James Pustorino: Cosmic Strips by Victory Hall Press

VICTORY HALL PRESS FEBRUARY 2017

ISBN-13: 978-0615649375 ISBN-10: 0615649378

THIS PROGRAM IS MADE POSSIBLE IN PART BY FUNDS FROM THE NEW JERSEY STATE COUNCIL ON HE ARTS/DEPARTMENT OF STATE, A PARTNER AGENCY OF THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS, ADMINISTERED BY THE HUDSON COUNTY OFFICE OF CULTURAL AND HERITAGE AFFAIRS, THOMAS A. DEGISE, COUNTY EXECUTIVE, AND THE BOARD OF CHOSEN FREEHOLDERS.

WE WERE AWASH IN IMAGES AND SOUND, SHAPE AND COLOR THAT TOLD

ABOUT HOPE AND PROMISE AND THE POSSIBLE.

IN THE MIRACLE OF TELEVISION, I HAVE SEEN THE PAST AND UNDERSTOOD THE FUTURE · THE VALUE OF ADDITION AND SUBTRACTION IN THE ACCOUNTING OF A DAY · AN EVENT OF SMALL CONSEQUENCE · A SIMPLE EXPLANATION · ALL THINGS

CONCEIVED

SHALL

REALIZE

LIBERATION

CONTAINER FOR LIGHT · THE TRANSFORMATION OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT · MYSTERY OF FLIGHT, STRUCTURE OF LIGHT, A CONTINUING STORY OF POTENTIAL ENERGY· IN LIMBO, BREATHING WATER IS FREE · IN LIMBO THERE IS TIME TO CONSIDER · THE INVISIBLE RESOLVE OF NIGHT WILL NOT VANISH WITH DAY · SEQUENCES OF EVENTS THAT RESULT IN INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL REALITIES · EVERYTHING THAT TURNS IS BECOMING, AND EVERYTHING TURNS · MAPPING THE CONTINENTS OF LOST THOUGHT · WHAT UMBRELLA WILL HOLD THEIR LIQUID SOULS ? · EXPERIMENTS IN CURVED SPACE · I SAW THE SEA · THE STRENGTH OF GRAVITY HOLDS US LIKE A NET AND BALANCES US AGAINST THE WEIGHT OF TIME · IN THE PRESENT MOMENT AS HOPE PULLS AGAINST MEMORY AND GRAVITY BENDS EARTH TO SKY · INFINITY STRUCTURE/DIAGRAM OF THE SPACE BETWEEN · WHAT CAN I TELL YOU ABOUT THE SPACE I'M IN?·

In the miracle of television, I have seen the past and understood the future

< An event of small consequence

A Simple Explanation >

The Cosmic Strips are a cosmology in 20 parts--a personal perception of the universe in a multi-layered, visual narrative that makes use of abstract painting, graphic forms, drawing from life and photographs, and real and constructed landscapes. Influenced by orchestral fantasias, comics, science texts and named in honor of Cosmic Comics, a set of short stories by the Italian novelist, Italo Calvino, in which he imaginatively personified astronomical occurrences--each panoramic panel presents a story full of symbols and abstract language. The Strips form three basic groups:

Cyclical Strips-those that concern systems of nature and science, visible and invisible waves and the structure of light., Cognitive Strips-that concern time, memory and perceptions of experience and reality, and Consciousness Strips-concerning space/time and the experience of landscape.

The Invisible Resolve of Night will not Vanish with Day

In Limbo, Breathing Water is Free - detail

COSMIC STRIPS

In the miracle of television, I have seen the past and understood the future 2003- acrylic, pencil, colored pencil on denril 54" x 120"

The value of addition and subtraction in the accounting of a day 2004- oil, acrylic, pencil, colored pencil 54" x 115"

An event of small consequence 2003- oil, acrylic, pencil, colored pencil on denril 54" x 115"

A simple explanation 2005- acrylic, pencil, colored pencil on denril 54"x 108"

All things conceived shall realize liberation 2005- oil, acrylic, pencil, on denril 54" x 110

A container for light 2006- pencil, acrylic, colored pencil on denril 54" x 132"

