Fine Art Summer 2016 by Fine Art Magazine

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DMI NC “One moment can change a day, one day can change a life and one life can change the world.”

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Mother Earth, acrylic and oil, 39⅜" x 31⅞"

LJUBOMIR MILINKOV “There is a lot of hope in these paintings,” commented Serbian-born artist Ljubomir Milinkov. Emotionally charged and well-received by audiences world-wide, Milinkov’s work reflects a powerful interaction between artist and subject matter. In Mother Earth, (above) the artist conveys all at once a sense of longing, power, melancholy, sensuality and love. A paen to both the planet and motherhood, Milinkov represents here a somber yet beautiful reminder that we have a very delicate balance, a requisite to which the inhabitants of our planet must pay attention. Beginning his career in the world of art in 1963 after settling in Paris, he moved to New York City in 1967 znd after a six month trip across America, found himself in 1969 exhibiting paintings at the fabled Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Many exhibitions followed at museums, art fairs and important galleries. Originals and multiples are available for discerning connoisseurs at milinkovl@free.fr Page 6 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

THE FORBES REPORT In compiling editorial information for this magazine in an age of instantaneous gratification and social media that makes everything dated, we strive to put together what will serve our readers and the artists and events we cover for eternity. Yes, forever. The articles we publish are suitable for the longrun. So many times, over our 40 years of publishing, we hear from people we wrote about decades ago and how the written word in our publication has served their career. This is a two-way street for if we were not careful and thoughtful regarding our editorial policy, we

would certainly bore ourselves out of existence. The artists we meet and get to know bring to us an energy and enthusiasm for their work and their lives that continually inspire us to do our utmost to present them. We met Andy Warhol on the streets of New York and later at a Dolly Parton/Eddie Rabbit concert at the Palladium. Take his statement — “If you want to know who I am, look at the surfaces of my painting. There’s nothing behind them” — and compare it to Jean Francois Ibos’ point of view: “I could do sad art because sadness is in the streets. But I am not interested

SUMMER 2016

in that kind of art at all. When people see my art and go back to the street, I want them to have faith and be happy.” Then add in Dr. Robert Baker’s words about Matthew Troyan and we have a large sampling of what art means to the individual: “Only a heart filled with passion and a desire to achieve immortality can produce a master artist.” In this issue, admittedly a long-coming, we are not deign to cover all elements of the struggle. Publisher Jamie Ellin Forbes’

interview with our cover artist, DMINC, is a revelation as you will soon find out (see page 4). Her concept is not that the rose has a thorn, but that the thorn has a rose, and while the thorn remains, the rose does not last all that long. “Life,” concludes Dr. Baker, “is in the daring to take in and love the suffering, the defeats, the challenges...and emerge knowing victory that can only go to those that truly take the journey.” –VICTOR BENNETT.FORBES

The School of Paris, Page 38 DMINC – cover artist, Page 4

founded in 1975

Synergism: Garsot & Helen Kagan Page 20 U2’s Bono, with Houston Volunteer Honoree Carolyn Farb, Page 28

Robert De Niro presents the Robert De Niro, Sr. Award Page 26

PUBLISHER JAMIE ELLIN FORBES info@fineartmagazine.com (631) 339-0152 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF VICTOR BENNETT FORBES victor@fineartmagazine.com 518-593-6470

www.fineartmagazine.com

Ailene Fields Baba Yaga, Sacred Spaces & more, page 55

Joey Ramone, page 49

Andy Warhol Shadow, Bilboa Museum, Page 23

DMINC

Artist Warrior Princess By JAMIE ELLIN FORBES

Page 4 • Fine Art • Summer 2016

Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 5

FINE ART MAGAZINE INTERVIEW – DMINC “My primary purpose in art is to narrate something true, crystalline and transparent … just like water.” There is a poetic principle of story-telling employed in all of the motifs executed by DMINC in her constructed works. Her artistic media is constant and incorporates Swarovski crystals and bas relief adding dimensionality and textural objects that reveal the subtleties of concepts intended to move the viewing audience through her visualization of a space or ideas within a personal time-line of reference. Multiple influences embodying mechanical and Sacred Geometric cycles are put forth in both her organic environmental works and the more industrially inspired pieces. Each composition is a reflection of DMINC’s special synthesized interpretation of the dream of vision she is portraying. The artist explores a duality of processes and concepts within her works as the images are both hard and soft and exact and diaphanous at the same time — connecting the ancient past with the immediate now in a timeless process of reflection. DMINC’s evolvement of mechanical concept is ruminative of the Dadaists and Constructionists, capturing a threaded history seen as current from 1850 forward. Kinetic Art is evident as an influence in “Star Wars” and “My Space” using the wheel as a mechanical influence studded in crystals. The images on these pages offer a powerful philosophy and a striking mode of expression that can only be described as a DMINC. How did you find your voice for painting? I was supposed to be a lawyer, but when it was about to happen, it was as if I was kidnapped by the spectacles of the world. I realized that I was living in some place surrounded by wonders at any level: from Mother Nature — the Sea and the Sky, dawns and the sunsets, snow and rain, flowers and butterflies — but also from the human mind, like endless skyscrapers and supersonic airplanes, Hollywood movies and Broadway shows, the Metropolitan Museum and The Louvre, Michael Jackson dancing and Michael Jordan flying! It was enough to take a look outside with the eyes of the heart to visualize that laws and codes have been created for someone else. As Paul on the road to Damascus, I was hit by the light of Beauty and hearing its voice I could no longer pretend to be what I wasn’t and I became what I am: a painter, who wants to tell everybody that despite the fact ugliness and negativity are getting increasingly attractive nowadays, Beauty and Positivity still perfectly fit the human spirit. When did you start painting? About 26 years ago. I had a classical background, but to be honest, my artistic education was much less than what would normally be expected. At the very beginning I was literally captured by Fashion (I still am, to tell the truth), so I took part in Fashion design classes. Later, I attended the Fine Arts Institute in Geneva for one year, where I specialized in “nudes” and next, I started drawing and oil painting classes, following the lessons of the teacher Mrs. Catherine Bourlet for two years. Everything else I know I simply learned by living every day and picking up as much as possible from what and who has much to teach, like the outdoor world and the Masters of the 18th and 19th centuries, — Klimt, Monet, van Gogh, Picasso, Rodin, Camille Claudel, Schiele, Hiroshige and Hokusai. What made you want and need to paint? You used the proper word: it was a need rather than a wish! Many times during my career I was forced to stay away from my atelier. Each time I was feeling like the best part of me was missing. Then I came to the conclusion that painting was to me the same thing as breathing! Why? Page 6 • Fine Art • Summer 2016

Have you ever heard the astonishing singing of a nightingale? Have you ever wondered why it sings? It sings because it needs singing, and no one will ever know why. DMINC is the same way: just look at my works and get delighted, disturbed, excited, hysterical, enthusiastic, nervous, passionate, bored, thrilled, touched. I don’t mind what you feel, as long as you feel something…and when that happens it means that I have succeeded in what I set out to do. In My Space you use a palette of cool grays and mechanical objects set in to the abstracted swirling background. You use an impression of what you see internally to tell your story through composition color and textures. Is this space unique to you? By painting the My Space series, I wanted to pay a two-fold tribute to space with a capital “S” to mean the Universe, where everything started and everything will return; and with a lowercase “s” to signify the space that we all have at our disposal to build or to destroy, to give or to take, to run or to stay still, to do or to pause, to dream or to wake up, to love or to hate. That’s why I titled it so. There are as many as ten paintings in which I wish to display my space where only the first option out of the two expressed above is possible. In any case, space is a unique place and my series, initiated with a palette of cool grays and finalized with the use of mechanical objects, means to be a hymn to magnitude. Its presumption is the seemingly irreconcilable beliefs that in a work whose protagonist is the Universe itself, we are as small as a grain of sand, and yet we are also something much greater if we are able to understand and live all this. Finally, to better understand how much space means to me, I’d like to close with a question: is there something more appropriate than it in which the desire of flying further and further, — beyond the limits and above the established horizons — could be better materialized? In Star Wars you capture the feel of definition of space created for the moviegoers. Are you a fan of the films in general or is space an inspiration? Everything that goes around me can be an inspiration, and space is a precious source to me. It is the closest thing we have around and at the same time the most distant, light years away from

Star Wars

My Space X

The Long Wave, detail

us. That’s why I consider space an essential component of my subjects. In creating Star Wars, I wanted to kill two birds with one stone! Yes, I am a very big fan of movies in general and it was just a movie in particular — “Iron Man” — that gave birth to creation. After watching it, I exclaimed to myself: “I got it!” and just one second later I started rummaging the toolbox, looking for God knew what! The way in which Tony Stark, protagonist of “Iron Man”, assembled his “suit” as a prisoner in a cave in Afghanistan was a revelation and a revolution for me! As it very often happens to those who have the boldness to exceed a limit, my adventurous ﬂight to the unknown was rewarded greatly. Painting was no longer enough for me: in fact, it was just then that I planned the sculpture-painting!

The Long Wave is reminiscent of an Oriental feel to the tidal pull of the wave. Is this part of your inﬂuence for this work?. Yes it is. I started the Sea series with The Wave and The Long Wave was the second canvas. In these paintings the lure of the East is very strong but I never denied being a big fan of Eastern culture or not to take inspiration from two major masters — Hiroshige and Hokusai. Since my childhood, I was surrounded by the East. My great-grandfather was an Ambassador in Tokyo and this meant that my house was ﬁlled with many oriental artifacts such as decorated boxes, screens and handmade stamps and kimonos, which I loved to wear and still do. Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 7

Stardust

In Stardust, crystals, tiny stars, small seashells and the wheel of life is seen within the work, all representative of the sea. Yet you call this Stardust, why? In my last video called “Intimate Reflections: Episode One”, amidst the pictures, I wrote: “There is a connection between the Sea and the Sky. Finding it gives meaning to everything including death Missing it makes everything meaningless including life”. Fll a glass of sea water and it will appear transparent…yet the sea is blue. Because there are stars and starfish, snow crystals and icebergs, the sun and sunset and then finally there is the blue which merges the sky and the sea in an endless embrace. The depths of dark and light are explored in the abstracted Endless. Is this a call of the soul to explore the unknown? In a certain way this is a correct interpretation, but my vision Page 8 • Fine Art • Summer 2016

Endless

was intended to be even bigger. I’m talking about the concept of “unknown” that I didn’t mean just like “unidentiﬁed” or “undiscovered” or “unexplained.” Exploring the unknown is going further, exceeding the limits (whatever they are), going out from the dark tunnel to enjoy the light. It doesn’t matter who we are or what we do to live, what matters is always giving our best; to approach even one inch a day to the goal we have set. Finally the title, Endless is the coronation of the human hope: it never is over until it ends for real and we are lucky because tomorrow the sun will rise again and on that new day we could take the chance to improve, to elevate, to gain ground, to go beyond; to use the word “impossible” with extreme caution… Spring Snowing, The Hymn to Life and Forever seem to be Romantic works. Are you a Romantic? I am an awfully romantic person and I do nothing to hide it, both in my personal life and my art works. But, as you stated very well, I can be a warrior also.

“My need for painting rises from the deepest part of me.”

Hymn To Life

Spring Snowing

In Spring Snowing and Hymn to Life, the renewal of life is portrayed as a rolling wave in your imagery. Once again an Asian feel to the composition is evident. As with the Long Wave, is this an intended influence or a happening by painting your vision? Do your visions on canvas reflect your personal philosophy and hopes, wishes and dreams? Both of them. I can’t divide the painter living inside me from myself: it is one thing! When it comes to the creation of a new painting, DMINC works this way: she acquires her visions through her senses, she processes those visions through her essence, that is a concentrate of her life experiences, culture, studies and diffuse background. She pulls out the result of this procedure, releasing it through her heart in order to coat everything with a touch of romance that should never miss in her work! That’s why I can state that Spring Snowing and Hymn to Life are affected by an Oriental influence in their primary concept, but the final creatures which come out are nothing but a mixture of factors, just like me. That answers to the following question: of course my visions on canvas reflect my personal philosophy, hopes, wishes and dreams. And it couldn’t be otherwise because my need for painting rises from the deepest part of me, that in which all those ideas are guarded. Anyway I’m making my work very simple: just guess for a minute how hard it would be, expressing emotions, inclinations, aspirations and beliefs of someone else!

