Look, See

Untitled (Kurt Weil)

Untitled (Kurt Weil), 2005, HTML & JPEG, 420 x 400 pixels (image used without permission)

Untitled (Clay vs. Warner)

Untitled (Clay vs. Warner), 2005, HTML & JPEG, 560 x 700 pixels (image used without permission)

Interview with Vincent Romaniello

Vincent Romaniello’s exhibit at Gallery Siano— The Urban Canvas (September 30 – October 29, 2005)— is a genuine tour de force. Most importantly, it is a solo exhibition of a significant new body of work consisting of paintings, assemblages, and works on paper, all influenced by the structures, colors, surfaces, and layers found in urban environments in general, but particularly in Philadelphia, near where he lives.

The gallery is also showing videos that Vince makes about artists and their work and streams from his website, a generous act that puts the spotlight on others and makes an important documentary and educational contribution to the art scene. At the same time, Gallery Siano also hosts a group exhibition co-curated and organized by Vince that includes invited artists from the videos and the weblogging world, further proof of his commitment to creating opportunities for colleagues (full disclosure: I am included in the group show).

For more information and images please see InLiquid's feature article about The Urban Canvas. Links to the different artist videos in the series called Artists Varied Stripes are at the bottom of the page.

The following conversation between Vincent Romaniello and Chris Ashley was conducted via email during August and September, 2005. Vince lives and works in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. Chris lives and works in Oakland and Berkeley, California.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Chris Ashley: Architecture, or architectural structure, seems pretty central to your most recent work. Is this something that you have used in your painting all along, even in earlier work where it might not be quite as obvious, or is this a newer development?

Vincent Romaniello: It is a fairly recent development, since 9/11 actually. Looking back over my work from the beginning it falls into three major bodies. The first was figurative, in what one writer called an "old masters" style. I found that remark funny, as if you only had to push a button and there you have that style. The second is what I would call atmospheric abstraction. And the third, which includes my current work, is where I combine an organic and a structural element to arrive at what I feel is a better reflection of the world we live in.

CA: Can you break these different bodies of work into specific time periods and locations where you lived?

VR: I think where I lived at a given time could have affected my work, and probably did, but I don’t really know. I believe that there are many layers of things that cause my work change. I will give you an example. When I moved to New York City in 1990 I really got serious about painting. When you study painting it is a pretty natural thing to paint the figure, especially in class. You also look at a lot of work from the masters as part of your learning experience. I loved the color of Renaissance paintings and thought I could incorporate that into the modernist imagery that I was doing before I moved there from San Francisco. Instead, I got seduced into the whole humanistic philosophy that went along with the techniques. But I think I was also reacting to New York. I loved it there, but I did miss some of the beauty of California, and New York seemed anything but humanistic, especially when I first got there.

Now I live in a suburb of Philadelphia and miss the things that large cities have to offer. So again, I am reacting against where I live, or maybe I can see things better when I am removed from them. I find the architecture of the city, both new and old and in transition, inspiring.

CA: How have you moved from one body of work to another?

VR: I don’t know exactly. Here is another example: during the attacks of 9/11 I was doing a series based on the four elements- fire, water, air, and earth. By chance, the piece that was to be "fire" had this central shape in the underpainting that reminded me of a large building. The rest of the painting had passages that strongly resembled plumes of smoke. I left this as part of the elements in the series, but in fact it was the first step in a major change that would slowly evolve into what I am doing now.

The very next paintings were three pieces that I called "Smoky Bars on the Silk Road", which were consciously meant to be about the attacks of 9/11. The strongest image that stayed with me from the attacks was that of huge metal beams stuck into the ground with smoke all around them, and I translated that into this set of three paintings.

Realizing that using these hard-edged, straight bars was a major change for me, I began to think about these geometric elements in my work in a more formal sense. I saw that throughout art history, sometimes even in the most idyllic landscapes, straight lines could be found maybe in a farmhouse, a fence, windmills, etc. In portraits you find the subjects posed leaning on a ledge, near a window, or seated at a table. The seamless backdrop is a modern construct.

I thought about structure more and realized that these things were never natural phenomenon, but were only made by humans. This seems obvious, I know, but sometimes the obvious becomes more important in a given context. I then felt like it was escapist to leave out these human-made marks because we have made our presence felt everywhere on this planet and beyond.

You can find structural elements in some of my earlier work, but I wasn't conscious of how important a decision it was to use them at the time.