The transformation of darkness into light 2006- pencil, acrylic, colored pencil on denril 54" x 132"

Mystery of flight, structure of light, a continuing story of potential energy 2005 - acrylic, pencil,colored pencil on denril 96" x 54"

In limbo, breathing water is free 2003- pencil, acrylic, oil colored pencil on denril 54" x 140"

In limbo there is time to consider 2003- pencil, acrylic, oil, colored pencil on denril 54" x 132"

The invisible resolve of night will not vanish with day 2004- pencil, acrylic, oil, colored pencil on denril 54" x 115"

Sequences of events that result in internal and external realities 2004 - pencil, acrylic, oil, colored pencil on denril 54" x 144"

Everything that turns is becoming, and everything turns 2004- pencil, acrylic, oil, colored pencil on denril 54" x 132"

Mapping the continents of lost thought 2005- pencil, acrylic, colored pencil on denril 54" x 112"

What umbrella will hold their liquid souls ? 2006- pencil, acrylic, oil colored pencil on denril 54" x 132"

Experiments in curved space. 2006- pencil, acrylic, colored pencil on denril 54" x 105"

I saw the sea. 2006- pencil, acrylic, colored pencil on denril 54" x 120"

The strength of gravity holds us like a net and balances us against the weight of time 2005/7- pencil, acrylic, colored pencil on denril 54" x 120"

In the present mÂˇoment...as hope pulls against memory and gravity bends earth to sky 2007- pencil, acrylic, colored pencil on denril 54" x 120"

Infinity structure/Diagram of the space between 2007- pencil, acrylic, colored pencil on denril 54" x 124"

What can I tell you about the space I'm in? 2007- pencil, acrylic, colored pencil on denril 54" x 129"

THE SPACE WE'RE IN

The Cosmic Strips are a type of odyssey, starting in Long Island and New Jersey and traveling around to Ohio, Virginia, San Diego, and all the places where my wife and I belonged in some wayand like those odysseys of Homer and James Joyce, the stories end with the return to home. Unlike either of these odysseys, my wife was always with me in these travels and places, and it seemed like all of them were home in some way. In these pictures, people close to me took on symbolic forms and associations, and in completing the series, I wanted to bring them forward like actors at the end of a play. I was back in New York looking at Bellini's St Francis painting at the Frick Museum and I wanted to try using space in a similar way. I used a photograph I had taken from the plane leaving San Diego and placed my wife, Jill and Samantha, our dog, in the foreground the way patrons would be placed in the lower front of Renaissance paintings and added the pine in the front to give the viewer something to hold onto as they looked down into the land below. If the first piece was about the return trip, the second was about being home, the house where we are known and visible to everyone.

Now is the unseen structure holding us in place 2007- pencil, acrylic, colored pencil on denril 54â&#x20AC;?x 120â&#x20AC;?

By the time we realized 2007- pencil, acrylic, colored pencil on denril 72â&#x20AC;?x 120â&#x20AC;?

Cosmic Strips exhibition at Chambers 917 Gallery, Portland Oregon, 2009 with gallery owner, Wid Chambers, left and guests.

Notes on the making of the Cosmic Strips This set of work is an exploration of thought; of memory both as image and experience, of observation and imagination, of empirical study as well as intuitive, internal forms from the mind and hand. It is inspired by literature as much as by visual art. I had read Italo Calvino's Cosmic Strips collection of stories and his last book of essays, Six Memos for the Next Millennium. The first was striking for the inventive way Calvino created fantastic, existential stories based on principles of astrophysics. For me, the second book was a training manual on how to think and create with the liveliness that imbued Calvino's work as well as the works of many writers he (and I ) admired, like James Joyce and Herman Melville. These writers were able to create a comprehensive picture of their times, and I wanted to make visual works that incorporated those principles for writing Calvino described in his essays; lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, multiplicity and the one he does not get a chance to describe, consistency. I thought I could accomplish this sense of engagement and completeness by working realistic rendering against abstraction to create a series of visual narratives that would express my investigations of the universe that I experienced, in a similar way to those writers' stories of their own worlds. A visit to a room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art filled with facsimiles of Egyptian wall paintings gave me the format for the work. The images from around 1400BC, told a story with pictures, color and symbols. The long, wide format would, like a scroll, speak of time.

