stuff about art

2024-10-14

2024-10-03

Artist Statement

v The artist’s role in society, and the making of our work, can ~ at times bring joy; other times, other occasions the work produced may be disturbing. It is my goal to prod the viewer to reflect upon what is before them. The foundation for the illuminated text focus on more potent matters. The objective is to have an impact.

v When I was a child, a third grade instructor, Mr. Abel, taught the basics of poster layout and design. A junior high art instructor, Fannie Bufarlie, taught art theory and history while encouraging me to depict what I “… damned well please …” when making art. My mother ~ Mary Selma Evans ~ made certain I was able to visit great museum collections, where docents and security guards would caution against me standing too close while studying brush strokes.

v I learned the craft of typography from a father/son instructor team, the Bonkempers, who made clear that words, as well as images, were key parts to developing a visual oeveur. In college, after studying grainy pictures of air bases, open pit mines, glacial deposits, urbanized sprawl ~ I created maps of NY Finger Lakes region drumlin fields. Afterwards, I managed prepress operations for commercial web press printing and publishing firms; designed and developed materials for music festival, posters and booklets for theatre festival performances’ handouts, interpretive maps, illustrations, creating print materials for concert performances and the production of regional publications. Worked for Northern New York regional planning agencies with mapping, graphs, and typography.

v Some influences that have trained my eye and how I think about making images:

v Freida Kahlo ~ for her strong sense of vision, use of color and composition … and for her tenacity.
v Rockwell Kent, N C Wyeth, Kent Monkman ~ for scale, massing, vibrant color use and visual story telling.
v Herb Lubilan and the magazine U&lc ~ to understand creative use of type, lettering and calligraphy.
v William Blake, Alfred Waud ~ for exquisite detail illustrating narratives, and working in ink and prints.
v Robert Rauschenberg, Bette Saar, Philip VanBrunt ~ instilled a love of making collage and combines.
v David Wojnarowicz, Soviet Era collage artists and others ~ helped to capture social protest on paper.

v I’m also a human rights advocate, further affirming that we are all responsible to convey critical ideals with and between one another, to the obligation to speak out about economic, cultural and social injustices, and to identify paths to just resolution.

v I want to thank the staff at the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health [PRCH], for the opportunity to exhibit examples of my work here ~ including social issues pieces and landscapes ~ intermixed amidst display from the agency’s permanent collection of works of other artists already gracing these walls.

excerpts from exhibit: "Visual Verbal Whirlwind" at Yale PRCH

collage Peter talks with R D Laing"

pen & ink A Race at War With Ourselves

acrylic: "Shelter Program Intake"

2024-09-29

photography "Aftermath ~ on a Spring Day

watercolor: Fully Involved

Watercolor ~ a challenge doing a painting of a night scene, and showing water and fire

2024-08-31

ESSAY: Economic Treason

ECONOMIC TREASON

AN ACT CONCERNING THE BREACH OF PUBLIC TRUST

BY MANAGERS OF GLOBAL RESOURCES, WEALTH AND PROPERTIES

v The premise is straightforward; when parties entrusted with wise management of the planet’s resources conduct their efforts disproportionately benefiting themselves while jeopardizing the wellbeing of the rest of the global community then they have endangered the “life of the Polity” (the People) to whom they serve they have then committed Economic Treason.

v When legislators act in concert with those managers people who have laid claim to protecting the public trust they too, are culpable.

v There are precedents, however unsavory, that through history have been employed for these kinds of crimes; and specific methods and tools on how to punish the worst of the Transgressors.

v We do not have to be beholden to past methods to address those miscreants for what they have done to the rest of the global citizenry, It would be more thoughtful to take consideration the level and degrees of involvement of the perpetrators in order to best come to some equitable resolve.

v Seizure of Assets and equitable redistribution of ill-gotten assets; mandatory remediation, reimbursement and reparations due of stolen goods, lands, titles are in order to correct economic, social and personal injustices perpetrated by those guilty of such Crimes,.

v The penalty of Death would be more compassionate a response than what the most aggressive violators deserve. Being mandated to see their exalted positions stripped from them, may actually be a more brutal, though appropriate, beginning at compensating others for their malfeasances.

v Leave the perpetrators without protections, maintaining a very public address without any interventions or resources to ensure their safety or security. Bar them from titles, licenses, remove certifications and authority. Silence their voices and strip them of any influence they may have. Subject them to as grinding a poverty as can be imagined. Let forces they created prior take their course. The malefactors, no longer powerful, shall have to deal with their foes, opponents and enemies uninsulated.

v MEANWHILE, allocate those once tightly held assets in a more equitable manner so the rest of humankind shall benefit and prosper.