Forever, detail Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 9

Silent Light, detail

Silent Light appears to be snowflakes dancing in the cold, dark, winter night’s sky, somehow relating to the eternally famous hymn. Each flake is distinctive and unique and the detail of the crystals and settings used to form the flakes is reminiscent of real snowflakes where no two are alike. What core beauty do you want to convey, share and evoke in others when they view this work? I believe everyone is fascinated by a snowfall. Snow has always evoked feelings of purity, innocence and calm. It falls down softly and faintly — noiselessly — as if the sky was reciting a poem, narrating it with its best voice intonation: that of silence. I couldn’t be deaf to this silent poetry. Snow has always been very significant to me. It represents, in my opinion, the second half of the sky, the one that warms the hearts when there is not the sun to do it. That’s why I decided to step inside the snow and what I found was something absolutely astonishing — snow crystals as the endless repetition of an ordinary miracle. In the same way as the American photographer Wilson A. Bentley (who was the first to take pictures of snowflakes under a microscope), I sought to capture their fascination as well. The first thought which came to my mind was to capture such beauty before it fades away, because once the snowflake has vanished, it is gone forever. It won’t come back anymore with that shape and that beauty. With another, but not with the same. The vanishPage 10 • Fine Art • Summer 2016

ing snowflake may be juxtaposed as a life that has passed. Silent Light can be considered a hymn to ephemerality; its delicate snowflakes falling softly are a metaphor for life’s transience. We had better enjoy these snowflakes when they are still in the air because once they touch the ground, they are lost forever. Silent Light may seem to be a melancholic painting, but it isn’t at all. Whoever feels a sense of melancholy in front of it is because his/ her life is fuller in regrets than in complacencies. For them, this painting means “Even as today is passing, fortunately, yesterday I did exactly what I needed to do…and then I’m fulfilled!” Silent Light becomes the mirror of conscience with which everyone must deal and to which everyone cannot lie anymore: in the good as in the bad. That’s why I named it so. It is the image of the awareness and awareness is silent and lighting. We can’t hear its voice but we can see its light when we allow it to switch on and enlighten our path. As always happened in my life and my art, I like going against the flow and the making of Silent Light did not escape the rule. Indeed, I started and completed the work between July and August when the thermometer read 104 degrees and the snow might appear only like a mirage in the desert! So no inspiration at all looking out the window. Luckily, I still had my heart from which to draw.

Forever

THE PASSION OF FOREVER Forever conveys great passion. There is detail and depth in this work. Is this representative of your passion personally? Yes it is, but its meaning aims to go further than mere personal passion. Forever is my hymn to Love, but just for once, in accomplishing it, I wanted to be selfish. Yes, because it was a gift for Francesco, my fiancee. I employed fabric roses, but each petal of each rose was covered by four or five layers of a special paste. I can remember it was a laborious and severe commitment, but I could feel my strength was doubling because I was assembling something for my half. And he got back to me with a present: a video which is his love letter to me…and is becoming a love letter to anyone who perceives inside that passion, given the huge audience consensus it is getting on the social medias. But the painting wants to be a Love song, too. Love is, in my opinion, the “engine” of the world, what moves everything and what everything revolves around. The best poets and philosophers wrote thousands of poems and essays about Love and despite these scholarly readings, we are barely able to give it a definition. I certainly do not expect to be successful in the duty because I know very well there is nothing more private than Love and everyone conceives and understands it in their own liking and inclination. What I aim at is just to remember that somewhere in the world, and more specifically, somewhere inside us, we can find something called

Love. And even if we don’t know what it really is, I just want us to remember that even a few drops of it, like a fine fragrance, can change our lives for the better…. But why did I use the rose? Going to the symbolism of this flower I cannot help but be reminded that the beauty and the elegance of the rose is always accompanied by the presence of thorns ready to sting and hurt. The two sides of the coin that divide the world in two — good and evil — the harmony and disharmony, paradise and hell. It has been said that “Life is a rose where each petal is an illusion and each thorn a reality.” Well, in Forever I wished to destroy this dualism. On the canvas we can find only petals, and it couldn’t be otherwise knowing the first “axiom” of my artistic conception: that of Positivity. Rather than complaining because roses have thorns, I belong to those who are thankful because thorns have roses. I don’t want to turn a blind eye to the ugly in life, pretending that it doesn’t exist, but once again, I wish to portray the ephemeral side of life that passes and never returns. I can see that roses and thorns are different parts of the same plant, but I also know that the rose is there on the plant for not more than a week, while the thorns are there for much longer. In my opinion, roses are metaphors of life suggesting to us that we enjoy the beauty of our petals before only thorns are left, and this is the first “axiom” of my way of life. Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 11

Visions Of A Dream

What is the source of your desire to use crystals? Why did you decide to combine the beauty of crystals in your paintings and what does the light coming through the crystal mean to you? When I philosophize about perfection, the image of a crystal is the first one that comes to my mind. Looking at them, I truly understand the supremacy of Nature: no two alike and they are all astonishing! In my opinion, there’s nothing more pure than a crystal which is simply water that acquires the most spectacular of shapes. I’ve already told you about Wilson A. Bentley and his breathtaking pictures of snow crystals (sincerely that kind of show was enough to make me fall in love with crystals), but since I like to exaggerate, I’m going to reveal something about Masaru Emoto. He is known for his theory of the memory of water, according to which there would be a relationship between human behavior and water conditions considered at the conventional temperature of -4° C. Emoto documented his thesis tooling pictures under the microscope in which crystals take form harmoniously symmetrical or, conversely, chaotic and disorderly, as a result of distinct “energy” to which they were exposed, be it in form of sound (voice and music), written words (label applied to a bottle) and even thoughts! Now you are free to believe or not in the arguments of Mr. Emoto: in any case, it wouldn’t be the point! The point is that, once again, there was someone who united the purity of water with excellence of crystals, through the positivity of human attitude! I said “once again” because in my scope, I aspired, and still do, to achieve the same. When I engineer a painting, I make sure that there may always be three elements: the story I want to communicate, the configuration that this story will take that must obviously be the best and finally Page 12 • Fine Art • Summer 2016

myself, considered the link between the two. The first one would be the water, because my primary purpose in Art is to narrate something true, crystalline and transparent, just like water. The second would be the crystals which are the best conceivable architecture we have reached the superlative. The third would be the righteous human actions whose honorable intentions and valuable sentiments the design I always carry into my works. By these words I think I made clear also what the concept of light coming to the crystals means to me. If I estimate water like an emblem for immaculacy, I value light like its knight. Because light has the power to fly anywhere in no time and when it comes through a crystal, the miracle just happens. On one side we see a single ray of light going in, on the other we see all the colors together going out. And rainbow still is my favorite color! You use some ancient spirals and forms in Vision Of A Dream and other works to state the fusion of light, color and myth in your compositions. In Visions Of A Dream the influence of the Mediterranean in color and symbol is displayed as floating, awaiting intercalation by the viewer as the light moves through the overlay of paint. What is your vision for this work? My vision for this series comes from far away to arrive very close: from India, China and Japan to catch up to Mediterranean Sea. Visions of a Dream aspires to be a compendium of my copious trips around the world, especially in the Far East, where I’m thankful for having been able to admire irresistible landscapes as well as precious fabrics. That scenery had to be framed, and I needed 23 paintings to pay respect to all the beauty I saw. Visions of a Dream seeks to be one more tribute of mine to the Orient, because remi-

niscences of my childhood are also in there. Indeed, I can’t pretend not to have been inspired by the numerous Hokusai prints which filled the walls of my home. But as always happens when it comes to the realization of my works, I can never stop the flow of thoughts and introspections coming out from myself: that’s why each painting of mine can’t be one and one thing only, but always a fusion of disparate schemes. Because I conclude there is no better interpretation than that which takes the best from different parts, summarizes them and finally brings them together to create the ultimate masterpiece. Tell us about your admiration and fascination with Bruce Lee and also with The Expendables movie characters. I’m sure everyone will be thinking that I admire these characters because I’m a fighter: nothing more wrong! I’m fascinated by these figures because they are much more than fighters, they are symbols. The ability of not wanting to settle, the desire of always pushing oneself further and the firmness of going straight to the target, make these people “special” and worthy of everyone’s admiration. Let’s start with Bruce Lee. I always thought of myself as the “small animal” of the shells which certainly lacks the grace of the eagle or the power of the lion or the endurance of the horse. But even the eagle or the lion or the horse — from the height of their beauty, strength and elegance — are incapable of creating from nothing, that architectural wonder we call “shell.” Equally, Bruce Lee gives birth to his legend. I don’t think I’m insulting him at all, if I report that he was not as handsome as Alain Delon or massive like Arnold Schwarzenegger or tall like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar! Likewise I don’t intend to offend these three terrific characters if I wrote that each of them could learn something from that “Little Dragon” with the heart of a giant. Generally, speaking about Bruce Lee, we mainly think of him as an actor and a martial artist, which is not wrong at all. Well, in my opinion, he is first of all a philosopher, whose thoughts and teaching could be the basis of the conception of uniting, believing at all costs, going beyond, doing everything and even something more to get to the goal. He was a forerunner. Indeed more than fifty years ago, when most of the countries were still suffering of that disease called racism, his target was joining and after much “fighting” was able to unite the East with the West — the Chinese with the Americans — by opening the secret world of Oriental martial arts to everybody. His marriage with the American Linda Cadwell and the birth of their children Brandon and Shannon are the best evidence of his purpose. However, favoring my instinct, I aim to see more than what cinema shows and I’m not satisfied to stoop to exteriority. I know it may sound strange because watching his movies we are amazed by a man flying from side to side of the screen, bringing his shoots with absolute excellence and such velocity that we may believe we are running the DVDs at double speed! The questions are: how is it possible to reach such impeccable moves? Where could he find, being certainly not a giant, so much strength and power? How could he do anything faster than other fighters? Well, Bruce Lee belonged to that class of man in which when the body can’t succeed, surely the mind can and finally the first follows the second. This is how he “worked”: a marvelous mind containing a powerful will, thanks to which he could do what no one else was able to do. He trained hard since he was a kid, punching and kicking three thousand times a day, every day of his life, even when he reached the status of international star, or when his moves had become unexceptional or when he injured his fourth sacral nerve in the lower part of the back and the doctors told him that he would never be

The Dragon, detail

“The key to immortality is ﬁrst living a life worth remembering.” – Bruce Lee

the same, and they were right because he became even better! Bruce Lee once said: “Even today, I dare not (say) that I have reached a state of achievement. I’m still learning — for learning is boundless.” And, at the end of that path, there is immortality… “The key to immortality is ﬁrst living a life worth remembering,” Bruce Lee said. Life is that road, the way in which we walk it, makes the difference between the end and the endless. When I decided to do The Dragon, I felt an enormous responsibility. I was going to “touch” a legend for an entire country: China. I can’t deny I was even a little scared. And once again, the words of Bruce himself helped me to dissolve all my doubts: “Don’t fear failure — not failure, but low aim is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.” Perhaps I should paint still lives and landscapes and I would deﬁnitely live more easily. Yes, I might…even as Bruce Lee could have been an amiable teacher of philosophy in some Chinese school. The truth is that some people are born to suffer history, some others to make it and some others yet to tell the stories of those who make history. The world needs all of these kinds of people. It needs the dream, the dreamer, and it needs those who — while dreaming — make the others dream. Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 13

The Expendables

“I am on a mission…and I never look back! If Cinderella went back to pick up her shoe, she wouldn’t have become a princess!”

The Expendables aims to celebrate my “second half.” If it is true that I’m loaded with Eastern philosophy, it is also indubitable that I was born and I’ve always lived and am now living in the Western part of the world. What is causing my existential dilemma is that I truly feel split between East and West. I could stay still for hours to meditate like a Buddhist monk and just one minute later live recklessly without even sleeping, like a New Yorker! That’s why I chose to carry out from myself my Western side in realizing TheExpendables right after having accomplished The Dragon. Why them? My passion for Hollywood movies is no longer a secret and my affection for those actors who played in that ﬁlm is convincing enough to make me plan that painting. Is there someone left in the world who doesn’t know Rocky Balboa or Rambo? Even Antarctica penguins know them! And if I talk about Terminator, is there someone left who doesn’t know about whom I’m talking? This is the main reason that makes me love Hollywood: it is a magic place, like a fairy tale’s chateau, in which real artists conceive and give life to dreams designed to overcome the boundary of time and trends. A few days ago, I watched for the tenth time “Gone with Wind” and I can assure you that it is much younger than its real age. In “The Expendables”, each character I portrayed means something special to me: each of them struck me with something peculiar. I can almost “smell” some kind of magnetism coming out from those men whose real lives were characterized by difﬁcult personal stories, even dramatic in certain situations, but thanks to their determination and unbelievable will, always culminated in happy endPage 14 • Fine Art • Summer 2016

ings. I won’t bore the readers mentioning all the biographies of the movie’s actors, but as a summary of what was said before I would like to mention just one episode. A young and above all unknown Sylvester Stallone, with a bank account of $106, refused to sell his script for “Rocky” the movie to the producers for the amount of $300,000. He asked for $8,000 and the role of the protagonist in the film. Please just tell me now: isn’t that a lesson of courage, conviction, determination, will-power? It would have been much easier walking the simple way, especially when it’s your bank account which is asking for that! So, what I want to say is: it is dangerous, strenuous, and demanding going beyond the Pillar of Hercules, but if you’re willing to take the risk, you might reach America! What core beauty do you want to convey, share, evoke in others when view they your works? The beauty of conscience: mine, which absolutely is dipped in my works but also that of world. Because we have to remember that the world is full of good energies if we have the will to go find them and especially if we get the strength to stay away from the dreadful ones. It is all around us: we have to make the choice…My paintings are a very little help to make us choose… Maybe I am audacious to believe I could do such a task, but I simply live and act every day following my instinct and above all serving my first commandment: never have regrets. So, yes I’m pretentious, but I am gratified, too: please don’t forget I am on a mission…and I never look back! If Cinderella went back to pick up her shoe, she wouldn’t have become a princess!