CA: The idea that these kinds of structures are always human-made is interesting; why do we pursue these kinds of shapes and edges? What draws us to straight lines and corners? We ourselves aren’t really straight and hard, although our orientation to the ground is more or less ninety degrees, or at least there is the idea of being perpendicular to the ground while also resisting gravity.

VR: I think we are looking for some kind of order in our lives. After recently seeing the film Grizzly Man I wonder now if maybe we are subconsciously afraid of nature. Another movie comes to mind, Walkabout, where after being lost and walking around in the outback they finally come upon a house. And you really take notice of the flat surfaces that humans like so much, like a patio or a road, and that our shoes are meant for those flat surfaces. Many of these things are used to tame the earth so it conforms better to our bodies. We make chairs so we can sit comfortably, and we need a flat surface to put the chairs on, and so on.

CA: In another discussion we had you mentioned your theory about the use of hard and straight edges in a painting, and how the actual painting itself doesn’t have straight edge. In other words a canvas’s surface and edges can actually seem somewhat soft. Can you elaborate on this theory, and talk about how it works in your paintings, or the work of other people that you like?

VR: Most everything I do in my artwork has three aspects. First, there are the formal: things I am thinking about and want to try, or the use of color, contrast, relationships to shapes, etc. Then there are the things that affect me in my life: my family, friends, war and other world issues, and so on. And the third aspect is the unconscious, which I feel I need to use but do not want to control.

Even though most canvases, paper, wood panels and other supports artists use have straight edges, the four sides that make them up, this is entirely different than when you make a straight edge somewhere on the interior of the painting’s surface. I think by using a box, line, rule or other straight-edged mark or shape you instantly create order in the work and also signal, on some level, that the human presence is there. I use tape or other tools to make a perfectly straight edge and have to mix the paint to the right consistency so it doesn’t move around freely, and this all comes through to the viewer. I believe we are all hard-wired from when we are born with countless signals we can recognize. One thing all artists hear from non-artists even when they are very young is, “that is great, I can’t even draw a straight line.” People think if one uses a straight line there is some kind of special talent involved and respect that even if they don’t like the image.

If an artist only uses straight-edged shapes they’re called geometric artists. The Cubists used them, as did the Futurists, because they knew people would get the feeling of the work being Modern. Before that, if geometric elements were used it was used in a smaller role. People were proud of their achievements in architecture and other technological advances in the Renaissance, but the difference there was that man was still at the center.

CA: I want to follow up on two things you touched upon above- the unconscious and conscious aspects of your art. You specifically mentioned the unconscious as one side of your work, perhaps as a source of some of your subject matter and images, but particularly in relation to how the unconscious is connected to the way that we are “hardwired” to respond to images, marks, space, texture, color, texture, and so on. So I want to ask you about how the unconscious is part of your own creative process and how you make your work

At the same time, you mention various artistic intentions throughout history, which are of course very conscious aspects of making art. Artists do this all the time: “I do this so that the viewer will respond like that.” This is something more than formal intentions- it has to do with the subject, meaning, and experience of your work. So aside from the three sides of your work that you mention- the formal, the personal, and the unconscious- is there a fourth side, too, which would be your conscious intentions about the subject, meaning, and look of your work?

VR: The unconscious aspect is openness to feelings and things that are deeper than the surface, and I want to be free enough to let that come out in the work. When I am starting a new series I don’t think about all of the different sides at work. I might have a kernel of an idea and work on it. By working I mean I spend a lot of time- days, weeks, months and longer- to try and get something that I am after to work. I will do works on paper for months. When I start I try out a lot of little ideas I have had. The individual paintings or drawings don’t seem like they belong to one another at that stage because it is too early for me to focus. Later when I find something I feel has possibilities I can then start working within some parameters. It does take work, and work to me is still a process of discovery.

This is where “conscious intention” comes in, but only after I have worked for a while and can then set up some mental guidelines for myself. Painting has so many possibilities that I feel like I need either a concept or a set of graphic devises before I can create a series. But even then I am still open to new things happening during the process

CA: This newer work you're showing at Gallery Siano seems to combine the more rigid structure with the atmospheric effects of previous work. Is this correct? And your color is definitely more urban, more like concrete and wood, than some of your previous work, especially the earlier work on paper with vertical divisions and brighter color. Is there something about this combination of structure and atmosphere that made you need to identify a different palette?

