HYPERPSYCHESCAPES

 

Hyperpsychescapes 

Crowded Skies

3-Bedroom Duplex

Air Mattress

Church

Balloons 2

Fever Ball

By Tom Wachunas

“…Flat Affect is not about a call to action, but a sort of resignation – the numbed state of waiting for security, for permanence, for a future that feels less borrowed…” – Maxmillian Peralta

Wordlessly watching /He waits by the window/ And wonders /At the empty place inside… (lyrics from “Helplessly Hoping” by Steven Stills)

 

EXHIBIT: FLAT AFFECT –  paintings by Maxmillian Peralta / at Massillon Museum Studio M / 121 Lincoln Way East in downtown Massillon, Ohio / ON VIEW THROUGH AUGUST 3, 2025 /330.833.4061 / viewing hours: Tuesday through Saturday 9:30am - 5:00pm and Sunday 2:00pm - 5:00pm

https://www.massillonmuseum.org/    

https://www.massillonmuseum.org/home/exhibits/detailpage/maxmillian-peralta-flat-affect

  

   Executed with admirable precision - what some might call a hyper-realism technique - the recent paintings here (acrylic and acrylic ink on canvas) by Maxmillian Peralta are pensive and mercurial juxtapositions of indoor and outdoor spaces,  structures, and objects.

   The artist’s statement posted with these works is a remarkably eloquent exercise of forthright candor. A brave honesty. Peralta is unapologetic in telling us that the paintings “… reflect the quiet generational dread of contemporary existence…These empty interiors, moody and subdued, hold a stillness charged with hopeless unease…They are impossible, looming visions and omens that confront the viewer with my personal anxieties around trauma and fear…They evoke a world which feels increasingly cold and impossible to navigate or survive: a place where fear is ambient, collective, and unavoidable…”

   Accordingly, the surreal scenes and sites Peralta constructs are haunting conflations of the familiar and the enigmatic to make startling (albeit beautifully painted) symbols of an ineluctably bleak existential emptiness. “The result,” he confesses, “is a meditation on displacement and dread – interior and exterior, private and political – quietly seeping into one another.”   

   Like a strange procession of little puffy white clouds, quietly seeping into the azure firmament of “Crowded Skies,” there’s an X-ray image of the artist’s teeth floating above a huge utility pole holding up a wild tangle of black wires. Wires presumably connected to some desirable place? Are those teeth smiling, or grimacing? Could this be the gaping mouth of our entire world hungry for empathy, meaning, and purpose? Or a plea for the power to plug into mercy and hope? If so, then please sir, can I have some more?

   Ahh, the dreadful weight of waiting. Reality bites.

MEGAMAZED, Part 2

                                                        MEGAMAZED, Part 2 

MEGAMAZED, Part 2

By Tom Wachunas and John Sabraw

“… I don't know, it just makes me ask really metaphysical questions, you know? …Lots of feels in this one…”  - John Sabraw

 

EXHIBIT: APEIRON – The Eco-Art of John Sabraw / at Canton Museum Of Art/ 1001 Market Ave. N., Canton, Ohio/ THROUGH JULY 27, 2025 /  Open Tuesdays - Thursdays from 10 a.m. – 8 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., Sundays 1-5 p.m.

https://www.cantonart.org/exhibits/apeiron-eco-art-john-sabraw-april-29-2025-july-27-2025  

https://www.johnsabraw.com/

 

   Measuring 7 ft x 18.75 ft x 4 ft., John Sabraw’s Glide is absolutely spellbinding - a galvanizing, supersensory journey into both earthly and astral dimensions. Walk all around slowly, underneath what appears to be a  boat suspended high above your head. It’s not a solid form. It’s perforated. You can see through it, up into the gallery ceiling spotlights. From this worm’s-eye view, and from certain angles, those lights can sometimes seem to congeal into a single bright orb, bright like the blazing sun. Or you can look through the stern, into the cosmos of many suns and their planets, and see constellations projected on the wall. Preternatural imprints of numinous  presences and forces.

   What is this ethereal vessel? An excavated fossil? A skeleton? A memory?  I read this Sabraw work to be a complex place, where manmade and natural actions could connect to preserve environmental life, or just as readily collide to harm it. Here’s an elaborate symbol of planet earth, engineered into an intricate and hypnotic matrix of holes and tunnels, pits and pathways, synapses and circuits.

   John Sabraw was very generous in responding to my questions about his materials and processes. So here’s what he wrote back to me. His words. Glide indeed. Welcome aboard.