The Expendables, detail

Your love of the ocean is a recurrent theme. What inspires you to paint the landscape of the ocean? At least once in our life, we stayed in front of that blue giant called Ocean. What it inspires is very personal and on that list, I guess, all the emotions could be written. Sea is freedom and imprisonment, the alpha and the omega, the white and black. It has an end, but we don’t ever see it. It is made of transparent water, yet it looks profoundly blue. Its water is vital for ﬁsh, but it’s undrinkable for humans. It may gently lull your body and just a while later destroy it. The Sea unites the same countries it separates. The Ocean is the only thing deeply terrestrial reminding me of the Universe, another topic of which I am fond. Also, it is full of life and wonders and it never denies anybody the chance to be pleased with it. It is generous and noble, it is able to infiltrate your spirit and become an essential part of your life, it is a magician whose spell may hold you in its net of prodigies forever. You use sunset to convey the metaphor of rebirth with the chrysalis and the butterfly. Why sunset and not the dawn of day? I use sunset because it symbolizes the end of the day, and when the end of the day is approaching there are only two choices: we can go to bed as if nothing has happened or we can go to bed thinking that tomorrow morning we are going to be born again and what we are going to accomplish on the new day is what matters the most. Dawn would be too late, it represents the stage of our rebirth and what I wanted to point out was not just the renaissance in itself but above all, the desire of regeneration. And this wish can only occur in the evening, when most of day is gone and when we are alone with our reflections, analyzing what has been done and what has to be done.

Dminc At Moya Museum Wien (Vienna, Austria) 2013

Visit DMINC on Facebook. Over 885,000 likes! http://www.dminc.it/ Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 15

DMinc in her atelier

“STENGTH, MADNESS, VALOR, INVINCIBILITY & COURAGE ARE NEEDED TO PREVAIL. I AM NOT A HERO, BUT EVERY DAY I FIGHT FOR

THAT DREAM I CALL ART.”

Dminc At Asia Contemporary Art Show Spring Edition 2015

DMinc at the opening of Pallavicini DMinc Gallery 2011

Dminc at World Art Dubai 2015

Dminc at Art Monaco 2013

DMinc at Artexpo New York

Dminc at World Art Dubai 2015

Birds of Paradise, detail Page 18 • Fine Art • Summer 2016

Birds of Paradise

BIRDS OF PARADISE By DMINC

BEFORE THE WORLD THE MOST WONDERFUL BIRD ESCAPED FROM HEAVEN. IT FLEW FAR AND WIDE ON THE EARTH AND WHEN IT WAS ABOUT TO RETURN HOME, IT LOST A FEATHER. THAT FEATHER FELL TO THE GROUND AND SLOWLY DISAPPEARED IN THE SOIL. LATER, RIGHT IN THE SPOT IT STRUCK IN THE LAND, A MARVELOUS CREATURE CAME OUT. IT WAS HALF BIRD AND HALF FLOWER AND QUICKLY IT SPREAD ALL OVER THE EARTH. THEY WERE NOT JUST STUNNING BUT ALSO CARRYING A MESSAGE: YOU CAN WALK ON THE GROUND OR SOAR IN THE SKY AND IF YOU ASKED THEM “WHAT IF I FALL?” THEY WOULD REPLY “WHAT IF YOU FLY?”

 Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 19

s war disrupted Europe’s economy and art market—twice in the first half of the 20th century—the United States provided refuge to both European and American artists whose work was revolutionary. After a parade of stylistic “isms” such as Cubism, Fauvism, and Surrealism, artists embraced abstraction as the formal strategy that best suited their artistic purpose and made New York City the international capital of the art world. In today's cultural climate, with instant access to anything and everything, a new “ism” would be called a mash-up. That, in the most complimentary terms, is usually reserved for a musical composition when a pair of distinctive styles merge into a combination of the two. For the art history buffs, this energetic and thoughtful application of paint to canvas will be forever known as Synergism, a creation of and by two very interesting and accomplished artists from very different backgrounds. The legendary Greek, Sotirios Gardiakos (Garsot), combined forces with a Russian emigre who is a highly regarded in the Healing Arts field, Helen Kagan, PhD. "This,” says Ms. Kagan, “is much more than just two artists working together, inventing as we go. In fact, this collaboration gives each of our individual gifts a new dimension, a new way to expand into something greater than just our own individual selves.” Adds Garsot, “It is important to me that art be respected as it has much to teach us. To that purpose, we see ourselves as ambassadors of art for the next generation and all the generations to come. We are following in the footsteps of artists from pre-historic days right through the greats of art history and as we learned from the past, generations to follow will understand through our art what happened today.” This interaction of Garsot and Kagan is greater than the sum of its parts. They create by painting together, simultaneously on the same canvas without defined parameters or tasks, freely flowing, integrating their individual techniques, art forms, styles, intertwining, embracing and enhancing each other’s spontaneous colors and movement. “Always present in this process,” continues Kagan, “is that completely authentic organic holistic Oneness with the Creator, Universe, Source - allowing us to just be channels for this amazing spontaneity and synchronicity.” “As a musician and composer,” notes Garsot, “I am also engaged in the fine art of music. Playing synthesizer and writing material, I am forever inspired by the muses and this collection reflects that. Right now we are working on a ten foot long by seven and a half foot high composition, a double-faced screen which we will debut in December at Spectrum.” Page 20 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

SYNERGISM A GARSOT/KAGAN PROJECT

Interview by Victor Forbes How did you meet and decide to work together? KAGAN: Over the last few years we showed together in different galleries and exhibits and liked each other’s work. We thought of perhaps doing one painting together just to see how it could go. Finally, in March 2016, when circumstances allowed, Garsot drove to my studio (100 miles away) and we did our first Muse. It was easy and joyful; totally spontaneous with no prepping. This became the beginning of our Muses and Music series as well as our Synergism concept. How will Synergism impact the world in general and art world in particular? GARSOT: We believe that Synergism is a new art movement. It’s a new concept that integrates many different styles known in the art world, various media and techniques, themes, shapes and colors. Artists who will embrace our concept need

to be skilled enough though, because each participant must be in-tune with their collaborator(s), be able to create, co-create, and express their ideas on the canvas. We believe there will be many followers of our Synergism concept because it’s very inviting, colorful and positive and many people may want to create art together. The most important components of Synergism are depth, meaningfullness and positivity. The synergistic creations are definitely of positive energy and we choose the themes and subjects to communicate messages that bring spirituality and healing What is the concept of “Synergism” and how does it relate to your work in other fields and in your current and past art work? KAGAN: The concept has Greek origins (synergos), and I thought that it’s just a perfect description for what we do. “Synergism” as a concept has not been used or referenced in fine art. In collaborating we are developing a new perspective, a new art movement. It feels like I am living my

What is Your inspiration?

“EVERYTHING!” dream! As a scientist, holistic practitioner and artist, I’ve been creating and developing various projects bringing the Synergism concept into whatever I’ve been doing. Since 1998 I’ve been integrating the healing arts and fine art. Collaborating with Garsot is very special — it feels as if we were meant to create art together. Our synergistic process is smooth, beautiful and healing How will Synergism impact the world in general and the art world in particular? KAGAN: I don’t think there are many examples in the history of art when two (or more) artists collaborate on a large volume of works — not taking turns, not dividing canvases, or one day - one, the other day another, etc. The creative process happens spontaneously without much preparation or negotiation between us, just following the flow of creativity and spontaneity, while integrating many different styles and techniques in the same painting. It is a very interesting and exciting creative process. Our collaboration gives each of our individual gifts a new dimension, a new way to expand into something greater than just our own individual “selves.” As a holistic therapist and artist, my belief is that it’s all about relationships anyway — your relationship with yourself, with God, family, loved ones, and all others. I am truly enjoying collaborating with Garsot who is very positive, a great visionary who’s been creating his own “Positive Surrealism” art style for over 50 years! Synergistic Humanity. Mission, Vision, Purpose. Healing. These are not just words for me. I believe Art heals. I believe in the interconnectedness of mind, body and spirit. GARSOT: I think the more people will enjoy or even use our approach in the future, the more truly beautiful artworks will be co-created. More artists will bring positive and healing art, and more people will better their relationships in general. My motto is ‘Stay optimistic.’ How do you devise your paintings and what is the depth of your interaction? KAGAN: One day we just started to paint together, without big preparations or long discussions about who does what, when, and how, we just took a large canvas, paints, brushes and went to work! We each had our own sets in the beginning, then we started to pick up each other’s stuff. Now we share everything — paints, brushes, etc.

Thalia (48” x 48”) from the Series Muses and Music ©2016. A collaboration by Garsot and Helen Kagan. She is a beautiful Muse of Comedy and Pastoral Poetry. She's also a “country girl” with a Comedy mask in one hand and some musical instrument in the other, usually a trumpet, and has a crown of ivy on her head. Our Muse is hanging out in beautiful multi-colorful fields, replete with mountains, and clouds.

Who has the last word when there is a question of what to do?

an amazing ambiance full of Light, Love, Music, Beauty and Healing.

GARSOT: There’s basically no questions of “what to do” or how, when, where or who has the last word. This amazing creative synergistic process does embrace both of us.

KAGAN: We hope our viewers will find themselves gently guided into a relaxing and embracing warmth. Our intent is that the healing vibrations of Muses and Music be a powerful soulful experience that resonates clearly to all.

KAGAN: Well, I think Garsot often has the last word simply because I respect him being older and more experienced, and the proverbial holistic “Oneness” is so strong that I feel we are just channels for this sacred spontaneity and synchronicity. What do you hope to accomplish with this collection? GARSOT: Muses and Music consists of ten large square paintings — one for each of nine Muses of Greek Mythology — and the 10th Mnemosyne, Mother of all Muses. This is a bright, light, complex, spiritual, enigmatic and just beautiful body of work. Everything about it — the sparkling colors, energetically balanced composition, ancient themes, embedded healing messages. The beauty of the Muses and the Music is that it is intended to envelop the viewer in

Where can we see the next SYNERGISM exhibition? GARSOT: The first “official” show is scheduled for December 2016 at SPECTRUM Miami. www.garsot.com www.helenkagan.com www.artsynergism.com This interview will continue in the Winter issue of Fine Art magazine

SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 21

Cross-Cultural Dialogue By Celebrated Chinese Artist Qin Feng VENICE, ITALY – “Waiting for Qin Feng,” a solo exhibition of work by Chinese ink artist Qin Feng, on view in Venice is installed in three locations including the former Monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, now home to the Fondazione Giorgio Cini (the first contemporary Chinese art installation), The Armenian Catholic Monastery on San Lazzaro Island and Venice International University (VIU) on San Servolo Island, the exhibition will be presented in collaboration with the Fondazione Giorgio Cini and is curated by Achille Bonito Oliva and Ambassador Umberto Vattani. A Vernissage and performance by Qin Feng was held at the former Monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore on May 19, followed by a seminar with the artist and curators at the Navy Officer’s Club at the Arsenale. As one of the most distinctive and traditional mediums of Chinese art, ink painting has a history dating back more than 1,000 years. Over the centuries, the art form was kept alive through the practice of copying the work of earlier masters with little change. Today, a group of contemporary artists have reinvigorated the medium, shedding the rigid constraints of tradition and addressing modernity through a revolutionary new artistic language that remains respectful of ancient models. Qin Feng is at the forefront of this new school of experimental ink brush painting. His emotional and explosive images seamlessly blend ancient Chinese calligraphy with modern Western abstract expressionism. Having lived and worked in Germany and the United States, he exemplifies the contemporary Chinese artist whose career and creative development have played out on a global stage. Being rooted in two worlds, Qin Feng’s robust images and dramatic installations are expansive and inclusive. His work proves the continued relevance of brush and ink as mediums and calligraphy and its iterations as contemporary forms. The Venice exhibition unfolded as a multi-faceted dialogue between European Renaissance art and contemporary Chinese art. The conversation manifested in a Page 22 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

Qin Feng at work

number of ways including Qin Feng’s onsite painting performance in front of Paolo Veronese’s The Wedding at Cana, a facsimile realized by Factum Arte, Madrid, which is in the Refectory of the former Monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore. A large canvas will be placed on the floor in front of the painting on which Qin Feng executed his work. Other exhibition highlights include an installation of traditional Chinese Jingdezhen porcelain and other works in the historic Armenian Catholic Monastery, and at Venice International University. Social media, music and general information that can be accessed on mobile phones will add to the exhibition experience. A video on loop showed a series of images of ancient hieroglyphic writings that slowly fade to abstract symbols as if to show thousands of years of history condensed into a 10-minute evolution. The incorporation of new media creates an environment of visual and emotional engagement while embracing the age of digitally enhanced visual experiences. It is Qin Feng’s hope that this exhibition will be the beginning of a new “Silk Road” for cultural exchange; an opportunity to create an all inclusive art world. As an ancient network of trade routes that were central to interaction between Asia and Europe, the “Silk Road” was an important vehicle for promoting economic and cultural understanding. Xinjiang, Qin Feng’s home in the Northwest of China, was a stop on the ancient path and his awareness of the role it still plays in connecting disparate cultures has had a big influence on his work. Waiting for Qin Feng is timed to coincide with the Venice Architectural Biennale whose theme ‘Reporting From the Front” is a call to architects to consider

It is Qin Feng’s hope that this exhibition will be the beginning of a new “Silk Road” their role in the improvement of living conditions for people from all walks of life. This concept is mirrored in Qin Feng’s exhibition that promotes the importance of inclusivity and cultural interaction as a result of the greater understanding of our contemporary civilization through open dialogue.

ABOUT QIN FENG

Born 1961 Xinjiang, China, Qin Feng graduated from Shangdong Art Institute, China. Feng is renowned for his ink work. Using traditional Chinese calligraphic tools, he employs the brush with the unrestrained energy of the European Abstract Expressionists, combining the gestural impulses of Western action painting with the tradition of Chinese calligraphy painting. He has won several art awards from the City of Berlin and the Vermont Art Center. He has exhibited in major galleries and museums like the Goedhuis Contemporary in New York, The Beijing Museum of Contemporary Art in China, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Yale University Museum, The Ford Foundation, The Museum of Fine Arts Boson, among several others. His works have sold at various salerooms of major auction houses like Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Bonhams, and Poly International Auction. Feng Lives and works in Beijing and Boston.

