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? 

Scintillating Metamorphicals

 

Scintillating Metamorphicals 

Dryspell

Wild Dreams

Transmutation

Beach Tracks

Fortress

Sublimation

Broken Lilies

By Tom Wachunas

  

   Excerpts from artist statement: "My central theme considers science and patterns in nature as backdrops… Physical processes such as melting, solution, crystallization, fluidity, outer space nebulae, microscopic images...  my paintings often reflect not what I see but what I think, how I feel, and what music is playing in my studio or in my head. My art is an abstract reflection of what is within me, what is around me, and the art of how my mind deals with the external influences of both the real and the imagined.” – Joe Martino

   “After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved science and art tend to coalesce in aesthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are artists as well.”  - Albert Einstein

   “Art and science create a balance to material life and enlarge the world of living experience. Art leads to a more profound concept of life, because art itself is a profound expression of feeling.” - Hans Hofmann

EXHIBIT: MIXED MEDIA MAGIC: ARTISTIC ALCHEMY – work by Joe Martino / at Strauss Studios Upstairs Gallery, THROUGH MARCH 14, 2025 / 236 Walnut Avenue NE, downtown Canton, Ohio / Mon.-Fri. 10-5, Sat. 12-5

http://www.joemartinoart.com/

https://john-strauss-furniture.myshopify.com/collections/joe-martino

 

    A remarkably prolific mixed-media artist, Joe Martino is an enchanter, a conjuror. His elegantly framed wall pieces are evocative, mesmerizing transformations of diverse materials and processes. He doesn’t paint flat, static “pictures” so much as he raises amorphous, intricate geometries into quasi-sculptural structures. They’re at once tactile vessels and transportive conduits, holding and channeling ephemeral layers of coalesced realities, earthborn and celestial.  

   Molded, rubbed, carved or scraped into those realities is a tangible wealth of accumulated visual data that exudes the sensation of being on an adventurous expedition into a mindscape of pure intuition. The artist’s and my own. On this adventure, my personal act of looking infected me with a serious case of synesthesia. Spontaneous multisensory activation.

   Martino’s numinous architextures are transcendent topographies replete with vigorous flows of color harmonies, variable rhythmic cadences that pulse and dance, and even mystical melodies.  

    Eye keep hearing a magnificent symphony orchestra soaring.

Life at the Corner of Now and Not Yet

 

Life at the Corner of Now and Not Yet 

Don't Look Away When It's Looking At You

Nihilanth

Watching the End of the World

Brain Scorcher

By Tom Wachunas

 

“…I invite viewers to embark on a journey of contemplation and introspection, to confront the inevitability of mortality and the eternal quest for meaning. As we embrace the mystery of life and death, we come to understand the fragile beauty of our shared humanity, and the boundless depths of the human spirit. We are all arriving somewhere, but not here.”  - Kit Palencar

“Everything that is visible hides something that is invisible.” – René Magritte

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?  - Robert Browning

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.  – Hebrews 11:1

 

EXHIBIT: Arriving Somewhere, But Not Here – Paintings by Kit Palencar, at the Canton Museum Of Art/ 1001 Market Ave. N., Canton, Ohio/ THROUGH MARCH 2, 2025 /  Open Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 10 a.m. – 8 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., and Sundays 1-5 p.m. Admission is free on Thursdays and the first Friday of every month

Artist statement: 

https://www.cantonart.org/exhibits/arriving-somewhere-not-here-paintings-kit-palencar-november-26-2024-march-2-2025

 

   With only a few more days left to view the marvelous exhibit by Cuyahoga Falls painter Kit Palencar at the Canton Museum of Art, my NOW is a mortifying state of apology for the lateness of this post. Please rest assured I’m not so self-possessed to think that my words alone would prompt anyone to see a particular art show at the last minute. But hey, I can dream, can’t I? Still, at this juncture I simply wish to offer my real gratitude for the museum’s curatorial generosity and wisdom in giving us this show, and most importantly, for Palencar’s profoundly soul-probing visions.    

   One of his exquisitely crafted paintings, titled Don’t Look Away When It’s Looking At You, is especially compelling to me. The dramatic, haunting spirituality which it embodies – both perplexing and vivifying - is characteristic of the entire exhibit.

   Standing in front of the painting as an observer, I nonetheless had the uncanny sensation that I too had been somehow painted into the scene to join the group of people depicted in the painting itself. What is the strange, pale-walled enclosure wherein they sit? There’s no ceiling. Sky is visible overhead, as well as through a small rectangular opening on the wall in front of us. Is this a classroom, a theater, a sanctuary? Am I present at, or interrupting, an impending event? Am I late for a lecture, a play, a dance or sermon? One woman in the group has turned her head and looks very intently at me. I can almost hear her speaking the title of the painting, “Don’t look away…”  Is she Palencar’s conscience, his muse?  Or mine? Or yours?  

   Poignant, mystifying and illuminating all at once, the beautiful paintings in this exhibit are eloquent object lessons in contemplation. Thomas Merton’s definition of that word perfectly captures the essence of Palencar’s work: Contemplation is at once the existential appreciation of our own “nothingness” and of the divine reality, perceived by ineffable spiritual contact within the depths of our own being.

   The depths of our own being. Don’t look away.