**************************************  

Materials: The top frame that suspends the boat is hand made of wood…The hull or "skin" of the boat is made of Laser Felt Eco - a fabric constructed from recycled plastic bottles…I painted the exterior with our iron oxide pigments we make from acid mine drainage pollution - in this case I made an acrylic paint out of our raw - or sienna - colored pigment.

The laser cut pattern of the hull is made of two components:

1. Hand drawn maps of the room and pillar underground mine that is responsible for the acid mine drainage pollution currently pouring into Sunday Creek at Truetown, Ohio - where it proceeds to 'kill' the creek for the next 7 miles. This is where we are building our full-scale treatment plant.

2. Patterns from the Intel Chipset: 440LX, Code Name: Balboa, Release Date: August 1997 [I could have chosen any chip really, but my daughter was born that month and year so why not? Also, it is the first motherboard with AGP (accelerated graphics port), and I had a Pentium at the time and may have even used this chip to start my professional art career having received my MFA from Northwestern two months prior.]

These two patterns look so similar to me and are both of mankind's making to funnel energy for our contemporary way of life [coal for the industrial age, electrons for the computer age]. Perhaps this collage of the two in the hull is my way of asking the question: is there some key here? A visual revelation of our environmental scale adenosine triphosphate (ATP)? I don't know, it just makes me ask really metaphysical questions, you know?

The final pattern is a map of constellations that is silhouetted on the wall from a light shown through the stern. This is from how the sky looked above Danforth Chapel in Lawrence, KS on January 25 1992 at 6:30pm CST. The moment I got married. It contains the astrological signs of myself, my wife, and my daughter all next to each other - which I thought was very portentous considering we wouldn't have our daughter for several years. I think about space a lot, having collaborated with astrophysicists before, and I think about the universe and the big questions a lot through that context. Lots of feels in this one…

Insiteful Immersions, Fusions, and Extractions

 

 Insiteful Immersions, Fusions, and Extractions 

GLIDE

 

SHIMMER

ORDONNANCE

 

Floating

Presence of Water (detail)

Presence of Water

 

Falling Upwards

 

By Tom Wachunas

APEIRON (ἄπειρον): a Greek word meaning (that which is) unlimited; boundless; infinite; indefinite

 “…I am unearthing the topographies created from our extraction of natural resources and exploring their paradox. For they are at once wondrous feats of human engineering, yet also emblematic of our consumption and hubris…There is a terrible beauty in the resulting artworks that balance the delicate and the brutal…” - John Sabraw

EXHIBIT: APEIRON – The Eco-Art of John Sabraw / at Canton Museum Of Art/ 1001 Market Ave. N., Canton, Ohio/ THROUGH JULY 27, 2025 /  Open Tuesdays - Thursdays from 10 a.m. – 8 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., Sundays 1-5 p.m.

https://www.cantonart.org/exhibits/apeiron-eco-art-john-sabraw-april-29-2025-july-27-2025

 

https://www.johnsabraw.com/

   

   The sprawling collection of John Sabraw's eco-conscious (and eco-conscience) works  currently on view at the Canton Museum of Art (CMA) is magnificent on every level. From their conceptual and spiritual probity to the arresting epic scale of their riveting visual dynamics, they constitute the most compelling  exhibit I’ve seen at this museum in many years.

   John Sabraw is a Professor of Art at Ohio University where he is Chair of the Painting + Drawing program/  Digital Art + Technology Chair/ and a passionate environmental activist.  This impactful collaboration with CMA Curator of Exhibitions, Christy Davis, has given us a thoroughly provocative conflation of what Sabraw calls “the delicate and the brutal.”

   He tells us, “I am an artist who collaborates with scientists and environmentalists to find solutions to issues of sustainability – fusing art and science. The main focus of my research currently is working with a team of engineers and watershed experts to remediate streams polluted by acid mine drainage from abandoned coal mines.”

     In a flowing mindfulness of underminings, if you will, his paintings are remarkably immersive experiences that exude a protean rawness.  Along with generous applications of actual Appalachian coal in finely pulverized form, they also incorporate transformed sludge, i.e., iron oxide pigments developed from laboriously extracted toxic acid mine drainage that had polluted many miles of streams in southeastern Ohio, leaving once thriving waters devoid of life. While the paintings are certainly jarring enough translations of fractured earth and broken habitats, I find them haunting in another way.

   Here is an invitation to see artist as supplicant, making art as an earnest action of entreaty. A prayer? In this context, Sabraw’s paintings are a dramatic calling out for rescue from ruination.

   I intend to very soon post Part 2 of my commentary on Sabraw’s exhibit, specifically a closer examination of his immense sculptural spectacle called Glide. Meanwhile, fond as I am of wandering in wordplay, I can tell you that John Sabraw’s art has transported me to somewhere beyond merely fascinated or mesmerized. So what comes after awestruck and gobsmacked? Here in ἄπειρον, I’m… megamazed.