Andy Warhol (1928-1987) in front of the Shadows at the Heiner Friedrich Gallery, New York, 1979, Photo: © Arthur Tress, © Courtesy Dia Art Foundation, New York, © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / VEGAP.

ANDY WARHOL

The Shadows Know At 50 years of age, Andy Warhol embarked upon the production of a monumental artwork titled Shadows with the assistance of his entourage at the Factory. The work formalized earlier explorations with abstraction, seen the previous year in the Oxidation, Rorschach, and Camouflage paintings. In contrast to the Oxidation or Piss paintings, achieved through a process of staining in which a canvas coated in copper reacted to the acidity of urine spilled or dripped on it, the Shadows panels are silkscreened canvases. To understand the radical implications of Warhol’s Shadows, one must begin with the work’s form: the Shadows series was conceived as one painting in multiple parts, the final number of canvases determined by the dimensions of an exhibition space. In its first public presentation, only 83 canvases were shown. They were installed edge to edge, a foot from the floor, in the order that Warhol’s assistants, Ronnie Cutrone and Stephen Mueller, hung them. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Shadows (1978–79) in its entirety, , a monumental artwork of 102 large format, silkscreened panels that reflect some of

Andy Warhol, Shadows, 1978–79, Dia Art Foundation, View of the installation: Dia:Beacon, Beacon, New York, © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / VEGAP Photo: Bill Jacobson

Warhol’s explorations with abstraction through his signature palette of bright and cheerful hues, which characterized a large part of his work. Organized by Dia Art Foundation

with Curator Lucia Agirre, the exhibition wil l be on vie w through October 2016 at Guggenheim Bilbao, Avenida Abandoibarra, 2 48009 Bilbao, Spain. http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 23

remembering perry… By JASON KOEPPEL Darrelle Revis, Janoris Jenkins, and Kevin O’Leary of ABC’s “Shark Tank” took part in Art New York’s Corners of New York Exhibit at Pier 94 with the proceeds to benefit the Perry J. Cohen Foundation. The exhibit featured two paintings that were curated by the Bushwick Collective (@theBKcollective), a non profit (501c3) based out of Brooklyn, NY – as well as photos from Kevin O’Leary’s Irreconcilable Images exhibit. The Perry J. Cohen Foundation was founded by Pamela Cohen and her husband Nicholas Korniloff (Perry’s stepfather) after their 14-year old son Perry and a friend went missing at sea outside of Jupiter, Florida on July 24, 2015. The United States Coast Guard conducted an eight-day search and rescue mission for the boys but suspended their efforts at sunset on July 31, 2015. The mission of the foundation is to educate and generate awareness regarding the safe enjoyment of recreational boating, fishing, and water sports. Because of Perry’s deep love for the sea, a highlight of the foundation’s work will be its annual scholarship program that will recognize deserving students who plan to further their education in the Marine Science and Marine Wildlife fields, as well as the preservation of our coastlines. The foundation will also seek to continue to provide financial assistance to future SAR efforts for others lost at sea. Pamela and Nicholas met Kevin O’Leary through mutual friends and artists at the Art Miami Fair in 2015. Their son Perry was a young entrepreneur and fan of ABC’s “Shark Tank” in which Kevin (Mr. Wonderful) is one of five “sharks” who listen to pitches from business owners looking for an investment in their company. After the fair, the three began planning an exhibit to showcase Kevin’s photography at the February 2016 Art Wynwood Miami Fair with 100% of the proceeds to benefit the Perry J. Cohen Foundation and Teenage Entrepreneurs. Perry’s stepfather Nick is a lifetime New York Jets fan and grew up minutes from Hofstra University. He had been a Jets season ticket holder since the days at Shea Stadium and as a young kid, his parents were very friendly with former Jets player and Super Bowl champion John Schmidt. John frequently took Nick to training camp with him and a fan of the team was born. The Cohen’s neighbor in Florida, Joe Namath (yes, that Joe Namath) was extremely active in the search efforts for Perry. During Art Wynwood, Pamela and Page 24 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

Darrelle Revis, Brooke Shields, Kevin O’Leary at Art New York

PERRY J. COHEN, 2001–2015

NY Jets football legend Joe Namath, Perry Cohen

Nicholas met Darrelle Revis and his agent, Neil Schwartz. They told Darrelle all about Perry, the foundation and their goals, and Darrelle was extremely moved. He told the parents to stay in touch and keep him updated. As Revis received additional information, a bond between himself and NY Giants defender Janoris Jenkins was formed as both players wanted to help out. “The relationship with Darrelle and Janoris quickly developed by staying in contact with their agents Neil and Jonathan Feinsod. They made it clear to us that both of their clients wanted to help Perry’s Foundation. They are the ones that created the Corners of New York Exhibit. It was up to us to find the artists to support it – and we did through the Bushwick Collective,” Pamela told us.

Perry always had an insatiable affection for life, family, friends, art, sports, animals and the ocean. His love and passion for fishing, diving, boating and swimming defined his physical existence and created a most caring, peaceful and generous persona. Perry’s laughter and kind ways were infectious to those who knew him both intimately or casually. He was the most loving son, grandson, cousin, nephew and friend. He marveled at the natural beauty of sunsets and art and was always incredibly thoughtful and considerate toward all of nature and mankind. Perry’s goal was to unify his creative entrepreneurial spirit and love of nature for a career in the Marine/ Environmental Science and Oceanography Fields as he was in awe of the beauty of the sea and marine-life.

“Darrelle is a very sincere person and a first class role model for adults and children. He is extremely genuine, very soft spoken, looks you in the eye and connects. We were honored to have him at the Fair and he has contributed to our mission above and beyond just his presence, we’re extremely grateful.” The star cornerback was one of Perry’s favorite football players – although he was a huge Patriots fan. This made for some fun trash talk around the house between he and Nick, most notably after Revis signed with the Pats and won a Super Bowl there. “We now have Darrelle back home where he belongs,” Pamela said. “Nick truly believes that Perry will provide an additional force from above for Darrelle and the team to get the job done in the near future.” The author is President, NYJetsFans.com

ROBERT DE NIRO SR. PRIZE AWARDED TO LAURA OWENS

Untitled, 2013, Acrylic, oil, Flashe and resin on canvas, 137.5 x 120"

Courtesy the artist / Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York / Sadie Coles HQ, London / Capitain Petzel, Berlin / Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne

Untitled, 2014, Acrylic, oil, Flashe, silkscreen ink, charcoal and bicycle wheel on linen, 108 x 84"

Courtesy the artist / Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York / Sadie Coles HQ, London / Capitain Petzel, Berlin / Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne

At a reception in the elegant Drawing Room of the Greenwich Hotel in Tribeca, New York City, Laura Owens was feted as the fifth recipient of the Robert De Niro Sr. Prize administered by Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) for her considerable contribution to the field of painting. The merit-based $25,000 award pays tribute to the work and legacy of accomplished painter Robert De Niro Sr. who was part of the celebrated New York School of post-war American artists. Created by his son and TFI CoFounder Robert De Niro to support the next generation of artistic achievements, the Prize shines a light on influential midcareer artists. Stanley Whitney received the inaugural award in 2011, Joyce Pensato in 2012, Catherine Murphy in 2013, and Robert Bordo in 2014. “Laura Owens’ gallery of work is one that truly captures everything we are looking for when awarding the Robert De Niro Sr. prize,” said the famed actor. “In recognition of my father’s legacy, we want this award to celebrate and honor an American painter who is creating her own legacy through her incredible artwork.” A selection committee of distinguished individuals was appointed to nominate candidates and select the prize recipient. It included: Peter Brant, philanthropist, collector and owner of Art in America and ArtNews; Kelly Baum, Curator of Postwar and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Sarah P. Hanson, Editorial Director at Paddle8; Richard Flood, Director of Special Projects and Curator at Large; Leah Dickerman, Page 26 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

Marlene Hess Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art. “That Laura Owens is an accomplished painter goes without saying,” said Ms. Baum. “Yet this alone is not the reason we saw fit to grant the Robert De Niro, Sr. Prize to her. Over the course of a career that is now past its second decade, Laura has dedicated herself ceaselessly to the investigation of painting as a formal and material practice. She has refused to settle on one particular approach or style and remains restless in her experimentation.” Born in 1970 in Euclid, Ohio, the artist lives and works in Los Angeles. She studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the California Institute of Arts. Her paintings first attracted attention in the late 1990s. In 2003 she became the youngest artist ever to be honored with a retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Most recently, Owens’ paintings and handmade artists’ books were exhibited at Capitain Petzel, Berlin, Germany; Secession, Vienna; and Zona Maco, Mexico, D.F. Her work will be shown at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art in Spring 2016. Owens large format paintings and specific visual idioms are inspired by references to art history, borrowings from popular and vernacular culture, and the visual traditions of non-Western cultures. She teaches at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. Since 2012 she has operated the exhibition space 356 S Mission in Los

Angeles in collaboration with Gavin Brown and Wendy Yao. Owens is represented by Gavin Brown Enterprise, Sadie Coles Headquarters, and Galerie Gisela Capitain. ABOUT ROBERT DE NIRO SR. De Niro Sr.’s work blended abstract and expressionist styles of painting with traditional representational subject matter, bridging the divide between European Modernism and Abstract Expressionism. He studied with Josef Albers and Hans Hofmann and went on to exhibit at Peggy Guggenheim’s renowned museum/gallery, Art of this Century in 1945 and 1946, as well as at galleries throughout the U.S. during his career. In 2010, a retrospective exhibition of his work was presented at the Musée Matisse in Nice, France. De Niro Sr.’s work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Hirshhorn Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Smithsonian American Art Museum, among others. His life and work was chronicled in Remembering The Artist: Robert De Niro, Sr., a documentary aired on HBO in June, 2014. The work of Robert De Niro, Sr. is represented by DC Moore Gallery, New York. The prize is funded by Robert De Niro. www.robertdenirosr.com

TRIBECA FILM INSTITUTE Tribeca Film Institute champions storytellers to be catalysts for change in their communities and around the world by identifying a diverse group of exceptional filmmakers and media artists and empowering them with funding and resources to fully realize their stories to connect with audiences. TFI’s education programs give students hands-on training and exposure to socially relevant films, offering young people the media skills necessary to be creative and productive. TFI is a nonprofit organization founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff in the wake of September 11, 2001. tribecafilminstitute.org

Stanley Whitney, Joyce Pensato, Robert De Niro, Laura Owens, Robert Bordo (Past recipients of RDN Sr. Prize with RDN and Laura Owens)

Katarina Witt, Stephen Hannock

Megan Fox Kelly, Stanley Whitney

Liz Kresch, Stephen Hannock, Robert De Niro, Drena De Niro, Al Kresch

Prize panelist Leah Dickerman, Robert De Niro, Robert Bordo, Prize Panelist Sarah Hanson, Laura Owens

Liz Kresch, Al Kresch,Robert De Niro, Megan Fox Kelly, with prize panelists Peter Brandt, Leah Dickerman

Robert De Niro, Drena De Niro

Megan Fox Kelly, Stanley Whitney, Joyce Pensato, Robert DeNiro, Laura Owens, Robert Bordo

Joyce Pensato, Robert DeNiro

Photo Credit: Startraks/Dave Allocca

SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 27

Dr. Carolyn Farb Honored with 2016 Greater Houston Service Impact Award The Annual Greater Houston Service Awards Gala event, held May 13, 2016 at Union Station, Minute Maid Park, celebrated the power of volunteers to spark change and improve the Houston area through community service. The awards originated over 33 years ago and since then many honorees have been recognized, perhaps none so dynamic and giving as this year’s Volunteer Houston Impact Award Recipient Dr. Carolyn Farb who also was recognized with the Daily Point of Light from the Bush Foundation. A legendary figure in the world of philanthropy, Dr. Farb has a heart as big as Texas and a list of accomplishments that could fill a book, two in fact in which she imparts secrets of her success. “Carolyn literally wrote the books on philanthropy — The Fine Art of Fundraising and How to Raise Millions: Helping Others, Having A Ball,” said Charles Ward of Idea Works, “These are must reads for Signing with a student at the T.H. Rogers School for gifted and impaired students on Carolyn Farb Day people who are involved in philanthropy. They have all the tips of many years of Carolyn’s work. I have spent a lifetime living in various resort-like areas of the world and have had a career of marketing the fastest flying private jets, the most luxurious autos, the finest jeweler and other products and services while attending polo matches and yacht races. I have had the pleasure of knowing Carolyn for a few decades and have been on site at some of her finest moments in philanthropy and special events. A memorable one was when she decided to be the first woman to ever raise a million dollars in one night. It was called the Million Dollar Evening for Cancer Research. She convinced Ann-Margaret, Marvin Hamlisch, Liza Minelli, Crystal Gayle and Alan King — really great stars — to come to Houston and the event exceeded all expectations.” “This award,” said Carolyn in her keynote address, “belongs to all of us. It is team effort. Volunteers touch and change the lives of individuals they may never know. They give hope, guidance and encouragement to those who need it most. Sometimes life throws you a curveball when you least expect it. Volunteer Houston, through its mission of service, has given the spirit of volunteerism its most powerful voice. All of you here today reflect what it is to be a Houstonian: a generous heart looking for causes to help those Dr. John S. Stehlin at the Million Dollar Evening for the benefit of the in need. Your participation is what truly makes Houston a great city.” Stehlin Foundation for Cancer Research Page 28 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

PLAYGROUND WITHOUT LIMITS “Building an accessible playground is something the disability community has wanted for years,” said Michelle Colvard. “I learned that Carolyn Farb was very interested in making this dream a reality. I was put in touch with her by the Houston Parks Board and we began a coordinated effort to raise money for these playgrounds. Carolyn influenced me by helping me to learn to think big — to think audaciously — because when I first learned that we were going to team up together on this playground project, I thought, maybe we can raise a little bit of money and it would take ten years. I was so naive. We were able to get six more Playgrounds Without Limits — inclusive playgrounds — all around the city of Houston, far exceeding my expectations.