I chose a 54' tall roll of the vellum, denril, that I could vary in width as the picture needed. The material has a smooth, translucent surface that allows painting and drawing freely with no need for a ground of any kind, so it is immediate-quick as thought. However, I did work on each of these a long time, so they are a combination of slow and fast, thought and movement, and the material has a capacity for unlimited detail. These images were done during years when my wife and I were often traveling to see family around the country in places where we had lived before, and I decided that I would take as subjects the things and places we encountered and create a system for them that would elicit meaning. These objects, places and forms would all exist on the same plane, all things happening at once, just the way they all exist in my mind, where it is always now. A continuing story of potential energy...., for example, contains rhododendron flowers from our yard in New Jersey, an airplane hangar in Virginia, a rainbow from an overnight layover in Dallas, and pictures of butterfly wings from my wife's field guide. Some aspects were borrowed from trips to museums or remembered from books; some from cards and photos people in my family gave me. Everything Turns... contains my wife's hand, a Buddha's halo I saw at the Met and an image of Dresden after WWII. The tiger in Sequences of events... is a rescue my sister-in-law worked with in CA, but the trees are from where I lived in Virginia,, and the image of the lion in Invisible resolve â&#x20AC;Ś came from a card my mother-in-law gave me, the dogwood blossoms in the same picture, from a memory of my mother in our old back yard, the image at bottom is Mont Saint-Michel, a monastery on an island off France, from a book we have. 76

Making a new sense of order from these objects and images reveals the purposefulness that exists in our lives as well as the intentionality of each person who interacts with us, whether directly or indirectly. Each object exists because of purpose. The pine tree by the beach in Del Mar, CA that was the subject of the piece, What Umbrella... was planted and tended and carries a long history of human interaction unknown to us. The roman broccoli that my wife's sister brought home becomes for me a fantastic cosmic system in Transformation of Darkness into Light., (an example of exactitude) but it too was the result of human intent, cultivation and care, of choices made. This is what Calvino expressed in his short stories; that everything that exists has a story of its own and a point in existing. The retelling and arranging of my stories here is, in keeping with the philosophy of the short story, a glimpse at a vast world of thought and possibility. By the time I got to the twentieth picture in the series, I was not only incorporating landscape as part of the image and story, but immersing myself in the concept of place and space. What can I tell you about the space I'm in? from a time spent in Torrey Pines State Reserve near San Diego, is the final image in this set and the beginning of the next; a study of the form and structures of land and the space between. At this point, the manufacturer also stopped making the vellum I was using in the size I needed. So events came together and I saw that the story I was telling was told and it was time to start something new. -James Pustorino

Mapping the continents of lost thought and Sequences of events that result in internal and external realities were developed into 16 foot by 60 foot banners for this 2006 installation at Ninth and Erie streets in Jersey City.

A KEY TO THE COSMIC STRIPS My artwork is greatly influenced by the design and graphics that were surrounding us when I was a child in the late 1960s. It seemed to communicate so much about the hope and the strife of that time. My father would often talk to me about the possibilities for the future of visual media. Much of our information came through television, which was so amazing to us in its technology -- images sent through space and reassembled before your eyes and voices that told us how things were and how they might be. When I was about six years old, I noticed a small door in the back of my father's closet that opened up into a little dark room. I asked him what the room was for and he said that it was only big enough to store things in - that we didn't use it the way we did other rooms. I thought it could be big enough for me, and later that night I had a dream that I was sitting at a console creating imagery that would fill the walls of that room with color and light. The images in this series as well as the materials used are a product of current technology. The way I think about space and see images is changed by the computer's multiple windows, and developments in cinema and television. The artwork is made by hand but digital processes are at work along the way: in-progress photography, reviewing and at times adjusting images in Photoshop, then reworking by hand. I want the art to have a strong physical presence but also be about the image. Ultimately the image is free of its physical properties and it can be on your phone or lap-top, projected on a wall, or in a book. 78

KEY In the miracle of television · with its shapes that recall heat shields, was done soon after the space shuttle Columbia explosion, which connected for me with both the Challenger disaster of the 1980s and the moon launches of the 1960s. All came to us, as so much did then, through television.