Mourning Prayers

 

     Mourning Prayers 

DAWN

It's too new to know the name for it (deep scar)

 

May we know how to love and not hate

Unbelievable Chaos II

Ein Sof (unending)

Burning Bush

The Music Stopped

The Sky After

     By Tom Wachunas

“A nova is a star that shows a sudden, dramatic increase in brightness. Black holes are created when stars collapse in on themselves at the end of their lives and their bright light goes out. Singularity is a point or region where space and time become distorted or break down. It is a point at which a function reaches infinity, particularly when matter is infinitely curved, as at the center of a black hole.”  - Exhibit title conceived and explained by Shelly Mika

EXHIBIT: SINGULARITY – works on paper by Kim Goldberg / at Strauss Studios Gallery, 236 Walnut Ave. NE, downtown Canton, Ohio / through June 13, 2025 / Gallery hours: Wed. - Fri. 11 – 6, Sat. 12 – 5

https://john-strauss-furniture.myshopify.com/collections/kim-goldberg

 

https://www.kimgoldberg.com/  

    Based in Omaha, Nebraska, artist Kim Goldberg tells us in her exhibit statement that her Singularity series of watercolor and ink works on paper was prompted by the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 NOVA Music Festival in Israel. She writes, “That morning, those attending…looked up to see what they thought was a fireworks display. They soon learned they weren’t seeing fireworks, but rockets launched by Hamas terrorists. Singularity represents the beauty of the NOVA participants and the horror on the ground that day. It honors the lives of those who were taken, the deep mourning of their families, and the trauma experienced by survivors. It processes the emotion of that day and asks: what do we do when the world turns upside down?”

   Upside down indeed. Inside out. Panic and pain. Black holes of exploded earth. Smothering smoke. Sky on fire. Piercing screams. Weeping. People scattered. Running. Captured. Bleeding. Dying. Where is refuge or rest, solace or quiet?

   Kim Goldberg’s abstract ink and watercolor compositions on paper aren’t literal illustrations, duplications, or imitations of an already well-reported, horrific event. Her fascinating configurations are nonetheless compelling reports in their own right. The larger unframed works here are hung like outstretched flags, banners, or pennants. Doleful banderoles seemingly lined up for a funereal procession. They bear intricate images that float like so many pulsating emblems or insignia, all centered in surrounding blank white grounds.

    Here’s a symbolic, even seductive sort of complex calligraphy. Amorphous and jagged shapes are juxtaposed with linearities, both sharp and soft, cutting through or hovering in washes of colors saturated and opaque, or translucent and fading into an undefined distance. Ahh, that fading away. Into a longing for refuge, for a peace that surpasses understanding. The sheer depth of Goldberg’s metaphysical imagery, her visual “writing” as it were, mesmerized me, drawing my eyes further and further into even the tiniest of visual passages wherein swirling moments of chaotic discordance give way, if ever so briefly, to hope and harmony.  Thus seduced, I wasn’t just looking at paintings, but into them, and just far enough to be effectively drawn to a quiet state of…prayer.      

   These works are eloquent, powerful evocations that speak the unspeakable. Abstract painting can do that. Kim Goldberg accomplishes as much with stunning acuity and a remarkably brave panache.    

Telltale Glowings

 

 

                                         Telltale Glowings 

Drawn Between Worlds

Desensitized Playtime

New Forest Growth

Bury What Matters

Disillusioned Nostalgia

                                           by Tom Wachunas

“For some people…Monsters are walking, breathing entities who inspire fear and hatred…African American men have been perceived as a monster… My created works reclaim the semblance of my humanity. Racist connotations are placed on children at birth, who come to accept these negative biases attributed to them through popular culture, media, and the nightly news. What I sought was to find the everyday joy that these monstrous entities partake in…To me, Black joy is positive moments within the mundane, when we forget about the crushing realities surrounding us and experience happiness in the small things…Through my work, I have woven a narrative that sets the stage for my Black Frankenstein… - excerpted from the exhibiting artist statement by Dadisi Curtis Jr.

EXHIBIT: Tales of Mundane Black Joy – work by Dadisi Curtis Jr. / at the William J. & Pearl F. Lemmon Visiting Artist Gallery and The MJ and Pat Albacete Gallery, located in the Fine Arts building, Kent State University Stark Campus – 6000 Frank Avenue NW, North Canton, Ohio / through April 30, 2025 / final day for viewing on Wednesday, April 30, 11a.m. to 5p.m.  