“Carolyn is iconic. She’s also fearless. In every sense of the word, she is magnificent.” “Carolyn has the spirit of volunteerism in her DNA,” notes George Lancaster, Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications, Hines REIT, a major international real estate firm. “I think she was born with that gene. What is extraordinary about her is that people see her as this beautiful woman who is in the paper all the time, but in fact most of the philanthropic activities that she conducts, no one hears about. She’s working almost 24-7 every day on smaller projects, projects that don’t get a lot of recognition. Her whole life and her whole heart is dedicated to helping others. What would Houston look like without Carolyn Farb? I would ask, what would the world look like without Carolyn Farb? I would say not near as good a place.” Bob Sanborn is the leader of Children At Risk, an advocate of speaking out and driving change for children. “When you think of one word to describe Carolyn, what comes to mind is ‘classy or super-generous’, but a good phrase for her as I see it is ‘servantleader’, a glamorous servant-leader. She is absolutely helping the work but she still looks good all the time. I am a better fund-raiser having followed in her footsteps.” “Carolyn was an icon when I met her as a second year law student when I was attending the Texas College of Law in the mid-80s,” said Kim Ogg. “We knew her as a society lady then, before she had been dubbed First Lady of Philanthropy. She was very impressive both in her charisma and her looks and she did raise money for the law school. I would define Carolyn Farb as passion in the flesh. When she believes in a cause, there’s no stopping her. There’s so much that our world needs. Carolyn is a real blessing. The true first lady of philanthropy in Texas.” “Carolyn is iconic. She’s also fearless. In every sense of the word, she is magnificent,” said Joe Mashburn, former Dean of the University of Houston Geraldine D. Hines College of Architecture. Adds Houston television news anchor Dominique Sachse, “How lucky are we to call her our own and to be able to tell stories of her impact right here.” According to Carolyn, “The key element to volunteerism is

At a “A Conversation with Bette Midler” VIP dinner reception after Bette’s lecture a the Wortham Center Brown Theater designed as an opportunity to inspire leadership in Houston’s youth and their families.

passion. Having a passion for something that you want to give your all to no matter what and that’s what I’ve had for so many causes that I’ve undertaken here in Houston. They’re all deserving, worthwhile and I would do it all over again.” The Greater Houston Service Awards embrace the challenge of tackling the unmet needs of the Houston community through volunteer action. For 41 years, Volunteer Houston has been the city’s sole referral service connecting volunteers to a broad spectrum of diverse nonprofit organizations. Nonprofit organizations all around Houston and its vicinity rely on Volunteer Houston to acquire over 50,000 volunteers per year. SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 29

Above: Carolyn discussing an art project with Dominique de Menil, founder of the Menil Collection, and artists Jack Massing and Michael Galbreth (known collectively as “The Art Guys”)

Dominic Walsh, world renowned Choreographer and former Founder/Director of Dominic Walsh Dance Theater. “I first met Carolyn Farb after a performance of Don Quixote, a ballet in which I was dancing the lead. Carolyn came to quite a few of my events, whether they were big events or small. She came to my open rehearsals; very causal meet and greets and she watched the process of how ballets were created. In 2009, she threw our company our very first big formal gala.” Page 30 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

“Carolyn really is the epitome of the volunteer and what it takes to donate and dedicate time, effort and energy. She really sets the bar and sets the standard and we are so blessed to have Carolyn in our community,” commented Dominique Sachse, the very popular Houston television personality (with 100,000 Facebook followers) who anchors KPRC Channel 2’s 6 and 10pm newscasts.

Charles Ward: “So my parents said,‘Why don’t you go meet Carolyn Farb?’ She’s doing a telethon for the University of Houston public television station and you could help her. So I came down to the television station, introduced myself and we raised — mainly she did, but I was there helping — more money than ever before in a telethon in Houston and that was just the beginning of knowing Carolyn and her talent.”

“One of my beloved mentors, the late Nina Cullinan, told me I had a gift, and gifts are meant to be shared. This has been my mantra, and truthfully, I’m just a girl who can’t say no to a worthy cause.” 2 Carolyn Farb

With Lucas and Maximillan at home

Veteran restaurateur Manfred Jachmich, former First Lady Barbara Bush, 41st US President George H.W. Bush with Carolyn Farb at the Houston Toyota Center, home of the Houston Rockets. SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 31

SLYWORKS PHOTOGRAPHY

Carole Feuerman - Durga Ma Carolyn (Carolyn Farb), mixed media sculpture (detail) Page 32 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

Dynamic Galleries, Celebrity Attendees Drive Sales at Art New York, Context Six Days, Two Art Fairs, 23,000 Visitors

As the 2016 editions of Art New York and CONTEXT New York came to a close on Sunday, May 8 at Pier 94 in Manhattan, both fairs were highly recognized for the outstanding quality of the artwork shown. Together, the fairs drew more than 5,500 art world luminaries, journalists, and high-profile celebrities for their opening VIP Preview as well as 23,500 total guests throughout the entirety of the week. With over 150 galleries representing nearly 1,200 artists from 50 countries, visitors were inspired by an array of never-before-seen artwork, special exhibits, art talks, and solo exhibitions, including presentations by Academy Award-winner Adrien Brody and Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary. “We are thrilled with the turnout for the second edition of Art New York and even more pleased with the overwhelmingly positive response we’ve received from collectors and art enthusiasts,” said Katelijne De Backer, director of Art New York. “The excellence of the works on display, the selection of galleries, and the layout of the fair continues to be unsurpassed, further establishing Art New York as the preeminent fair at which to view PHOTOS BY JAMIE ELLIN FORBES and acquire works from the 20th and 21st centuries.” Notable attendees included Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio who stopped by Adrien Brodys booth to view his paintings. Michael Strahan, Bernie Taupin and Brooke Shields were also on hand.

David Kratz, President of the New York Academy of Art with NYAA Trustee Brooke Shields

Hazelton Galleries (Toronto) sold over a dozen works in the $15,000 – $30,000 range to corporate and private collections, including three mid-size Salvador Dali Triumphant Elephant sculptures and a figurative painting by Anna Razumovskaya

Pandora Pang, Director of Moso Art, featured the paintings and sculpture of Yuroz.

Artem Mirolevich, Natasha Akhmerova of Antarctic Biennale, Vladimir Andreyev

Mr. Brainwash, Everyday Life, 2016 Stencil and Acrylic on Wood Panels 64 × 58 in, Contessa Gallery, Cleveland A provocative figure in the world of street art, Mr. Brainwash practices an irreverent brand of appropriation characterized by the use of copyrighted images from history, popular culture, and art history. The artist subtly alters the picture or its context, mischievously undermining the tone of the source material. Brainwash, a pseudonym for Thierry Guetta, is known for producing massive spectacles to display his art. He came to prominence through mounting large-scale public projects in his current home of Los Angeles and as the main figure in the Banksy-directed film Exit Through the Gift Shop. His work hinges on the idea that anything is possible in his practice. “Art has no walls. Anybody can be an artist,” he says. “Art has no rules. There’s no manual.”

Alex Fanning, Devora Avikzer, Anastasia Kova and Damien Roman of Damien Roman Fine Art

Pure genius walking - Bernie Taupin lifetime visual artist and famed lyricist and writing partner of Elton John. His work was on view at the Waterhouse and Dodd booth. He is pictured above with FAM Editor Victor Forbes, art dealer extraordinaire Dana Yarger and art publicist Alina Goncalves. SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 33

KEITH HARING FELLOWSHIP IN ART AND ACTIVISM AT BARD COLLEGE RECIPIENTS NAMED The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) and the Human Rights Project at Bard College announced today that Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, architects and critics based in Beit Sahour, Palestinian Territories, have been selected as the third recipients of the Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism. Haring (1958–1990) contributed his talents and resources to numerous causes. He conducted art workshops with children, created logos and posters for public service agencies, and produced murals, sculptures, and paintings to benefit health centers and disadvantaged communities. In 1989, he established a foundation to ensure that his philanthropic legacy would continue indefinitely. Made possible through a five-year grant from the Keith Haring Foundation, the Haring Fellowship is an annual award for a scholar, activist, or artist to teach and conduct research in the Center for Curatorial Studies and the Human Rights Project. Hilal and Petti will take up their one-year appointment in September 2016, and spend the spring semester of 2017 teaching at the College. They succeed the New Delhi–based artist and curator Shuddhabrata Sengupta, who held the fellowship for 2015-16, and the first recipient, Dutch artist Jeanne van Heeswijk. Hilal and Petti’s work moves between art, architecture, and pedagogy. They are founding members and co-directors of the Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency (DAAR), an architectural office and artist residency program in Beit Sahour that combines conceptual speculations and architectural interventions. Alongside art and architectural practice, they are also engaged in critical pedagogy, notably as founders of Campus in Camps, an experimental educational program hosted in Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem. They describe their practice as taking place in a range of contexts: “in built architectural structures, in the formation of critical learning environments, in interventions that challenge dominant collective narratives, in the production of new political imaginations, and in the formation of civic spaces.” They have exhibited their work at many venues internationally, including the Venice Art Page 34 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti photo by Carlo Favero

and Architecture Biennales, 31st Bienal de São Paulo, Red Cat in Los Angeles, Creative Time in New York City, and 2015 Asian Art Biennial in Taiwan. Long before the current “refugee crisis,” Hilal and Petti focused their imagination and energy on the lives and representations of refugees and explored ways of creating, in their words, “different social, political and spatial relationships between people, state and territory beyond the liberal notion of citizenship.” Their recent architectural projects include the design of a girls school in the Shufat refugee camp in Jerusalem, a “Concrete Tent” in Dheisheh refugee camp (a pavilion that they say “embodies the contradiction of the permanent temporariness of Palestinian refugees”), and a public square in Fawwar camp, near Hebron. The Fawwar public square was featured on the front page of The New York Times in September 2014, where Michael Kimmelman wrote that, “years in the making, it has stirred some profound debates ... about hot-button topics like the role of women and the right of return. Along with headline sites like Tahrir Square in Cairo and Gezi Park in Istanbul, it’s another example, small and off the radar, of how even the most unlikely public space can become a testing ground for entrenched political authority and the social status quo.” In 2010, Hilal and Petti received the Prince Claus Award, which honored DAAR for its “non-traditional approach to development in conflict and post-conflict situations, for providing valuable speculation on the future realities of disputed territories, for its critical challenge to outdated urban planning theories based on a more peaceful world, and for highlighting the role of architecture and visualization in creating

and altering the frontiers of reality.” “ We are delighted to welcome Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal to Bard. They demonstrate the intellectual courage and curiosity, combined with a drive for change, that we hope will inspire the students and faculty at Bard,” said Tom Eccles, executive director of CCS Bard. “The Haring Fellowship honors the life and work of a courageous activist who could draw like no one before him,” said Thomas Keenan, director of Bard’s Human Rights Project. “Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal are rooted firmly in that tradition: critically sharp, practically engaged, theoretically adventurous, and rich in imagination and provocation.” Bard College seeks to realize the best features of American liberal arts education, enabling individuals to think critically and act creatively based on a knowledge and understanding of human history, society, and the arts. Two pioneering programs developed under this mission are the Center for Curatorial Studies and the Human Rights Project. The Human Rights Project, founded at Bard in 1999, developed the first interdisciplinary undergraduate degree program in human rights in the United States. The Project maintains a special interest in freedom of expression and the public sphere, and through teaching, research, and public programs is committed to exploring the too-often neglected cultural, aesthetic, and representational dimensions of human rights discourse. CCS Bard was founded in 1990 as an exhibition and research center for the study of late 20th-century and contemporary art and culture and to explore experimental approaches to the presentation of these topics and their impact on our world.

