C. Emerson Fine Arts

909 Central Avenue Saint Petersburg , Florida 33705 (727)898-6068

PO BOX 1769 St. Petersburg, Florida 33731

Contact: Lori Johns

(727) 898-6068

cemersonfinearts@gmail.com

www.c-emersonfinearts.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

React

Visual arts exhibition of drawings, mixed media, paintings, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and wood burning of international and local emerging and established artist.

Date: April 4 – 26, 2008

Event: Opening Reception

Date: Friday April 4, 2008 6PM-9PM

Cost: Free and Open to the Public

Location: C. Emerson Fine Arts

909 Central Avenue

Saint Petersburg, Florida 33705

Gallery Hours: Monday & Tuesday 10-2 & Wednesday –Saturday 12-6

Paula Allen

C. Wade Brickhouse

Denis Gaston

Eva Eun-Sil Han

Rebecca Sexton Larson

Lee Lee

Daniel Mrgan

Frank Strunk III

Please see gallery website for more information and images www.c-emersonfinearts.com

Artist Statements

Paula Allen

Ceramic Art and Drawing: linear experience on clay surfaces

After years of exploring the 2 dimensional surfaces of objects in the 1990’s I began more sculpture. In 2000 I began drawing about 3,000 illustrations. The ceramics and drawings in this show are done from that experience. I took studios here in St. Petersburg at St. Petersburg Clay Company to create most of my characters yet I could not paint and draw there so I would move to Salt Creek and the last move was Arts Space. If you want to work in clay and also do other visual arts it is hard to work in a clay studio alone because of the dust. The characters that you see here in this exhibit are made like a drawing. The clay surface is like paper to me, I draw on the clay when it is wet to create my characters. They are the future; they are looking all the time up to the sky for answers as man has from the beginning of time. Is it a bird or a plane or an enemy ship from another planet? Could there be a superman or superwoman? Is that superman or woman inside one of us? The characters stand together looking for answers. Who will lead us? Who will make peace in the world? I make them on white clay with black lines so they have the feeling of black ink on white paper. I began making these in 2003 and have not stopped.

They are playful like nature but they sing to another world beyond even my own imagination. They sing “POLLYZOOM.” The glazes fly over the surfaces of the clay when it is wet like watercolor paper. Here is a window on a dress, here is a sleeve a collar. It is so much fun to do this that I have continued this exploration in art for 5 years.

I could make them larger, yes I might do that, I can make them large paintings, yes I can do that. It is an ongoing journey for the artist. They have many songs to sing and I am here to listen.

C. Wade Brickhouse

React = Respond

When walking I notice the beauty in the small detritus of contemporary life that is left at our feet. Each shard has its own unique sculptural and aesthetic quality that we ignore as we tread over them. Each piece has its own story to tell and combined with others possibly an intriguing tale. Their true beginning we can never know but only imagine. By lifting these discarded items up and incorporating them into a new environment I am able to give them a new life and make them items of contemplation. Hopefully you will appreciate and see these modern artifacts in a new light and imagine new and unique beginnings.

Denis Gaston

1979 found me stuck fast in a corporate art cubicle in suburban Atlanta, my job for eight hours a day, to design bank logos that looked terrific shrunk to a quarter of an inch and printed on checks. An impossible task.

As the days dragged on, I often found myself staring out the hermetically sealed windows at traffic rolling silently by on I-20. My thoughts raced after big semis headed east to the Carolinas.

How in the world had I landed in this place? After four years of art school, and ten years of work, was this to be my fate; an indentured corp-rat slave chained to a drawing board?

Bank advertising managers routinely called me to inquire on the progress of their designs, or more often, complain about something. Listening to them drone on, I absent-mindedly sketched on a legal pad. Later, looking at pages and pages of faces and figures, I marveled at their raw unadorned energy. My gesture drawings from school never looked like those little gems.

Not knowing what to make of them, but sensing their importance, I carefully tucked away the drawings in a manila envelope, with no idea that years later their offspring would appear full blown in my art.

By the mid-1980s I had relocated to Florida and thrown everything into art making. For almost a year I labored in vain, trying to paint in the same logical problem solving way I used to design bank logos. Nothing worked. Once, in frustration, I ripped apart a piece I had worked on for a week.

About that time I re-discovered the envelope of drawings and desperate for any spark of inspiration, spread them out on my drawing board, row after row of cryptic faces staring out like Easter Island monoliths. Their power remained undiminished, and quite literally, in a flash, I knew what my art making focus would be.

I knew that my art making could only be realized by relying on intuition, through a process of not knowing; not knowing what to paint, in what direction it would go, or the final outcome. I had just to remain open to a vast wellspring of unconscious imagery, and assist in its showing up on the canvas. A teacher once said it best, “Stop thinking, get out of the way, and start painting.”

The pieces in the “React” exhibition continue that commitment.

Eva Eun-Sil Han

The first Surrealist manifesto was written by the French artist André Breton in 1924 and released to the public 1925. The document defines Surrealism as:

Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express -- verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner -- the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.

For the [React] group exhibition, I choose the subject [pure Surrealism] by using Flemish paintings from 14-15 century, mixing the element of surprise and unexpected juxtapositions.