The value of addition and subtraction in the accounting of a day · continues concepts of television with cathode ray tube, electron beam and test pattern forms.

An event of small consequence · is about the infinite microscopic events that constantly occur that keep life going - imagery is mostly from sea plants in San Diego and Delaware.

A simple explanation · the title is borrowed from Einstein's book on relativity-which of course very few people can really comprehend. Likewise, the next group of four images create visual systems that allude to the complex realities of living materials I encountered, in a this instance a yucca plant from my brother-in-law's in San Diego. for All things conceived shall realize liberation · a postcard of an atomic model sculpture, plants from CA, my parents' cook book cover, of Norwegian fish. In A container for light · from the hydrangeas outside our New Jersey house.

The transformation of darkness into light · from the roman broccoli. Mystery of flight, structure of light, a continuing story of potential energy · arranges the imagery discussed in earlier notes with my hands to build a language of flight.

In limbo, breathing water is free · the place of the lost and of waiting is the subject of two images-this later one engages science, biological engineering... the begonia is for hope.

In limbo there is time... · this earlier work combines a chambered nautilus and an eclipse. The invisible resolve of night will not vanish with day · see notes p.76 Sequences of events that result in internal and external realities · synchronous events: things happening in different places that may or may not connect or affect each other.

Everything that turns is becoming...· cycles of healing and destruction Mapping the continents of lost thought · a time-web containing memory places from different friends, a french cathedral, landform in the southwest, virginia trees....

What umbrella will hold their liquid souls ? · from San Diego-Jill in a pine, like Ariel in the Tempest, hanging over the ocean, surrounded by developing housing structures.

Experiments in curved space · the landscape is taken from the plane over Kansas, the structures from Jersey City, the theme: architecture and physics - on a curved earth, there are no straight lines.

I saw the sea · from a Delaware beach and a study of charts on the structure of the eye during a long wait at the optometrist. These next images are also about seeing the invisible structures in landscape.

The strength of gravity holds us like a net … · continues images from the air-a cloudscape. In the present moment... · a Delaware beach pine. Infinity structure/diagram of the space between · tress from Ohio, sky from Virginia. What can I tell you about the space I'm in? · landscape from Torrey Pines State Park, CA.

What umbrella will hold their liquid souls ? - detail

The strength of gravity holds us like a net and balances us against the weight of time - detail

James Pustorino is an artist and curator, and is Director of Drawing Rooms, an art-space exhibiting artists from the NY/NJ area. As Executive Director of Victory Hall Inc. a non-profit arts organization, he publishes books of artists' works and produces exhibitions and public art projects in Hudson County and lower Manhattan as well as directing classes for children and developmentally disabled artists. Pustorino received his BFA from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1983. He began organizing largescale exhibitions in Pittsburgh in public spaces and small museums in the 1990s and directed a city-wide arts education program. From 2001 through 2007, he developed and directed Victory Hall as a community arts center in Jersey City providing arts and martial arts classes, music, dance, and film events, theater and art exhibitions. From 2007-09 he produced education programs for the Jersey City Museum and the City of Jersey City and several public art projects and ran exhibition spaces in lower Manhattan. In 2012, Pustorino worked with the staff and board of Victory Hall Inc. to renovate an unused convent building in the Paulus Hook area of Jersey City and launched Drawing Rooms in October of that year.. The gallery moved to the Mana campus in Jersey City in 2018. Pustorino has exhibited in venues throughout the U.S. His work was featured in an exhibition of large-scale paintings at the Columbus Museum of Art by seven artists that included Julian Schnabel, Anselm Kiefer, William Wiley and Malcolm Morley, along with exhibitions at The Butler Institute of American Art, and the Jersey City Museum, and has had solo exhibitions with Chambers 917 Gallery in Portland, OR and has shown at Odetta Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. His artwork uses graphic, abstract and realistic form to explore concepts of narrative and spatial/structural composition. Photograph by Geoffrey Sokol