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Susan N. McCollough – International Abstract Artist

Her Earthly Vision, Oil on canvas, 5’ x 4’

“I paint from the excite ment of the blank canvas. I paint with freedom of inner-feelings, movement, lighting, connection of space, combination of colors, playing with negative space until it all speaks to me. My ideas come from so many things that just fill my head all the time. They come from our travels, the faces I see, the natural works of nature and creations of mankind, the archi tecture, the people we meet. Sometimes and mostly the feeling I get just waiting to start a new canvas. I look at things that are realistic in nature and change them into abstract paintings.” Of Heaven and Earth, Oil on linen, 4’x 8’

– Susan N. McCollough

www.susannmccolloughart.media susannmccolloughart@aol.com 251-967-7677 Page 36 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

Painting: Metaphysical, Oil on Canvas 4’ x 5’; Susan receiving the David of Bernini and Anne Frank Humanitarian Award in Lecce, Italy Accademia Italia in Arte Nel Mondo Associazione Culturale

Begin Again, Oil on linen, 4’x 7’

Pablo Picasso, Le Moulin de la Galette, autumn 1900, Oil on canvas, 88.2 x 115.5 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser, 78.2514.34, © Sucesión Pablo Picasso. VEGAP, Bilbao, 2016

Windows On The City The School Of Paris 1900-1945 In the early 20th century, Paris was the capital of the avantgarde. Artists from around the world settled in the City of Light where they created new forms of art and literature and responded to the rapid economic, social, and technological developments that were fundamentally transforming urban life. Paris was where Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque radically overturned the conventions of painting, Robert Delaunay composed visions of harmonious color, Vasily Kandinsky pursued new directions in abstraction and Constantin Brancusi reimagined how sculptures could be present in space. Bringing together masterpieces from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum collection, Windows on the City, curated by Lauren Hinkson, Assistant Curator for Collections, offers a vibrant glimpse of a historic creative outpouring and includes some of the past century’s most important paintings and sculptures, works that remain influential today. The exhibition, which spans the first years of the 20th century through World War II, charts key movements of modernism—from Cubism to Orphism to Surrealism—and the artists who came to be known as the École de Paris (School of Paris). Though diverse, the artistic visions represented manifest a common impulse to eschew conservative aesthetics and transform Page 38 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

perceptions of everyday life in a modern city. Cubism is among the most important artistic innovations to emerge in Paris in the first decades of the twentieth century. This revolutionary approach to painting — developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque between 1907 and 1914 — challenged conventions of visual art and raised questions about the very nature of representation. Poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire is often credited with coining the term Cubism. He described it as “the art of depicting new wholes with formal elements borrowed not only from the reality of vision, but from that of conception.” While Picasso and Braque exhibited their Cubist works in private salons and galleries, the wider Parisian public became familiar with the movement through the work of Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Robert Delaunay and other painters of the socalled Puteaux group, named for the Paris suburb where many of them worked. Their Cubist canvases titillated and scandalized visitors to the 1911 Salon des Indépendants, an annual exhibition featuring progressive art excluded from more traditional academic shows. In the wake of widespread criticism provoked by the exhibition, Gleizes, with Metzinger, defended the movement to the public with a book that linked the Cubist aesthetic to modern

Juan Gris, Newspaper and Fruit Dish (Journal et compotier), March 1916, Oil on canvas, 46 x 37.8 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Gift, Estate of Katherine S. Dreier 53.1341

innovations in science, mathematics, and philosophy. Pablo Picasso was still living in Barcelona when the 1900 World’s Fair drew him to Paris for the first time. During the course of his two-month stay he immersed himself in art galleries as well as the bohemian cafés, night-clubs, and dance halls of Montmartre. Le Moulin de la Galette, his first Parisian painting, reflects his fascination with the lusty decadence and gaudy glamour of the famous dance hall, where bourgeois patrons and prostitutes rubbed shoulders. Picasso had yet to develop a unique style, but Le Moulin de la Galette is nonetheless a startling production for an artist who had just turned 19. In the painting, Picasso adopted the position of a sympathetic and intrigued observer of the spectacle of entertainment, suggesting its provocative appeal and artificiality. In richly vibrant colors, much brighter than any he had previously used, he captured the intoxicating scene as a dizzying blur of fashionable figures with expressionless faces. In 1908, Georges Braque abandoned a bright Fauve palette and traditional perspective for the simplified faceted forms, flattened spatial planes, and muted colors of what came to be called Analytic Cubism. The hallmarks of this style, conceptualized as the breaking down or analysis of form and space, are seen in Piano and Mandola (Piano et mandore). Objects are still recognizable in the painting, but are fractured into multiple shards, as is the surrounding space with which they merge. The composition is set into motion as the eye moves from one faceted plane to the next, seeking to differentiate forms and to accommodate shifting sources of light and orientation. The naturalistic candle serves as a beacon of stability in an otherwise energized composition of exploding crystalline forms—from the disembodied black-and-white piano keys to the virtually disintegrated sheets of music. Juan Gris moved to Paris from his native Madrid in 1906, settling in the same building where Pablo Picasso lived. In Houses in Paris (Maisons à Paris), one of at least six canvases of Gris’s Montmartre neighborhood painted in 1911, the artist experimented with tropes he learned from Picasso and Georges Braque, while

Georges Braque, Violin and Palette (Violon et palette), September 1, 1909, Oil on canvas, 91.7 x 42.8 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 54.1412, © VEGAP, Bilbao, 2016

retaining his own sensibility and color palette. Creating severely flattened architectural spaces and rendering passages of shadow and light on their own plane, Gris applied a modern technique to the urban landscape—as Robert Delaunay and Fernand Léger were doing in their paintings—while drawing on his work as a journal illustrator for the juxtaposition of shapes, strong tonal contrasts, and overall visual rhythm of the surface. Robert Delaunay explored the developments of Cubist fragmentation in his series of paintings of the Eiffel Tower. Constructed in 1889 as a symbol of technological advancement, the Eiffel Tower captured the attention of painters and poets attempting to define the essence of modernity. In his own series on the subject, characteristic of his self-designated “destructive” SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 39

Marc Chagall, The Soldier Drinks (Le soldat boit), 1911–12, Oil on canvas, 109.2 x 94.6 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, 49.1211 © VEGAP, Bilbao, 2016 Robert Delaunay, Red Eiffel Tower (La tour rouge), 1911–12, Oil on canvas, 125 x 90.3 cm Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, 46.1036

picture, with his right thumb pointing out the window and his left index finger pointing to the cup, figuratively mediates between dual worlds—interior versus exterior space, past and present, the imaginary and the real. In paintings such as this work, it is clear that the artist preferred the life of the mind, memory, and magical phase, Delaunay presented the tower and surrounding buildings Symbolism over realistic representation. When Piet Mondrian saw Cubist paintings by Georges from various perspectives. In their limited palette and simple blocklike forms, Delaunay’s first treatments of the Eiffel Tower Braque and Pablo Picasso at a 1911 exhibition in Amsterdam, he show the influence of Georges Braque and Paul Cézanne. The was inspired to go to Paris. Tableau No. 2/Composition No. VII, more dynamic representation of Eiffel Tower with Trees (Tour painted a year after his arrival in 1912, exemplifies Mondrian’s Eiffel aux arbres) signals a shift in the artist’s style. Delaunay regard for the new technique. With a procedure indebted to showed the tower from several viewpoints at once, suggesting the high Analytic Cubism, Mondrian broke down his motif —in this case a tree — into a movement of the eye through scaffolding of interlocking space and time and expressing black lines and planes of a Simultanist vision. color; furthermore, his palette In 1910 Marc Chagall of close-valued ocher and moved to Paris from Russia, gray tones resembles Cubist where he encountered canvases. Yet Mondrian went Fauvism and Cubism. beyond the Parisian Cubists’ Chagall’s paintings quickly degree of abstraction: his began to reflect the latest subjects are less recognizable, styles; he merged Cubist in part because he eschewed fragmentation of space with any suggestion of volume, colorful imagery inspired by and, unlike the Cubists, who his hometown and elements rooted their compositions of Russian and Jewish folklore at the bottom of the canvas and legend. Years after Chagall in order to depict a figure painted The Soldier Drinks (Le subject to gravity, Mondrian’s soldat boit) he stated that it scaffolding fades at the developed from his memory painting’s edges. of tsarist soldiers who were The year 1912 marked billeted with families during Piet Mondrian, Still Life with Gingerpot II (Stilleven met gemberpot II), the culmination of Analytic the 1904–05 Russo-Japanese 1911–12, Oil on canvas, 91.5 x 120 cm Cubism in the work of Pablo Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, L294.76 war. The enlisted man in the © 2007 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust Picasso and Georges Braque Page 40 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

Fernand Léger, Nude Model in the Studio (Le modèle nu dans l'atelier), 1912–13, Oil on burlap, 128.6 x 95.9 cm Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, 49.1193, © VEGAP, Bilbao, 2016

as well as the maturation of Fernand Léger’s idiosyncratic Cubist style. The resulting oscillation between volumetric body and dynamic space owes as much to Futurist aesthetics as to Analytic Cubism. With these thoroughly abstract images, Léger’s explorations of the Cubist idiom approached those of Robert Delaunay, whose later works like Circular Forms (Formes circulaires) neared complete detachment from empirical reality. Constantin Brancusi, a Romanian sculptor who settled in Paris after 1904, elicited from wood a tendency toward expressionism, and in doing so, developed a visual language uniquely his own. He counted among his friends Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Francis Picabia, and other modernists. Rejecting nineteenth-century sculptors’ emphasis on theatricality, detail, and narrative, Brancusi instead favored radical simplification and abbreviation. He sought to capture the essence of his subjects and render them visible with minimal formal means. The monumental oak King of Kings (Le roi des rois) was originally intended to stand in Brancusi's Temple of Meditation, a private sanctuary commissioned in 1933 by the Maharaja Yeshwant Rao Holkar of Indore. Although never realized, the temple—conceived as a windowless chamber (save for a ceiling aperture) with interior reflecting pool, frescoes of birds, and an underground entrance—would have embodied the concerns most essential to Brancusi's art: the idealization of aesthetic form; the integration of architecture, sculpture, and furniture; and the poetic evocation of spiritual thought. Vasily Kandinsky spent the last eleven years of his life in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris. He came to France in December 1933 as an émigré from Nazi Germany, following the close of the Berlin Bauhaus, where he had been a teacher. During this phase in his career, Kandinsky increasingly experimented with materials, creating imaginative works in which he combined sand

Constantin Brancusi, King of Kings (Le roi des rois), ca. 1938 Oak. 1300 x 48.3 x 46 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 56.1449, © VEGAP, Bilbao, 2016, Photo: David Heald, © SRGF

with pigment. His intricate compositions from this period resemble miniscule worlds of living organisms, clearly informed by his contact with Surrealism, including the works of Jean Arp and Joan Miró, and his interest in the natural sciences, particularly embryology, zoology, and botany. Capricious Forms (Formes capricieuses) is a product of the artist at perhaps his most playful moment: interspersed with the clearly delineated circles and squares—the fundamental geometric shapes of his Bauhaus works—are floating and dancing curvilinear figures, all rendered in pastel shades. The biological imagery may be read as the artist's optimistic vision for a not-too-distant future of rebirth and regeneration. When Wifredo Lam arrived in Paris in 1938 he carried a letter of introduction to Pablo Picasso, with whom he had an immediate rapport. Soon after, he met many other leading artistic figures, including members of the Surrealist group. The Surrealists were fascinated by the mythologies of “primitive” people, and Lam, as a Cuban of African, Chinese, and European descent, was thought to have privileged access to that undifferentiated state of mind. For further informaion, visit the Guggenheim Bilbao website SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 41

Jackson Pollock, Number 8, 1949, 1949. oil, enamel, and aluminum paint on canvas. 34 x 71 1/2 in. (86.4 x 181.6 cm). Collection Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, Gift of Roy R. Neuberger, 1971.02.11 © 2015 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Jim Frank. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

When Modern Was Contemporary at Mississippi Museum

evealing the pursuits of one of the twentieth century’s most century, while also exploring Neuberger’s considerable role as a important collectors, the American Federation of Arts collector of and advocate for the work of his artistic contemporaries. (AFA) and the Neuberger Museum of Art present When Born in Connecticut, financier Roy R. Neuberger (1903–2010) Modern Was Contemporary: Selections from the Roy R. Neuberger developed his passion for art while in Paris in the 1920s. After Collection, the first traveling exhibition reading Vincent van Gogh’s biography, of this groundbreaking collection of he was struck by the fact that Van American modern art in over forty Gogh died in poverty, yet after his years. Roy R. Neuberger was a devoted death the artist’s paintings achieved champion of the art of his time, and ever higher prices. Neuberger’s credo, he acquired works by a remarkable “the contemporary world should buy selection of modern masters, including the work of contemporary artists,” Alexander Calder, Stuart Davis, would guide him as a collector, and Willem de Kooning, Marsden Hartley, he often purchased works soon after Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O’Keeffe, their creation. Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Neuberger returned to New York numerous others. The first venue on in 1929 and went to work for a Wall this unprecedented traveling tour is the Street brokerage firm before founding Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, his own firm in 1939. He once noted, which will host the exhibition through “I have not collected art as an investor October 30, 2016. would, I collect art because I love it.” “It is our great pleasure to host By 1950, the center of the avant-garde this incredible exhibition featuring art world had shifted from Paris to work by so many of the Twentieth New York, and Neuberger was the Century’s most dynamic and revered most important collector focusing on artists,” said Betsy Bradley, Director contemporary American art in the of the Mississippi Museum of Art. country. “Never before in Mississippi have Concentrating on the patronage artworks by this inimitable group of of living and often under-recognized creators shared a museum exhibition artists, Neuberger was far ahead of space; we’re honored to make them his time in appreciating the talents of available to visual art explorers from soon-to-be canonical figures such as across the region and beyond.” Jackson Pollock, and his practice of With paintings and sculptures donating works to museums ensured Lee Krasner, Burning Candles, 1955. oil, paper, and canvas on linen. 58 1/8 x 39 in. (147.6 x 99.1 cm) from 52 of the era’s most influential that both emblematic and lessera r t i s t s , W h e n M o d e r n Wa s Collection Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State known, though important, artists University of New York, Gift of Roy R. Neuberger, 1969.01.16. Contemporary illuminates the artistic could be viewed in public collections. © 2015 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights transformations that took place in the Committed to making contemporary Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Jim Frank. Courtesy American Federation of Arts. U.S. during the first half of the 20th art more accessible, Neuberger joined Page 42 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