I try to tell a story through each of my works and at the same time a person who looks and observes my works might tell different stories, just like a different react between the artist and the audience. The each imaginary has mixed story just like our life, emotionally and mentally.

Born in South Korea, currently working and living in Belgium as mixed media artist. I do collages because I can easily express myself more than speak. My challenge is how I show my subconscious mind to everyone without moving or saying physically - it's all about inside of me. All works feature the element of surprise and unexpected juxtapositions-Working with elements from the tradition of Surrealism-

Rebecca Sexton Larson

My current body of work was created using large black and white silver prints produced from pinhole cameras. The images are captured on film by using either a 4x5 Leonardo pinhole camera or a pinhole camera made from a Tide detergent box. Both these cameras are modified to allow the attachment of a Polaroid 645 film back. Since the camera lacks a viewfinder, I rely on Polaroid Positive Negative 55 film to produce a positive ‘reference' image--this particular Polaroid film also provides a black and white negative at the same time.

After the silver print is made, I build upon each print by using various art mediums such as painting, drawing, and image transfers. Often, multiple photographs are juxtaposed together to evoke narratives connecting one image to another, not unlike chapters in a book. I feel most comfortable photographing possessions associated with my home, family and everyday life. Occasionally, I incorporate hand or machine-sewn verses or writing into select areas of the print to act as dialog. The writings, both from personal journals and verses from popular 20th century poets, push the narrative capabilities of the image. All of my finished pieces are distinctive works on paper that move beyond the boundaries of a traditional photograph.

Lee Lee

Ritual – India

India is a land of extremes. In the ancient city of Varanasi, Hindus make pilgrimages to perform a myriad of ceremonies in and along the great river Ganga. There are many cremations there, as Hindis believe that if one’s life ends in this most sacred city, in their next life they will return a step higher in the caste system. These two works convey life in the early morning as worshippers begin their daily rituals while remnants of the previous days offerings are washed ashore.

Confined Shrines – Myanmar

One of the most repressive regimes in the world today, people in Myanmar have an extremely difficult life, with little opportunity for self expression. At the same time, they are some of the most profoundly spiritual people I've met in their manifestation of Theravada Buddhism. As I traveled through the country, I found they kept most of their shrines locked within steel cages. It offered a very poignant reflection of life there today. These works incorporate photographic images of the steel cages transferred atop of watercolor drawings of the shrines.

Torched Angels – Cuba

The opposition between the process of using fire to the iconic images of Angels reflects struggle and perseverance. While in Cuba, I photographed Angels that grace the graveyard in Havana, later appropriating the images to collages made with a blowtorch. While I feel themes of struggle and perseverance are universal, I felt it especially strong among the prideful Cuban people. In a place where it is nearly impossible to maintain a balanced diet because of lack of food, Cubans have a strong will to maintain their identity and not sell out to an imposing global culture .

Combat Medic’s Mom

“I join with my sisters in every land in the Pax Materna - a permanent declaration of peace that transcends our ideological differences. In the nuclear shadow, war is obsolete. I will no longer suffer in silence nor sustain it by complicity. They shall not send my son to fight another mother's son. For now, forever, there is no mother who is enemy to another mother.”

Daniel Mrgan

I am a compulsive doodler. I'll doodle any chance I get on any surface available. Before wiping dust off my bookshelf, I usually make a few marks in it with my finger. This habit makes it very hard for me to lie still on the beach for any longer period of time. It might be nothing more then a nervous reaction, but it also might be a sheer joy of creating. I'm never quite sure. I save most of my doodles and sometimes spread them out on the floor or a bed. And just like some people would look at an old photo album and wonder what possessed them to grow that mustache or wear those silly leather pants in August, I look at these drawings and wonder what event, color, smell, object, childhood memory, everyday pop culture debris etc. possessed me to commit all that nonsense to paper. Then I start connecting the dots, coming up with little stories that amuse me and hopefully will translate into amusement for the viewer. Stylistically, my wood burnings owe much to my passionate love of cinema, Fleischer Studios' cartoons, silent cinema, small press comics, daguerreotypes, Olympic games and East European stop motion animation.

Thank you for paying attention.

Frank Strunk III

“ Do artists have a choice but to create? A choice not to express what lives inside them? Would it even be possible to deny such energy its rightful path and still maintain one’s sanity? There is no choosing, we are but receivers of some incredible signal, or unaware miners of hidden treasures. Ours is only to live, and to create.”

So says Frank Strunk III, a self-taught, American artist with a studio in Florida.

Born in a suburb of Washington, D.C., in 1964, Frank, an industrial aesthete, has developed a signature style that has earned him accolades as one of our nation’s most innovative, rising artists. In Frank’s world, acid-washed galvanized steel, sheet metal, rusted nails, tools, working parts and gears are the conduits of his art. “My work is a fertile collusion of the rigidity and order of geometry and the organic dance and palette of rust,” he says. Described as ironic, witty, fun, spiritual, imaginative, kinetic, unexpected and truly original, his industrial-infused art has traversed and intersected with the fine arts, functional art, wearable art, interior decor and architecture. Frank‘s art speaks about issues that affect us on levels that we don't always look at with the clearest of eyes: Work, religion, relationships, power – all of these loaded subjects are the focus of his work.