met VBF & Elvin at BB King’s Smokey amd he was a real nice guy. He taught me how to cook in the kitchen and later on the bandstand. He gave me a real appreciation soul food. We kinda shocked a lot of college kids by just doing what we were interested in doing and hoping somebody would go for it. For me it was a culture shock coming to the big town continued on next page

PETER BUTTERFIELD:

PHOTO BY CATE CHIRICO

(Paul’s brother) “Music was a personal quest. He separated from everything else. It was a very private place in his head, something he was doing alone. It almost reminds you of the way so many art students spend so much time studying art history. Blues guys living in isolation evolve a personal style that is very unique. Paul managed to achieve a very personal vision. Little Walter & Sonny Boy influenced him and he took it and went off into the woods with it. He wrestled with it and made it his own. A lot of talented players can pick up riffs and sound exactly like so and so, Paul basically went off into the wilderness and found enlightenment, and then brought it back. It comes from inside, as opposed to outside, like the mockingbird.

Paul, like Little Walter and Sonny Boy, found his own voice.”

Victor Forbes and Sam Lay at the Blue Poodle Gallery in Southampton Butterfield/Dylan Symposium produced by Fine Art Magazine, 2002

SAM LAY

He started over at the Blue Flame.

Paul was walking in the rain, playing his harmonica. Smokey (Smothers) gave him a ride and let him jam with him. There was nothing in that place but blacks, it was a black club over on Lake Michigan. Paul come in that night and the owners the next week asked Smokey Can you get that white boy? Then the crowd started askin’ “ Y ’all gonna have that white boy down there tonight?

That’s the way they were saying it. Every week there’d be a few more whites in the audience; people would be coming in just to see Butterfield.

“We were making seven dollars a night with The Wolf. That’s what we were making when President Kennedy was killed. So Paul got an offer to play on the North Side at a place called Big John’s, which had been, up to then, a folk club. I knew Paul from when he used to sit in over at the Blue Flame where I worked two nights a week with Howling Wolf, getting $12.50. a night. I had been with Wolf six years and Butterfield came in and said “I know where we can make twenty dollars a night for four nights.” We put the band together with no rehearsals. I went for 20 dollars a lot more than the $12.50.

“Then we started recording. Everywhere we would go, it was amazing to me that things just bloomed for us so quickly. At Big Johns, we always had a job. As long as we were in town, nobody could play Big Johns.

We drew a crowd every night. I’m glad I was a part of it. They looked up to me like I was their daddy, I only knew what I learned from Wolf and Little Walter. It was good for us both, they honestly listened to me.”

ELVIN BISHOP

of Chicago from Tulsa but I wanted to do it — the music — real bad. I just played guitar 24 hours a day when I got with Butterfield.

We played the same club six nights per week six shows per night and seven on Saturday.

It was a Lucky time, the 60s, because things were so much more wide open, not a formula thing. There was a nice window of opportunity for a lot of people to get started.

It was a real good learning experience playing with Sam and Jerome and Paul. We all from totally different backgrounds, musically and personally. Bloomfield was a city boy, a definite rich boy playing in bands since he was 13, 14. He knew a million notes and lots of music I didn’t know. As I said, it was a good learning experience and we all basically got along real good. A lucky situation for me to be in.”

Elvin has gone on to major commercial and critical success way beyond Fooled Around and Fell in Love and has become, as Little Smokey puts it, a wizzard on that slide guitar.

Jamie Ellin Forbes and Mark Naftalin at an Artexpo after party at the World Trade Center

MARK NAFTALIN: which was the group’s first album release.

“One day at the printing plant,” recalls this writer, “I couldn’t get the piano solo to Get Out Of My Life Woman out of my head and I wrote Mark a fan letter. I found out he was an artist and we published an article about his paintings (Mark Naftalin Paints The Blues by Ralph Musco) and brought him to a quasi-major art dealer who showed the paintings at Artexpo and had a grand piano on hand which Mark played for his adoring public. One thing I strongly recommend are the two CDs he released of live Butterfield shows on his Sounds Like A Winner Label.

East West Live features three versions of the cut with one going on for 28 minutes, precursor to Dead & Allman Brothers marathon jams. Strawberry Jam, is also must listening. www.bluespower.com

EPILOGUE

I met him at the funeral. He came looking for Paul’s body in the afternoon when only I was there. Sometime before the funeral was over, he told a beautiful story I will never forget. His small son had witnessed it on a public TV show. It’s about hearts.

It seems that when a cell is separated from a heart but kept alive in a petri dish it will continue to beat in unison with the heart it came from. If a cell is taken from another heart, it likewise will also beat in unison with the heart it came from. However, if the two cells are pushed together in the petri dish they will immediately begin to beat together. To me it was like describing the conception of children when two people love each other - like Gabriel or Lee. This was one thing I learned from the funeral. Another one is that as time moves on, so many things happen that we think are insignificant things, but in the final analysis those insignificant things are really very significant after all.

And a third lesson is this. No one person can be everything to someone else and from each person that we have a relationship with, we receive different things. Therefore, it’s really stupid to be jealous. Many people loved Paul and I rejoice that his life was rich this way. I try to send appreciation to the Universe that I was lucky enough for him to have been part of mine.