VR: Yes, this work has both structural and organic elements used together, just like everything around us. I am definitely aware that I made a big change in this new work. It doesn’t really take much for the work to look different. The reason this happened is because I wanted to work much larger, and because I felt like the space at Gallery Siano demanded it. That meant that it wasn’t practical to work on wood panels. Also, I didn’t like the idea of making colored panels and stripes that were six feet tall. But the way the work looks, the subject matter came from the influence of the urban landscape. I am still using hard edges, bars, panels, and organic passages, but I want an exhibition to be an installation, not just a group of individual pieces. When I say organic here, I am including the look of aged materials like concrete, brick, old torn signs, etc. These things come about over a long period of time, made by rust, pollution, weather, and countless other natural processes.

The current work comes from my experience working on videos around the streets of Philadelphia, mostly, and also from Miami, New York, and other places I have lived or visited. When I came back from shooting video in Miami I thought more about how each city seems to have its own palette. The colors that make up Miami was obvious to me, but I had to think about it more in Philadelphia. I came up with blue and brown as the two main colors. One of the things I find here is that the colors that the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) uses have a big impact. Another place this palette comes from is the fact that large parts of the city are poor, and that the people didn’t have the money to update their homes. So we have colors that were used many years ago that are still here; in fact, many from the time Edward Hopper was painting. These were cheap industrial colors like red ochre. I remember hearing that in Siena, Italy the reason the city has so many older buildings than other places in the country is because the plague wiped out a huge number of people and the city and the citizens were too broke to build new buildings, so they restored what they had. In parts of Philadelphia the same thing is happening, and I believe that saving older styles of architecture is a good thing.

CA: In a brief interview elsewhere (http://falsestart.org/vincentromaniello.html) you talked about how you first recognized at a very early age that you wanted to be an artist You drew well, and people admired and encourage that. You also played drums, and you have been involved in many different arts: acting, set design, graphic design, music, painting, sculpting and recently video. How did you move from wanting to become an artist and through all those other arts to where you are now?

VR: I think I became an artist for much the same reason that someone who grows to be seven feet tall ends up playing basketball. You see the possibilities based on how you feel and what others say about your talents, and then you start working. Little by little you get more and more serious, devote more time, sacrifice other things to paint or play music, and before you know it you are hooked. Being an artist takes a lot more work than I thought it would. And it gives back much less than what you put into it, but sometimes there is a reward, even if only you perceive it, and that almost makes it worth it. Many days I ask myself why in the hell do I do this? Making the videos is different though; I learned a lot by doing the videos because they aren’t about me. The videos are for showcasing other artists, not myself. They are not about me on many levels. If you ask most people who directed a certain movie, chances are they won’t have any idea. When you watch a movie you aren’t thinking about the director. Of course in this case I am the cameraman, and I do the sound, editing, interviewing, and so on.

CA: You’ve been producing videos about local artists and serving them from your own website for over a year now. It’s a very generous, community-oriented informational service that you provide, and your focus has been very broad, featuring artists engaged in very different kinds of subject matter and mediums. I’m sure you’ve gotten a lot out of it as well. I want to ask you about this, but I want to keep the spotlight on you: how has this engagement with a diverse range of artists affected your sense of the purpose of art, the reality of an arts community, and has this had any direct impact on your work in terms of subject, color, size, or your standards of success for your own work?

VR: I don’t think that interacting with the artists in their studios has affected my work directly in any of the ways you mentioned- color, subject, size. I have always been motivated and ambitious, and have more ideas than is probably good for me. During the taping it is funny how many artists say they are influenced by the same types of things, but it always comes out in a totally different way in their work. So even if I tried to incorporate something it would come out very different. I have learned technical things about encaustic for instance, but have no desire to use those things, at this point anyway.

The reality of the arts communities here and elsewhere, as far as the videos go, is that I have found the reception tepid. I also have had very little notice or even links from the blogging and vlogging world. I do have a few supporters, and I do appreciate their help in getting the word out so that the artists will get the attention they deserve.

My only agenda is to put the artists in the best light, and to help people understand their work better. Sure, I like hanging out with the artists and seeing their studios, but what I would love to see is more exposure for the artists nationally as well as locally. It is a whole different experience to do something for and about other people, completely different than being alone in the studio working on a painting. I have been fortunate this past year to be able to devote time to this project. I understand that most artists can hardly find time to do their work, let alone do things for other people, but if you can do so I recommend it highly.

