Artist Statements.

http://youtu.be/3v8DbLWAXvU

^ I always think of this video when thinking about artist statements.


1.Dan Grayber (Poor)

Objects are invented in order to satisfy particular needs, specifically, human needs. With my sculpture I investigate the concept of need when the human is removed from this equation. I do this by replacing the human with the object itself. My sculptures are invented only to sustain themselves, functioning as self-resolving problems. The result is an object that has been invented only to compensate for the complications created by its own existence. The piece alone represents the need and the resolution.
Many of my pieces are small, spring loaded, mechanical objects. They are intricately designed and fabricated to accomplish one of the most simple, yet most essential tasks that an autonomous object can. This task, this need, is that of holding itself up. In most cases, my pieces accomplish this by actively attaching themselves to specific architectural features and individual objects.

http://www.dangrayber.com/index.htm



2. Leslie Holt (Poor)

Artist Statement

My recent work includes several series of paintings that weave inter-related experiences – including growing up with a mentally ill family member, pop culture and famous works of art. My work often displays an unsettling intersection of childhood and the adult world.
Hello Masterpiece
In my most recent “Hello Masterpiece (art appreciation)” series, I juxtapose the character, Hello Kitty, with famous images from art history. The paintings are postcard size, similar to those found in a museum gift shop. The famous paintings become pop culture icons akin to Hello Kitty, and the paintings’ appeal as take home sized objects reinforces their context as commodities in a market. In these paintings Hello Kitty is often taking a tour through art history and dressing up to “match” elements of the famous painting. Hello Kitty becomes a toy version of Cindy Sherman, capable of changing identities by transforming her outer appearance. However, her “toyness” and her obvious overlay on the image disrupt any illusion that she actually fits in the scene of the artwork.
In other images from this series, Hello Kitty is pointing toward social or political issues, such as war, genocide, or gender identity. I rely on her to charm the viewer into looking, but her innocent, playful appeal contrasts with the serious adult subject matter. With this contrast of adult and childlike content and these “high” and “low” cultural icons, I hope to elicit laughter and irony.

http://www.skinnyhippo.net/leslieholt/index.php



3.Kim Kauffman

ARTIST STATEMENT


My images are fundamentally about form and revealing the visual eloquence of my subjects. Photo-collage from multiple scans of original objects describes the process I began to use in 1998 to create two bodies of work: Florilegium and Collaborations. Cameraless images are as old as the photographic medium itself. Mine contribute to a tradition of botanical subject matter begun with Henry Fox Talbot’s Photogenic drawings of plant materials (ca.1830's) and Anna Atkin's cameraless botanical studies of British Algae (ca.1843).
My garden is the classroom in which I’ve developed my appreciation for and connection with the botanical world. My desire is to share what I have learned. Scanning my subjects renders them in fine detail that draws the viewer in to see the plants in a way that they haven’t before. Combining many scans with photo-collage allows me to create images that at first seem realistic but, upon closer inspection, are not really—plants and other objects combine in unexpected ways. I wish to draw the viewer into the image as a surrogate for the garden and to be stimulated by it on many levels as one would be in a garden/nature.
Perhaps, for us to conscientiously live in the natural world, we need more references to it in our lives—so that we may come to value it more. In our modern culture, inundated with self-reference, I seek to put forth more images of the natural world.

http://scannography.org/artists/Kauffman-Kim.html




4. Elaine Coombs

Blue Skies Exhibition

For the past seven years I have been exclusively painting the forest landscape. For each series, I choose a particular forest, either locally or nationally, and spend time there taking photos for my reference in the studio. This show was inspired entirely by Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, the first time I have painted this area. 
 
The mid-day ‘blue sky’ photographs from the park brought to mind the song of the same name - Blue Skies, popularized by Ella Fitzgerald. I was drawn to the optimistic sentiment of the lyrics that herald a positive future. Although some artists use the changing state of the environment as an example of all that is wrong with the world, I feel rather that it is important to emphasize and enjoy our natural areas as they are now. To allow these spaces to somehow balance the swift pace of our modern lives, and in doing so we will logically be inclined to keep them around. There is much peace available to us if we only seek it out and soak it in.
 
We are blessed in the Bay Area to be surrounded by many wonderful examples of natural beauty. Spaces where our hearts and our families can roam free, at least for a short while. The transformative nature of our forests is what I am interested in portraying – that intangible feeling of well-being. I liken the tree to a wise, old sage. One that knows the secrets of the universe so profoundly and completely that a person must only become really quiet in order to have this information transferred wholly into their being, as if it was flowing from the leaves themselves.
My painting style of juxtaposing dots of individual colors to create an undulating mosaic is both methodical and meditative. The pattern created with this palette knife application suggests movement and a flow of light and energy through the forest canopy. Developed over time, this technique is a natural evolution of the years I spent working in an abstract, exploratory manner. It has become my signature style along with the forests I paint.

http://www.elainecoombs.com/3/Asset.asp?AssetID=3445&AKey=8L35ATHQ



5. Saul Chernick


Artist Statement 2011

I have long been fascinated by Medieval and early Renaissance Woodcuts from Northern Europe. They represent the earliest examples of mass produced imagery in Western culture. Through blunt yet economical lines these images reduce the visual world into a glossary of graphic icons. The prints I created for the LESP merge the conventional idea of an icon as a representation of the sacred, with the modern-day, technological conception as an image that represents a specific file, directory, window, option, or program. Renaissance motifs commingle with the framework of the computer’s Graphic User Interface (GUI) to depict a series of portals. Just as the symbolism behind religious iconography grows more obscure over time, so too will the easily identified buttons, frames, and drop-down menus. How long will it take before the traits of past and present become indistinguishable to viewers in the future?

http://saulchernick.com/artist-statements