— ELIZABETH BARRACLOUGH, 1987 Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 61

“Music Never Stops” in Tyler’s Room

L-R Oteil Burbridge, Tyler Seaman, Derek Trucks, Gary Seaman.

By MARK BERNER When I was a teenager I idolized Duane Allman, a skinny redhaired slide guitarist who played with an edge that I felt in my gut.

In a short but vital career his tasty lead guitar left its mark on records

by Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, King Curtis, Delaney & Bonnie, and inspired Eric Clapton to new heights on the seminal album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. I saw Allman play almost every time he came to New York and was devastated when he died on October 29, 1971.

His band continued without him, dynamic but fragile, splitting up and reforming several times. Thirty years after Allman’s death, the two guitarists that came closest to emulate Allman's slide playing, Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks, played together in the band that bore his name. By then they had new fans as well as old ones, and the audience was dotted with gray hairs and kids. One of those kids was Holding a freshly painted cherished cherry red vintage Gretsch model 6120 Tyler Seaman, who first saw the band at age 8. I often saw Tyler with from 1960 or thereabouts is guitar magician Tony Maddi, an engineer/ musician who has the skills and heart to take on any and all challenges in his dad, Gary, and brother Marley at Jones Beach and the Beacon the musical instrument restoration area. He is pictured above with FINE Theater.

ART Magazine’s Victor Forbes, fortunate steward of this beautifully restored Tyler was an athletic kid who loved music and played bass guitar, axe, with the well-traveled Clarence of Keene Valley looking on at LB but in December 2006, at age 14, he was diagnosed with a rare bone Bindery in Fairfield, NJ. If you would like to experience the brilliance of Mr. cancer called chordoma. He was determined to be an ordinary kid, Maddi on one of your own prized instruments, look him up on Facebook. but he was fighting an extraordinary battle. Through Make-A-Wish Foundation he attended 11 Allman Brothers shows at the Beacon Theater in March 2009. It was a guest-filled 40th anniversary celebration of the band and Tyler had backstage access. One night he sat with Galadrielle Allman, Duane's daughter. Another night bassist Oteil Burbridge played Tyler's bass on stage. After another gig Trucks and Burbridge took Tyler and his family to Recording Studio ~ Microphones dinner. Tyler was on top of the world.

After the experience Tyler immediately went to Boston for more radiation treatment, and said to his dad, “Now I'm just anAudioHipster AudioHipster other kid with cancer again.” Trucks and Burbridge rejected that AH-01 AH-04 statement and kept in contact with Tyler at home and on the Large True Condenser Blumlein Ribbon road. Burbridge sent him unreleased songs from the studio.

But Tyler’s treatments could only postpone the inevitable.

A Needed Improvisation for Any He died on October 29, 2010, exactly 39 years after Duane AllRecording man. In response to their loss the Seaman family started a founDesigned for Singersdation to honor Tyler and help heal young, seriously ill patients Songwriters, Professional Studios with music. and Musicians The first project of Music Never Stops: the Tyler Seaman True Passive Classic Foundation is “Tyler’s Room,” in partnership with Mount Sinai Size Matched Elements Beth Israel’s Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine.

Blumlein Stereo Coincidence Image Beth Israel has refurbished a room to make a new music therapy Up Close, Far Away space for its patients, and with the money raised, Beth Israel will Owner Engineer: Doyen Keaton or Over an Orchestra Engineer: Chase Cassara hire new therapists and fill the room with instruments, recording the AH-04 Rubs SAE Institute Graduate Weenies with the Best equipment, software and albums, and pay for streaming music Live Please Say accounts, concert tickets and provide playing space. To donate www.AudioHipster.com No to GMO Healthy please go to http://www.tylersmusicroom.org/

Track to Analog Tape Again

62 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

Uliviero Ulivieri with Riverdale’s own Dr. Paul Hertz with the latest addition to his collection purchased at the Faustini Arte Gallery in Firenze, Italy

Laawrence Gartel at the Setai Hotel on South Beach with one of America’s greatest living artists Chuck Close

Jacky and Brett Loving at Pulse NY

Frank Owen and Victor Forbes having some fun in the Art Area of Keene Valley, New York. Photo by Joe Sharak

Fine Art Magazine publisher Jamie Ellin Forbes, Julian Lennon, and Editor-in-Chief Victor (Perry) Forbes had the great pleasure of meeting Julian Lennon, the extraordinarily gifted son of John and Cynthia at the opening of his photography exhibition at the Emmanuel Fremin Gallery in New York City. He is as nice a man as he is talented, and that is saying a lot.

Photo by Kevin Frest

Artist Claudia Hecht and Johnessco Rodriguez of Art Monaco at Art Miami

Artist Pat Kirmer and author/screenwriter Russell Banks in serious discourse at Pat’s exhibition at Keene Arts. Photo by Pete Plumley.

Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015 • 63

SOULFUL ORANGUTAN photographed by Jamie Ellin Forbes at the San Diego Zoo available in limited editions of varying sizes on acrylic contact jamie.forbes@mac.com for more information, visit www.fineartmagazine.org/jamiephotos

64 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2015

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