CA: You’ve worked really hard the past few months on a body of work for this show at Gallery Siano in Philadelphia. This show has been even more labor for you because you’re also showing the artist videos, and you’ve organized an accompanying group show. After the show opens you’ll have time to catch your breath. I wonder if you have some sense of what directions your work might go next. After this intense period of working what leads are you likely to follow next?

VR: One of the best reasons to have a show is to get a dialog going with the people who see your work. That is why art criticism can be a good thing, good when it is well done. I hope to get feedback from a wide variety of people who are interested in the arts, and even those who aren’t necessarily art lovers. I will ask those people and artists I know what they think is the strongest piece, for instance. I am sure I will continue in this general direction, but because it is a large show I have tried out a lot of new ideas. If it were a smaller space I would have probably done an entirely different series of work. I continued to paint after the show was complete and the few pieces I did were more geometric and less organic. They remind me of graffiti removal but with a lot more happening. But what usually happens is that I have two or three series going at the same time. I heard once that there are two kinds of artists. The vertical artist stays on a course that is pretty straight, and seems to follow a logical progression that is clear. Then there are the horizontal artists who try many different things over their careers. I fall into the second group. I realize that the vertical artists are better rewarded by the gallery and museum systems, but I don’t agree with them, and I’ll do as Henry Miller wrote, “paint as you like and die happy.”

Chris Ashley
Oakland, CA 2005

Untitled (Beetle)

Untitled (Beetle), 2005, HTML & JPEG, 290 x 600 pixels (image used without permission

Untitled (Brautigan, Ferlinghetti)

Untitled (Brautigan, Ferlinghetti), 2005, HTML & JPEG, 545 x 540 pixels (image used without permission)

Untitled (Dave Clark Five)

Untitled (Dave Clark Five), 2005, HTML & JPEG, 290 x 370 pixels (image used without permission)

Rhizome Community Campaign

I belong to Rhizome.org and you might want to, too. About Rhizome.org's Community Campaign:

Rhizome.org is an online platform for the global new media art community. Our programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways. We foster innovation and inclusiveness in everything we do.

Rhizome launched its membership drive, the Community Campaign, on September 19th. We are trying to raise $25,000 by December 1st. Please help us meet our goal! This targeted amount will go into strengthening our current programs, including our annual cycle of new media art commissions, our editorial publications (Net Art News and the Rhizome Digest), and our online discussions and exhibitions. It will also go into seeding our energy into new initiatives. This is a very exciting time for the organization, and a great time to get involved. Please consider becoming a Rhizome Member or making a donation today!

Untitled (Verde Antique)

Untitled (Verde Antique), 2005, HTML & JPEG, 480 x 600 pixels (image used without permission)

Untitled (Deerhunters)

Untitled (Deerhunters), 2005, HTML & JPEG, 400 x 500 pixels (image used without permission)

Untitled (Woman, Vampire)

Untitled (Woman, Vampire), 2005, HTML & JPEG, 532 x 652 pixels (image used without permission)

John McLaughlin

I was glad to see this review by Grace Glueck in today's NYT (that link will probably expire) of a show of John McLaughlin's paintings. He is well-known on the West Coast but still seldom seen. His work has meant a lot to me since I first saw it over twenty five years ago. As Glueck says, " McLaughlin's paintings do not really lend themselves to verbal description. See them, let your eye romp and your mind fall into them."

John McLaughlin
Ameringer Yohe Fine Art
20 West 57th Street, Manhattan
Through Oct. 1

Once much appreciated by artists, collectors and curators, but somewhat lost in the shuffle of today's art world, the self-taught painter John McLaughlin (1898-1976) lived in Southern California for his last three decades. There he made reductive paintings remarkable for their intense quietude amid the hubbub of the West Coast art scene. Born to a cultivated Boston family, McLaughlin early on developed an appreciation for Asian art, eventually zeroing in on Japan. His experiences of that country's life and culture, especially of the 16th-century Zen and literati painters, may have deepened the meditative sensibility that informs his work, but he was also beholden to the radically reductive "spiritual" Suprematism of the Russian painter Kasimir Malevich.

McLaughlin didn't begin painting full time until he was pushing 50. "My aim is to achieve the totally abstract," he said, and the works on view in this small show, dating from the 1960's and 70's and mostly in black and white, come close to that goal, if anything devised by human hand can really be considered "totally abstract." Austere, yes. Bars - vertical and horizontal - rectangles, empty spaces and fields of solid color inflected by stripes characterize this late work, which seems to point toward Minimalism but does not relate at all to its industrially derived aesthetic and prepossessing size.