Charles Sheeler, The Web (Croton Dam), 1955. oil on canvas. 22 ¼ x 24 in. (56.5 x 61 cm). Collection Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, Gift of Roy R. Neuberger, 1972.04.12. Photo: Jim Frank. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Marsden Hartley, Fishermen’s Last Supper, Nova Scotia, 1940-41. oil on canvas. 30 1/8 x 41 1/8 inches. Collection Friends of the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, Gift from the Estate of Roy. R. Neuberger, EL 02.2011.67. Photo: Jim Frank. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Collection surveys the development of modern art in the U.S., from representational modes in the early years of the 20th century through the Abstract Expressionist revolution at mid-century. The exhibition begins with works by artists who built upon European precedents, including paintings such as Max Weber’s La Parisienne (1907), with sinuous lines inspired by Matisse, and Joseph Stella’s Gas Tank, Pittsburgh (American Landscape) (1918), which freely samples from Cubism and Futurism to depict the vibrancy of an American city. Georgia O’Keeffe, in her Lake George by Early Moonrise (1930), and Arthur Dove, exploring shape and color in his Holbrook’s Bridge to the Northwest (1938), are inspired by organic forms in the American landscape, while industry is celebrated in paintings such as Ralston Crawford’s At the Dock (1941) and Charles Sheeler’s The Web (1955), a conceptual view of industrial structures. The collection’s masterworks of Abstract Expressionism include Jackson Pollock’s Number 8, 1949, an exemplary “drip” painting, and Willem de Kooning’s Marilyn Monroe (1954), the only named figure in the artist’s groundbreaking Woman series. Neuberger selected each work for the collection himself, taking artists and artworks on their individual merits, a fact evidenced by the notable diversity of the artists he supported. Works by exceptional masters such as Marsden Hartley, represented by the iconic Fishermen’s Last Supper, Nova Scotia (1940–41), and Horace Pippin, represented by a classic Cabin in the Cotton (1944), as well as significant sculptures by Harry Bertoia, Alexander Calder, David Smith, and others, are among numerous highlights. When Modern Was Contemporary also exhibits rarely seen archival material, including contributions made by artists to albums presented to Neuberger for his fiftieth and seventy-fifth birthdays and receipts for purchases of artworks, offering unique views into the development of the collection, the artist-patron relationship, and the workings of the art world. Following the presentation at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, the exhibition travels to the Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida, (December 2, 2016–January 29, 2017); Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania, (February 26–May 21, 2017); Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, New Mexico, (September 30–December 31, 2017). The exhibition will be highlighted on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter via the hashtag #Neuberger and during its run in Mississippi with #BeModernMS.

Jacob Lawrence, In the evening evangelists preach and sing on street corners, 1943. gouache on paper. 25 x 17 in. (63.5 x 43.2 cm). Collection Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, Gift of Roy R. Neuberger, 1975.16.25. © 2015 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Jim Frank. Courtesy American Federation of Arts. SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 43

DALI/PICASSO TOUR Arrives in Mongolia

Pablo Picasso, Picador and a Bull, ceramic, 1959

A n u n p re c e d e n t e d e x h i b i t i o n displaying one of the biggest private collections of Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali works was held at The Fine Arts Museum of Zanabazar in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The museum is presenting the Dali and Picasso exhibition with a collection of over 200 original artworks by the greatest contemporary artists, owned by the world’s fourth biggest collector and exhibition lead Alexander Shadrin from Russia. Acquired from high profile international auctions and private donations over the last 20 years, the combined collection was last seen publicly in Dalian, China in April 2016 as part of a world tour reaching millions of viewers. Receiving a world class exhibition with astounding magnitude and abundance for the first time, the Mongolian public will be able to explore the true depth of the famous painters’ masterpiece paintings and drawings. The diverse exhibition will also feature ceramic works including Goat’s Head, Four Dancers and Picador and a Bull by Picasso from the former owners, the Ramié family in Madoura, Spain. On the side, there are lithographs, drawings and sculptures including Triumphant Elephant, Vision Of An Angel, Dance Of Time I-III and Woman In A Flame, all of which are the reflection of Dali’s surreal ingenuity. Alexander Shadrin states that the exhibition was brought to Mongolia in honor of Gala Dali, the lifelong inspiration of Salvador Dali. According to his belief, Gala, who was an ethnic Russian, came from a family with a far-flung ancestor from Mongolia. “Seeing the remarkable works by the world famous artists with my own eyes feels Page 44 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

incredible. I believe the exhibition is a very generous gift to Ulaanbaatar residents, who are ardent for modern arts,” said Bat-Uul Erdene, the Mayor of Ulaanbaatar, who supported the exhibition under the city’s campaign “Hospitable Ulaanbaatar.”After a month long viewing, the collection will be heading back to China. The Fine Arts G. Zanabazar Museum was founded in 1966. The museum is renowned for the works of G. Zanabazar (1635-1724), which include the statues of Sita Tara, the Five Dhayani Buddhas and the Bodhi Stupa. The Fine Arts Museum was named after Gombodorjiin Zanabazar in 1995. It has 12 exhibition galleries covering the arts from ancient civilizations up to the beginning of the 20th Century. Initially opened with over 300 exhibits, the Museum rapidly enriched the number of its objects, with the modern arts becoming a separate division in 1989 as an Arts Gallery. Among the museum’s 13,000 objects are artistic works of Mongolian masters of the 18-20th centuries, coral masks and thangkas, as well as the famous paintings of B. Sharav including A Day in Mongolia and Airag Feast. The exhibition hall regularly hosts the works of contemporary artists. The G. Zanabazar Museum has been successfully cooperating with UNESCO for the improvement of the preservation of priceless exhibits and for training of the Museum staff.The tour of the museum begins at the 2nd floor, guiding through the following topics. http://zanabazarfam.mn

Salvador Dali, Woman a-flame

Tuyana Balzhieva, Buryat-Mongolian from Buryat Republic of Eastern Siberia, Russia will be performing as this ancient Shinto folklore Goddess Izanami, who with her mate created the many Island homelands of Japan over many difficult travails, her horrible demise in the underworld and her love returning to the present world without her.

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Peter Tunney, b. 1961, The Good Life, Acrylic paint, hand-pulled silkscreens and collage of original Tony Bennett album covers from 1957- present on canvas, annotated and signed lower right by the artist in scraffito. Accompanied by the original vinyl records from the album covers in the painting, along with a Crosley record player. 77.5 x 102.5 in, auction estimate $200-250,000. For the first time in history, you can listen to your painting!

The Power of Love Gala in Las Vegas Keeps The Memory Alive The 20th Anniversary Power of Love® gala, an exceptional evening of music and philanthropy with proceeds to benefit the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health included the special honor of celebrating Tony Bennett’s 90th birthday. Many legendary entertainers were on hand to take part in this extraordinary event, that featured performances from Chris Botti, James Corden, Andra Day, Herbie Hancock, Diana Krall, Darius Rucker and Steven Tyle. Luxury auctions, exquisite wines, tantalizing cocktails, and delectable cuisine prepared by Wolfgang Puck, Nobu Matsuhisa and Mario Carbone all contributed to raising funds and awareness. Memory Alive's Power of Love™ gala has become an annual tradition in Las Vegas and now attracts a national audience. Part of Center’s mission is to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families. A Keep Memory Alive Community Leadership Award was presented to local leader William S. Boyd Artists who contributed work to the auction include Jeff Koons, Dale Chihuly, Benedetto with Marina Abramovic, Rob Pruitt, Johnathan Horowitz, Neville Wakefield and Peter Tunney whose The Good Life mixed media is quite the tribute. “Tony is a special human being and I am truly honored to have been chosen to participate in the 20th Anniversary of the Power of Love Gala,” he said. Tony Bennett was born Anthony Dominick Benedetto and grew up in Astoria, NY. His last name, “Benedetto” translates in Italian to “the blessed one.” His longevity in the music business and his Brain Health confirm his blessed life. “Tony Bennett is the poster child for care-giving,” commented Southern Wine and Spirits Vice President Larry Ruvo, founder and chairman of the Keep Memory Alive organization, “and we have a big care-giving program because until there’s a cure, there’s a caregiver.”

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“I am blessed with the fact that I am not only in good health, but I am sold out all over the world,” said Tony Bennett whose dedication to brain health shows that healthy aging is possible and attainable.

On The Set with Frank Sinatra at HistoryMiami Museum

Sinatra Centennial Exhibit at HistoryMiami Museum

Sinatra: An American Icon Showcases the Life of the Legendary Performer and his time in the Magic City Following its highly acclaimed stops at the New York Public Library and the GRAMMY Museum® at L.A. LIVE, the multimedia exhibit exploring the life and career of Frank Sinatra traveled to the HistoryMiami Museum. The official exhibit of the Frank Sinatra Centennial, Sinatra: An American Icon, traces 100 years of Sinatra’s legacy, from Hoboken, N.J. through superstardom, chronicling the meteoric rise of his music career, his Hollywood success, personal life, and humanitarian work. The exhibit, presented in cooperation with the Sinatra Family, Frank Sinatra Enterprises, USC School of Cinematic Arts, and the GRAMMY Museum at L.A. LIVE, combines photos, family mementos, rare correspondence, personal items, artwork, and, of course, music, to offer a look into Sinatra's legacy. On view in the Museum’s Special Exhibits gallery on the third floor, HistoryMiami also curated a special section highlighting Sinatra’s connections to South Florida. During the mid-20th century, Sinatra not only performed at Miami venues, but also shot several movies and television programs in the region. On display are concert programs, movie and television memorabilia, and other items that tell Sinatra’s Miami story. “Sinatra has a remarkable legacy performing, working and playing in Miami, and being able to bring the official exhibit of the Sinatra centennial to our museum is truly a treat for fans in South Florida,” said Stuart Chase, President and CEO of HistoryMiami. “This exhibit not only celebrates his iconic music legacy, but offers visitors a rare look into what it was like to know him personally.” Sinatra’s story is told through items of his clothing, including

Miami movie poster

his signature fedora and tuxedo, and pajamas, original artwork by Sinatra, and his golf clubs. Other items on display include numerous awards, archival video and audio recordings, original audio from a recording session, personal family photos, behind-the-scenes studio images, and Herman Leonard’s classic photographs of Sinatra. “By working together with the Sinatra family on this exhibit, we were able to provide fans a unique glimpse of what it was like to know the man behind ‘The Voice,’ said exhibition curator Bob Santelli, Executive Director of the GRAMMY Museum. “Through SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 47

Sinatra and Gene Kelly shoes

this collection of photographs and mementos, the exhibit brings visitors into the life of Frank Sinatra.” HistoryMiami Museum, a Smithsonian affiliate, is the premier cultural institution committed to gathering, organizing, preserving and celebrating Miami’s history as the unique crossroads of the Americas accomplished through education, collections, research, exhibitions, publications and city tours. Located in the heart of downtown Miami, HistoryMiami Museum is a 70,000 square foot facility and home to more than one million historic images and 30,000 three-dimensional artifacts, including a 1920’s trolley car, artifacts from Pan American World Airways, and rafts that brought refugees to Miami. For more information, call 305-3751492 or visit historymiami.org or www.historymiami.org/museum/ exhibitions/details/sinatra/. This traveling exhibition is made possible through the generous support of Jack Daniel’s, Sinatra’s drink of choice. Page 48 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

Sinatra's favorite drink and sponsor of the exhibition

Sydney Satz stares at Sinatra’s Oscar

Hey! Ho! Let’s Go:

Ramones & the Birth of Punk Hey! Ho! Let's Go: Ramones and the Birth of Punk is on view with Danny Fields (Ramones' first manager), Monte A. Melnick at the Queens Museum through July 31 and will open at the (Ramones tour manager), and others who were intimately involved GRAMMY Museum in Los Angeles on Sept. 16, 2016, on display with the group throughout their career. Also on view are flyers and through March 2017. Organized intandem by both museums, press materials from early in the band’s career, personal photographs in collaboration with and clothing, and Ramones Productions entire walls of the Inc., JAM Inc., and band’s album covers Silent Partner, the and merchandise. exhibit is co-curated “The Ramones by Queens Museum represent a resistance guest curator Marc to the status quo and H. Miller and Bob so many of the artists Santelli, Executive who they influenced, Director of the and who they were GRAMMY Museum. influenced by, embody The twothat same ideal,” said part exhibition, L aur a R aicovic h, commemorates the President and 40th anniversary of Executive Director of the release of the the Queens Museum. Ramones’ 1976 self“As an institution, we titled debut album are thrilled to explore and will explore the the nexus of art and lasting influence the the Ramones, from punk rockers had on their roots in Queens their hometown, from to the international their start in Queens to diaspora of punk.” In their history-making the Post-pop world Danny Fields, Ramones in alley behind CBGB, 1977. Photograph courtesy the artist performances at of New York City CBGB. The exhibit in the 1970s and will highlight their musical achievements, 1980s, music was booming with a new and place a special influence on the generation of artists taking up residency dynamic synergy between New York City’s in the area’s lofts and tenements. Many music and visual arts scenes in the 1970s formed or joined bands, while others, and 1980s. finding inspiration in Andy Warhol's The Queens Museum iteration will work with the Velvet Underground and begin with their roots in Queens and reveal the psychedelic posters and comic art in their ascendancy in both music and visual San Francisco, connected to music via culture, while the GRAMMY Museum commercial art and fine art formats. As version will contextualize the band in the central figures at New York’s fabled CBGB larger pantheon of music history and pop club, the Ramones served as both subject culture. and inspiration for many visual artists, Featuring 400 items, the exhibition resulting in a large body of works, many of is organized under a sequence of themes which found their way into this exhibition. — places, events, songs, and artists — “ This is so amazing, the best and include materials by figures such Ramones collection ever,” said Linda as Arturo Vega (who, along with the Ramone, Johnny Ramone’s wife. “Gonna Ramones, designed their famed Ramones be a real cool time, fun for all! Gabba logo), Sergio Aragones (cartoonist for Gabba Hey!” Mad magazine), John Holmstrom (Punk “Many aspects of culture changed magazine founder and cartoonist), Shepard as a result of the genre of music, attitude, Fairey, and Yoshitomo Nara (who, for this and style the Ramones established 40 Australia 1989 Touring Poster exhibit, has created a large-scale version years ago, and art is certainly among those of one of his famous paintings of his recurring character Ramona, aspects,” commented Mickey Leigh. “That the Ramones’ effect on whom he named in homage to the Ramones). Also included in the our lives is being acknowledged, to the extent of a museum exhibit exhibit are contributions from the estate of Joey Ramone and the dedicated solely to them, is extremely meaningful. There will now Johnny and Linda Ramone foundation, as well as works from well- exist an exhibit representative of that contribution which solidifies known rock photographers such as Roberta Bayley (who shot the a link in the chain of our sociological history, and will be beneficial first Ramones album cover) Bob Gruen, and David Godlis, along to current and future generations who want to learn about it.” SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 49