 

https://studiodadisi.com/      https://canvasrebel.com/meet-dadisi-curtis-jr/

 

   Mea maxima culpa for another terribly late review. Still, I simply want to go on ARTWACH record as being thoroughly stunned by my first-time encounter with the extraordinary visions offered by artist Dadisi Curtis Jr. He’s a photographer and printmaker who teaches printmaking at Kent State University main campus.

   The art gallery is darkened, yet glowing. The place feels like a cinema auditorium when all the house lights are turned off and the only visible light emanates directly from the movie screen (or in this gallery setting, from many individual photographic screen prints on fabric or paper). It’s an exhibit of figurative scenes that radiate an immersive ultraviolet aura. The  eeriedescence of blacklight imbues all them with the glaring intensity of electrified, otherworldly color, along with an ethereal, sometimes creepy theatricality. In most of the depictions, African American men wear hoody-type masks, seemingly clawed, scratched and otherwise adorned with toothy snarls or lurid grins. Do these pictures constitute an ill-luminated narrative about threatening, maleficent beings?

    Indeed, as the artist tells us in his lengthy statement, it’s “…a narrative that sets the stage for my Black Frankenstein.” His statement for this exhibit is itself a compelling story, woven through with a brave spirit of confession. At one point he describes, with a disarming sense of fondness, his memories of stealing bicycles with his neighborhood friends: “During this difficult period of my life, I found small joy not in the act itself but in the bonds between myself and those who I was with. At the time we embodied that notion of future predators; little monsters running through the night…”

    Bicycles and their riders appear in several works, but nowhere more arrestingly than in the sprawling installation work called Drawn Between Worlds. A cruel parody, a scorching satire? In this haunting light, that supposedly monstrous bike rider – that feared masked marauder, that predatory miscreant in the night - has become a chained prisoner. Chained to the sheer corruptibility of distorted, biased societal assumptions and flawed perceptions.

   I think that at the heart of this impressive exhibit is an implied, sobering  and deeply probing inquisition. Its most potent conceptual thrust springs from an urgent question: Who, or what, is the real monster that so deftly continues to color the ethos of our divisive culture?

   Thank you, Dadisi Curtis Jr., for your courage in asking it.    

Risen Indeed

 

                                                                     Risen Indeed 

 

 

   Here is my newest artwork - yet another sculptural, mixed-media assemblage, this one called TABERNACLE (17 ½” x 10 ½” x 4”). Completed as Easter approaches, this piece is a metaphor - a symbol of a holy chamber, even of my soul. A receptacle for meditation. A dwelling place. More specifically, a meeting place for time with God to prayerfully surrender to and embrace Jesus Resurrected. And here too are some additional thoughts.

    From Philippians 3: 10-11 -  I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

   From Timothy Keller: If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.

  From C.S. Lewis, in God in the Dock, chapter 19: ‘What are we to make of Christ?’ There is no question of what we can make of Him, it is entirely a question of what He intends to make of us. You must accept or reject the story.”  

   From Lee Strobel:…I became a Christian because the evidence was so compelling that Jesus really is the one-and-only Son of God who proved his divinity by rising from the dead. That meant following him was the most rational and logical step I could possibly take.  

  From C.S. Lewis, in the final paragraph of Mere Christianity …Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him, everything else thrown in.

A.I. Phone Home

 

                                                               A.I. PHONE HOME 

AI Brainbleed

 

 

By Tom Wachunas

 

For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?  - 1 Cor.1:19-20

“The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence.”  —Jean Baudrillard

“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race….It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.”  — Stephen Hawking

   Here’s my newest artwork – a messy, mixed-media painted assemblage which I have titled AI Brainbleed. Embedded in all those twisting sketchy swirls, splotches and half-inch-thick paint blobs are various broken remnants of common electronic devices (mostly I-phone components and tv remote sticks), intended as a general reference to the dizzying, complex reality of Infomation Technology, empowering the www. Woefully Wobbly World. And at the core of it all there’s that inflection (or infection) named AI. Artificial Intelligence.

   Artificial = fake, unnatural, false. Superficial imitation. Think of AI as having our minds progressively altered, or amputated, and replaced with prosthetic robots. AI= Algorithmic Insemination, creating a new ”smart” us.

   This artwork is a symbol of my spiritual concerns about navigating and understanding the conditions and circumstances of human existence in a progressively tech-addicted, distressed and duplicitous world. A world immersed and floundering in the confusing confluence of darkness and light. Is our growing attachment to AI - and all its collateral manifestations and mutations -  a help or a hindrance? Panacea or placebo? Cure or curse?