A canvas like "Untitled" (c. 1965), whose cream-colored ground is divided down the middle by a vertical stripe, itself divided vertically in half, one-half black, the other dead white, plays with the eye's perception of symmetry while at the same time offering it a restful expanse of space. Other good works present the eye with teasing figure-ground relationships, like one from 1960 consisting of black horizontal bars separated by eight white ones.

But McLaughlin's paintings do not really lend themselves to verbal description. See them, let your eye romp and your mind fall into them.
GRACE GLUECK
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/23/arts/design/23gall.html?pagewanted=print

Untitled (Stingray)

Untitled (Stingray), 2005, HTML & JPEG, 420 x 660 pixels (image used without permission)

Guide Aims to Help Bloggers Beat Censors

Guide Aims to Help Bloggers Beat Censors

A Paris-based media watchdog has released a free guide with tips for bloggers and dissidents to sneak past Internet censors in countries from China to Iran.

Reporters Without Borders' "Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents" is partly financed by the French Foreign Ministry and includes technical advice on how to remain anonymous online. It was launched at the Apple Expo computer show in Paris on Thursday and can be downloaded in Chinese, Arabic, Persian, English and French...

In a bid to inspire budding Web diarists around the world, the 87-page booklet gives advice on setting up and running blogs, and on using pseudonyms and anonymous proxies, which can be used to replace easily traceable home computer addresses...

The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation also published an online guide this year to help Web diarists keep their blogs anonymous. That includes pointers on anonymizing technologies, including the EFF's own Tor, and tips on keeping postings out of search engines. The guide, though, was mostly aimed at preventing firings rather than bypassing censorship.

RSF handbook: http://www.rsf.org

EFF guide: http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Anonymity/blog- anonymously.php

Untitled (Hands, Child, Bull)

Untitled (Hands, Child, Bull), 2005, HTML & JPEG, 431 x 650 pixels (image used without permission)

Untitled (Lapidary Saw)

Untitled (Lapidary Saw), 2005 HTML & JPEG, 400 x 600 pixels (image used without permission)

Untitled (Deer, Child, Hands)

Untitled (Deer, Child, Hands) 2005, HTML & JPEG, 360 x 440 pixels (image used with permission)

Labels

Today I shipped five framed drawings titled Qinglü to Gallery Siano in Philadelphia; I made three labels for the back of each. The top label is the usual basic info about the work, the middle label is a longish statement about this series, and the bottom shows a thumbnail of each of the five drawings in the series. Very easy to make custom labels with the free Avery software that you can download.

Untitled (Speedway Grand Prix)

Untitled (Speedway Grand Prix), 2005, HTML & JPEG, 480 x 638 pixels (image used without permission)

Untitled (Willie Mays)

Untitled (Willie Mays), 2005, HTML & JPEG, 400 x 750 pixels (image used without permission)

Untitled (Elmore James, Jimmy Page)

Untitled (Elmore James, Jimmy Page), 2005, HTML & JPEG, 410 x 610 pixels (images used without permission)

Untitled (Husqvarna Riders 20 & 22)

Untitled (Husqvarna Riders 20 & 22), 2005, HTML & JPEG, 540 x 580 pixels (image used without permission)

Untitled (Reds) 1-5

Untitled (Reds) 1-5, 2005 (September), pencil, watercolor & ink on paper, approx. 8.75 x 6.75" each (scanned)

Untitled (Blue, Green & Orange) 1-5

Untitled (Blue, Green & Orange) 1-5, 2005 (September), watercolor & ink on paper, approx. 8.75 x 6.75" each (scanned)

Untitled (Man, Tent, President, Hats)

Untitled (Man, Tent, President, Hats), 2005, 400 x 660 pixels (image used without permission)

Towards Crossmaglen 1-5

Towards Crossmaglen 1-5, 2005 (September), pencil, watercolor & ink on paper, approx. 8.75 x 6.75" each (scanned)

Four for W.A.A.

Four for W.A.A., 2005 (September), Pencil, watercolor & ink on Rives BFP cream paper, 4 panels, approx. 8.75 x 6.75" each (scanned)

Qinglü (Album Two, 1-10)

Qinglü (Album Two, 1-10), 2005 (September), Pencil, watercolor & ink on Rives BFP cream paper, approx. 8.75 x 6.75" each (scanned)

Untitled (Man, Finger, Draft Card, Flame, 1969)