Love [ & Other Mythical Beasts ]: italy

Showing posts with label italy. Show all posts

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Circolo degli Artisti/In God's Garden

I finished this painting for the show at the Circolo degli Artisti, which my advanced painting class was participating in. I re-painted the face, as I had mentioned in an earlier post, and defied my painting professor who had been very critical of my inclusion of the glasses. After it was repainted, she took back all the pressure she had put on me to remove them. We had a good laugh at critique. It needs a bit of touching up to be completely finished but I'm not going to touch it again until I'm back home since I want it to be sufficiently dry for transportation.

In God's Garden. Oil on canvas. Uban. 2011.

Front of Invitation to the show.

Back of Invitation to the Show.

Me posing with my piece in the show. (Taken by Cheyenne Gil on Rosie Carlson's camera!)

I had prepared the Artist Statement for this show but it ended up not getting shown with our work... Check out the artturome blog for more pics from this show. My friend, Christina Lower, made a cute lil' video of the evening, "Take it away, Dave." All through the night, my single declaration was, "Art is hard." (After I consumed orange juice and gin, red and white wine, cosmopolitan, and long island iced tea, Christina got me on a night bus, let me fall asleep on her on the bus ride back, woke me up to watch me throw up, then walked me up my five flights of stairs to my apartment, tucked me into bed, and put a glass of water on my nightstand. She is a model friend... I, on the other hand, am a model idiot.) All in all, it was a good time although we had a bit of rain. We also got to meet the Cornell students participating in the show. I'd say it was a successful night.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

8 Meters of Rome

Official Poster for the 2011 Show "8 Meters of Rome."

My advanced drawing class had the opportunity to work with Italian artist, animator and cartoonist, Marco Raparelli, (unfortunately his official site seems to be under construction). I enjoyed working with him, there was a bit of a language barrier, but that didn't deter me from prying into his art life. His work and my work share similar themes, something like a cute but sinister darkly humorous personal reconstruction of how we see humanity but not trying to change the way people are at the same time. Marco doesn't particularly like to call his work "romantic," but it was evident that love has important place in his range of subjects.

The artists, Marco, and Professore Roberto.

The showed opened and was called "8 Meters of Rome." I honestly felt good about the work I presented, but I had a distinctly similar style to Raparelli's that I was able to invoke for this project. The space presented 2 4 meter works by students (8 meters per student). It was very nicely present. However, I was a bit underwhelmed by the lack of conformity between work in the technical aspect. In the diversity of styles, I enjoyed seeing how each of our experiences studying in Rome overlapped. Perhaps, I am being too critical of a student show, but I was a bit embarrassed when one of the faculty members who was in charge of curating the show, commented that another show, "Works in Paper", (my work was also in this show), hung in the upstairs gallery had much stronger work. I guess I find it difficult not to judge harshly in a field as competitive as the art world.

Mingling at the opening.

Though the turnout was very modest, a lot of our friends came out to the show opening to show their support. It was nice to schmooze with the grad students and faculty. And who doesn't love a little wine and party mix?!

In progress, one of two drawings.

Most of the pictures in this post were taken from artturome.blogspot.com. Check it out if you're interested in seeing more of the artsy goings-on at Temple Roma without my borderline a-hole commentary!