Blog

This blog traces my influences, studio practice, learning, and teaching of art.

"Soldiers And Sailors Monument"

The monument honoring the four branches of the Union Army as seen through a Gothic arch window of the old Society Bank building. The Civil War memorial on Cleveland's public square was built in 1894. How different Maya Lin's memorial to the Vietnam Veterans is. They both contain long lists of dead warriors. Where are the lists of the dead civilians?

"Old Stone Church"

Society Bank commissioned this and 4 other paintings in 1992 for their new building. How sad that the new Society/Key Bank skyscraper now dwarfs our beloved Terminal Tower. A fantasy: Terminal Tower could have been our Eiffel Tower, with all the other newer and taller buildings located west of the city, in Lakewood. This is a view out of the original Society Bank board room window showing the Old Stone Church, which contains some exquisite Tiffany window.

"Music Festival"


This lithograph is colored with the pochoir method. "Pochoir" is French for guess what? Stencil!
Duh. Everything sounds better in French, like "Giclee", which means spurt. A mylar stencil is cut for each color with a hot burner tool, and high quality watercolors are brushed on.

"Are We There Yet?",Public Art Commission, 1996, Cleveland Regional Transit Authority




Only a printmaker would think of sandblasting deep lines in 1/2" thick glass, and wiping black enamel into them. When dry the surface was scraped clean with a razor blade. There are six bench-wind screens on the East bank of the Cuyahoga River. They are like huge intaglio plates that I inked and never printed. I have worked on printing a set of smaller etchings based on these images. 

"The First Log Cabins On The Cuyahoga River"

The second bench shows the first European settlers from Connecticut. They traveled on corduroy roads. It must have been a bumpy ride. That's a drawing of Moses Cleaveland wearing a Yale cap, on the lower left. He settled and surveyed the town of Cleaveland, July 22, 1796. Parts of our beautiful Western Reserve look just like Connecticut because that's where the settlers came from.

"Space Cadet"

This painting was photographed from the side, at an oblique angle. (that's electric conduit on the wall). The blue checked strip on the right is painted on the side. I loved playing with the rotation of a circle/elipse. As the viewer walks by, the elipse rotates and becomes foreshortened.

"The Balance of Nature" 1992 proposal for a Cleveland transit station

What could have been at the W. 25th St. GCRTA station...
This is my proposal for a public art work made of enamel on stainless steel panels bolted to a steel framework. Another artist won the competition. He installed photo silkscreen on metal pieces inside the station building. They apparently are badly damaged from leaking water.
The rendering (below) of my sculpture is done in oil on panel. The piece still could be built somewhere else. I have the budget and engineering plans including concrete footers and lighting. The planar sculpture consists of UV resistant porcelain enamel on stainless steel. It is weather and graffiti resistant. At the presentation meeting I demonstrated to the jury how durable the sample porcelain panel was by banging it with a hammer. I guess I should have banged a few heads also.

"On Guard"

Aw Chaarmin', cunnin' have ya evah. The influence of 1950's cartoons is evident. The way half a cat disappears into another dimension behind a skinny table leg is a classic move. This piece was constructed of wood and plexiglass with screws. It was easy to dismantle and ship. My first gallery solo show was in Basel, Switzerland at the Mario Mainetti Gallery, 1988.

"Bird Food Chain Table"

This is a functional table. The cut outs are steel coated with porcelain enamel. That means the metal was coated with frit which is ground glass pigment. Each piece is heated in a kiln so that the the frit melts and is fused to the glass. Kent State University has a large scale enameling kiln. It is one of two in the world. The other is in France. The kiln has a huge conveyor belt which will accept pieces of metal up to about 48" square. This is a wonderful medium for polychrome outdoor sculpture or graffiti proof 2d painting.

Studio Wall, Spring St., NYC, 1980

I lived in a ground floor loft between Mott and Elizabeth Streets. It was like a cave. Only one window/door at the end of the space... a great artist studio. Louise Nevelson lived in building diagonally across the intersection. I would see her cruising around the neighborhood in a gigantic old station wagon, always with those eyelashes and gypsy babushka. I was acquainted with her assistant. He would have to coax the old woman into the studio when Pace Gallery called asking for a few more pieces. I was working on themes of "The Figure in Geometry": Circus, Baseball, Gymnastics. I liked the idea of planar cut outs and how a plane when rotated would disappear into a line.

"Gold Fish Table"

In 1981 the Spring St. loft had a resident stray cat. "Luther" would go in and out, up and down the fire escape when he pleased. I have a vivid teen age memory of a Mad Magazine issue that featured sculptures made to the exact specifications of children's drawings. The art of Al Held and Joseph Albers was also in my head and heart when I made this.

"Grecian Urn Table"

The notion to make perspective unusual and possibly change the way we look at things was exciting. I took two courses at Yale: Chinese Painting of the Sung, and Japanese Narative Scroll Painting. The Asians used paralell orthagonals to express a world that was expansive. This contrasted sharply with the Western use of converging orthagonals and one point perspective, where the viewer was the center. What would it mean to have the orthagonals diverge? An other worldly space is created. Byzantine icons frequently use this divergence.