SPIRITUAL TABLEAUX

 

SPIRITUAL TABLEAUX 

The Sower

Tent of Meeting

Jonah Palimpsest

Holy Ground

 

Golden Calf

Ash Wednesday

By Tom Wachunas

 “The first demand any work of art makes upon us is to surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.” - C. S. Lewis

 

tableau – noun / ta-ˈblō /plural tableaux / 1: a graphic description or representation : picture /2: a striking or artistic grouping : arrangement, scene

theophany – noun  / thē-ˈä-fə-nē / plural theophanies: a visible manifestation of a deity

EXHIBIT: SPIRITUAL TABLEAUX – Art by Tom Wachunas, Feb.2 – Feb. 28, 2025, at Brewtifully, 2698 Easton St NE Canton, Ohio 44721, in Oakwood Square /  M- F 5pm - 9pm/ Sat 12 - 9pm /Sun 12 - 5pm/ Phone: 330-312-5229 / Opening reception Saturday Feb. 8, 5:00pm to 8:00pm.

   I am elated to announce that I am the February featured artist at Brewtifully Gallery in Oakwood Square. And THANK YOU Tracy Dawn Brewer! We will be installing my work on Feb. 1, and the opening reception for the exhibit will be from 5:00pm to 8:00pm on Saturday, February 8. The exhibit will be up until the end of February. Also, Brewtifully will be hosting a Creative Roundtable presentation and discussion on Tuesday, Feb.11, 7:00pm to 8:30pm, about the evolution of my aesthetic, including a power point image show of works spanning nearly 20 years. I value your presence, always eager to hear your thoughts. Let’s have a lively Q&A!!!

   Much of my artwork of the past 25 years has been in the form of mixed- media paintings, relief collages, or 3D assemblages which I call ‘spiritual tableaux.’ They illustrate – sometimes literally, sometimes metaphorically - a continuing personal embrace of Biblical content.

    These works are narratives, ‘written’ in a language of the heart, straddling or crossing boundaries both daunting and joyous, between struggle and surrender, between the accessible and the unknowable, between the mundane and the mystical. Consider them meditations, or perhaps even theophanies, offered by a disciple of Jesus Christ, symbolizing aspiration, inspiration, faith, and discovery.

https://www.facebook.com/Brewtifully/

https://www.tracydawnbrewer.com/storefront.html

A Beautifully Awakened Passion

 

  A Beautifully Awakened Passion

 

 

 

By Tom Wachunas

   “No permanence is ours; we are a wave /  That flows to fit whatever form it finds: / Through night or day, cathedral or the cave/ we pass forever, craving form that binds.”  - Hermann Hesse

 

 Excerpts from Canton Repository (Sept. 8, 2024) newspaper article by Ed Balint:

https://www.cantonrep.com/story/entertainment/2024/09/08/oakwood-square-in-plain-township-welcomes-brewtifully-art-boutique/74885183007/

“… Pushing the door open, a visitor's senses immediately go into overdrive, swept up by the eclectic and tasteful mix of artwork and gifts. Paintings, wallets made of vegan leather, books featuring augmented reality, clothing, yard flags, magnets, stickers, purses, rugs, pottery, pet scarves, art kits, night lights made and shaped of acetate.

Welcome to Brewtifully, the new art-forward shop at Oakwood Square shopping plaza, 2698 Easton St. NE. Opened by Stark County-based artist Tracy Dawn Brewer, it's her artistic vision becoming reality…A wall near the entrance will showcase a guest artist monthly…”

   And speaking of artistic visions and showcasing guest artists, the current exhibit at Brewtifully Gallery, on view until January 31, features a very impressive array of acrylic liquid-pour paintings on canvas, along with lots of coasters and magnets, by Andrea Marie. In looking at the alluring intricacy of her numerous small abstract paintings (most of them 5”x7” or 8”x10”), it’s especially worth noting that Andrea Marie is not a trained painter in the formal or academic sense of the word. So what accounts for the compelling beauty of her potent imagery?

   The artist explains: “For me it has been a saving grace. I started back during Covid lock-down. I found a passion for the vibrant and unpredictable world of fluid art. No pieces are the same. I can use the same color palette on different forms of canvases and it’s a totally different experience just in the way the paints move. With no formal training I’ve embraced experimentation and creativity as my teacher. In blending colors and textures to create abstract art, what I see in my art, someone else may see differently. That is why I never sign the front of my paintings. The way I like to see it hung may not be the way you like to see it hung. It just gives me great satisfaction and has awakened a new passion in me. It’s a great feeling knowing I can bring some joy to someone from something that makes me happy to create.”

   Ah yes, the “Covid lock-down.” That dreadful pandemic. That protracted, fractious season of social distancing, even distrust. I don’t think it too unreasonable to see Andrea Marie’s early ventures into painting as an antidote – a vaccine, if you will - to the rampant pain and anxiety and that had so riddled our culture. Painting as a form of personal therapy, or crisis management?

   What are we to make of these exquisite, untitled soul-stirring deliquescences? Where do these fluid and air-blown articulations send you? Of what are they speaking?  Jump across their synapses, their wiggly webs, their pools and puddles of pulsing possibilities. Name these lustrous notions and neuroanatomies for yourself. That’s the sheer fun of it all.

  In any case, instead of making dark, murky pictures about angst and isolation, much less death, Andrea Marie tells us she feels happy to “bring some joy to someone.”

    A note to the artist: Dear Andrea Marie, Message received. Mission accomplished. Thank you! P.S. I’m feeling hungry. Make more, and please don’t be afraid to make them larger next time.

 

Brewtifully is open 5-9 p.m. Monday through Friday; noon-9 p.m. on Saturdays; and noon-5 p.m. on Sundays.

https://www.tracydawnbrewer.com/

Unique Designs by Andrea Marie, on Facebook:

 https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61552441463362