Shepherd Fairey, Tommy Ramone

Keith Green, Dee Dee on Balcony

The Ramones were loud and fast — and gloriously so, from the moment of their inception in Forest Hills, New York, in 1974, until their final concert (2,263) in Los Angeles on Aug. 6, 1996. They were prolific — releasing 21 studio and live albums between 1976 and 1996 — and professional, typically cutting all of the basic tracks for one of those studio LPs in a matter of days. They were stubborn, a marvel of bulldog determination and cast-iron pride in a business greased by negotiation and compromise. And they were fun, rock & roll’s most reliable “Great Night Out” for nearly a quarter of a century, which seems like a weird thing to say about a bunch of guys for whom a show, in 1974 or '75, could be six songs in a quarter of an hour. In their time, in their brilliantly specialized way, the Ramones — the founding four of Johnny (guitar), Joey (vocals), Tommy (drums), and Dee Dee (bass), were the sharpest band on the planet. Fully evolved as musicians and songwriters, they were Page 50 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

confident in their power and the importance of what they had. Road to Ruin was the first album with a new drummer (Marky), followed by CJ (bass), and Richie (drums). The atomic-mono impact of Johnny’s Mosrite guitar, Joey’s commanding vocal delivery, the unity of wardrobe and identity, right down to the original, collective songwriting credits and the mutually assumed surname — were the result of a very simple philosophy. As Tommy put it: “Eliminate the unnecessary and focus on the substance.” That is precisely what the group did on every record they ever made, on every stage they ever played. The Ramones place in Rock & Roll history was already assured by 1978 with their first three albums: Ramones, Leave Home, and Rocket To Russia, all made in the span of 18 months, between February 1976 and the fall of ’77. When it was time to make records, Tommy said, “Our art was complete.” The art was the combined product of four strangely aligned personalities — all

Punk Magazine

living within shouting distance of each other in the conservative, middle-class enclave of Forest Hills, where their mutual needs as fledgling musicians and bored delinquents far outweighed the mess of differences and civil wars that could never quite bust them apart. Once a Ramone, always a Ramone. Hey! Ho! Lets Go: Ramones and the Birth of Punk at the Queens Museum is generously supported by Delta Air Lines, the official airline sponsor of the Queens and Annette Blum, Fred Heller, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Special thanks to Linda Ramone and Mickey Leigh. Production support provided by Pace Gallery.

Rolling Stones “Exhibitionism” at Saatchi Gallery, London “We’ve been thinking about this for quite a long time but we wanted it to be just right and on a large scale. The process has been like planning our touring concert productions and I think that right now it’s an interesting time to do it,” said Mick Jagger about the Rolling Stones’ first ever major exhibition at Saatchi Gallery. On view through September, 2016, EXHIBITIONISM will be the most comprehensive and immersive insight into the group, taking over nine themed galleries spread across two entire floors at the prestigious gallery in London. According to Stones drummer Charlie Watts, “It’s hard to believe that it’s more than fifty years since we began and it is wonderful to look back to the start of our careers and bring everything up to date at this exhibition.’’ In addition to over 500 Rolling Stones important and unseen artefacts from the band’s personal archives, the exhibition will take the public through the band’s fascinating half century of history, embracing all aspects of art and design, film, video, fashion, performance, and rare sound archives. At the heart of the exhibition is the Stones musical heritage that took the group from being a hard-working London blues band in the early 1960s to becoming inspirational cultural icons adored by millions. O ver five decades the Stones have shaped popular culture, often in their own image, and this exhibition looks back through every facet of the band’s career to offer a unique perspective that only the bands own archive can provide. EXHIBITIONISM will be the largest touring experience of this kind ever to be staged by a band or artist, and continues the band’s tradition of groundbreaking innovation, that combined with “appropriation” of blues and rock riffs from Chuck Berry to Muddy Waters created the Stones signature sound. The exhibition starts with an introductory ‘Experience’,

Philip Townsend photo

“It’s hard to believe that it’s more than fifty years since we began…” — Charlie Watts giving visitors a look back at the high points of the band’s career through a new film, with a highoctane soundtrack. It will then be all the way back to the band’s beginnings and take you on a remarkable journey that made them the “Greatest Rock n Roll Band in the World.” EXHIBITIONISM has taken three years of meticulous planning and will offer a comprehensive insight into the band in a way that has never before been attempted. The exhibition is an interactive tour through the band’s vast artistic oeuvre, and includes original stage designs, dressing room and backstage tidbits; guitars and instruments, iconic costumes, rare audio tracks and unseen video clips; personal diaries and

correspondence; original poster and album cover artwork, and unique cinematic presentations. Collaborations and work by the vast array of artists, designers, musicians and writers will be included in the exhibition – from Andy Warhol, Shepard Fairey, Alexander McQueen, and Ossie Clark to Tom Stoppard and Martin Scorsese. “ W hile this is about The Rolling Stones, it’s not necessarily only just about the members of the band,” said Keith Richards. “It’s also about all the paraphernalia and technology associated with a group like us, and it’s this, as well as the instruments that have passed through our hands over the years, that should make the exhibition really interesting.”

Adds Ronnie Wood, “The scene was great down the King’s Road in the 1960’s. That was where you went to hang out to watch the fashions go by. So it is appropriate that our show will be housed at the wonderful Saatchi Gallery.”

SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 51

Amy Winehouse

Kurt Cobain

Adoni Astrinakis Iconic Rock Show at The White Room Gallery paint and will do that one day when I retire and it is realistic to do so.” A decade later, however, “The art just sort of found me again The Golden Age of Rock ‘n’ Roll group show at the White Room during a period I was under I was under pressure in my work. I was Gallery featured the American debut of Adoni Astrinakis, who was seeking a hobby, something I could control. I went back to art. It’s born in Tasmania and now lives in Melbourne. For a few years after something that doesn’t matter who or what is in your life — you can college, Adoni became CEO of a national healthy fast food chain that control it 100%. The outcome is a result of how fussy you are with he turned profitable after several years. Not feeling fulfilled by the your standards. I bought the biggest canvas I could find, along with business world, he sold his interest and some paint and I went for it. … And ever decided to focus his efforts on painting. since that moment it’s been commission Always inspired by pop culture, after commission. It’s been a really wild, Adoni set out to paint a portrait of Bob wild ride.” Dylan. After posting it on Facebook Astrinakis has chosen black and and Instagram, he very quickly started white to deliver what is a very well-defined receiving inquiries for subsequent line. These sophisticated expressions are commissions. In his minimalist style, stark and powerful impressions made so Adoni has painted icons such as Twiggy, by contrasting elements of light and dark Paul Newman, Tom Ford, Elvis and to exude the emotion which touches his Grace Kelly. work in each portrait of these members of I had the opportunity to chat with the “Club 27”, a group of rock superstars Adoni the day following his opening who all met their demise at that age. “Amy night. He realized his love of art at Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, the age of six, drawing reproductions Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison — there were of animation or cartoon figures seen others but these are the five that really in comics. After graduating from high resonate with me,” he said. Adoni’s Bec Astrinakis and Adoni Astrinakis school, he concluded that the idea of a transformative touch to his interpretations career in art just wasn’t feasible, recalling of the musical artists shown emotes their that he last painted at the age of 11. Adoni’s father is a very successful spirit, bringing out the heart and soul of these cultural icons. “I businessman and Adoni decided to go that route by pursuing a degree resonate with and relate to these artists and it suited what I needed in business. He put art to the side thinking, “I can draw and I can to do.”

By JAMIE ELLIN FORBES

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Adoni Astrinakis

Jimi Hendrix

Astrinakis has always gravitated toward large scale portraiture. “I have always felt most in my element when I am doing that,” he relates. “People have an emotional response to these very straightforward compositions with characters that are so well-known and that’s my challenge: to portray the essence of the person properly. That is the real art form and it’s difficult to really capture somebody, especially those who have their own place in the hearts of so many. Luckily these people are so enigmatic, they have an “X” factor all their own, so if I can recreate that and put it on canvas, that is what I am really trying to do.” The artist chose Bob Dylan as his initial foray back into the art world. “He is a living legend and was the first painting I did in 14 years. I was drawn to him because he lives life according to his own rules and I respect that. The painting sits in my own house and is very special to me. It’s what kick started this whole career.” Adoni brings the vitality of his business experience to the integrity of his painting, combining the two into a spiritual concept to deliver an art form he has loved since childhood. “It’s funny,” he continues, “because there’s a lot of discussion about art and business. Art and money are intrinsically linked and they always will be, but the idea of business and art in terms of business management … I think they tend to be put into different categories. When you make a decision to go into a career in art, you’re really going into the business of doing so, and I think that my experience in business management in employing many people in many states across Australia over a long period of time will really help me make very confident and direct decisions with regard to how I am going to apply myself in

my career. That decision comes down to everything including my subject matter and how I attack each work. You have to be confident in your decision making. Compositionally working in monochrome requires a decisiveness because of the necessarity to expose large expanses of open space. Coming back to your earlier question as to why people resonate with my work, I think they can feel that I have not been insecure about what I am doing and that confidence and belief in yourself is what takes the work to the next level.” Adoni and I spent more time discussing in detail the paintings from the hanging at the White Room Gallery and you can see our interview online here. More of Adoni’s work is on his website.

Bonnie Lautenberg, Adoni Astrinakis, Karyn Mannix, Anthony Haden-Guest, Andrea McCafferty at the opening reception SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 53

Malta’s Cavalieri Art Hotel

ince 2011, the four star Cavalieri Art Hotel, set in a quiet and unique location directly overlooking the popular and picturesque St. Julian’s Bay of Malta, has combined Art and Leisure into a distinctive experience and environment. The Art Concept invites guests to enjoy unique pieces of art during their stay. The hotel hosts bi-monthly exhibitions culminating in Arts Week, an annual event entirely dedicated to exhibiting various works by a large selection of different artists local and foreign. The Cavalieri Art Hotel has already hosted over 70 exhibitions and welcomed artists from Japan to Poland, Sweden to Malta and from Italy to The Netherlands. The Art Hotel concept features two stationary art galleries at the Lobby level, displaying an array of works of art by various local and foreign artists. The Lobby area itself also showcases several pieces and this is further complemented by a photographic gallery at the Restaurant Foyer. The Art Cove is a studio exclusively dedicated to our resident artist, with the artist’s recent works being displayed for a number of weeks at a time, creating a haven for guests and art lovers alike. All floor corridors are brought to life as each is allocated to different artists for the exposition of their works. The initiative strives to build lasting relationships with individual and corporate investors and promising and established artists, in a collaboration which knows no borders, remembering the greatest artists in history.

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Art and leisure on St. Julian’s Bay

From the portfolio of Anthony Xuereb, Honorable Life Member of the Malta Photographic Society featured in Ten - A Collective Photographic Exhibition

For more information about the Art Concept can be found at www.cavalieriarthotel.com or email marketing@cavalierihotel.

Written On A Subway Wall

Lenny Achan focuses on socioeconomic, political and cultural issues

“I don’t do graffiti, I am graffiti”

Jake Wallace Greenpoint Watertower

This summer, the Gold Coast Arts Center premieres an exhibition of aerosol artwork titled Off The Wall: Art in Transition! showcasing work from some of the most talented artists in the New York area at their 113 Middle Neck Road, Great Neck, NY gallery. “In recent decades, aerosol art has made the leap out of the streets and off of subway cars into the upscale art world of museums and galleries,” comments Jude Amsel, Gold Coast Arts Center Gallery Curator. “Increasingly, street art has gained credibility as the latest major art movement. We are proud to exhibit the works of some of these artists, a few of whom were part of our inaugural exhibit Wall Works in 2014. Lenny Achan, Jonathan “Meres One” Cohen, Luis “Zimad” Lamboy, Andrew Tess, Jake Wallace and Victoria Ward are artists who have successfully made that transition into the mainstream. I hope you will find this exhibition thoughtprovoking and reevaluate how you view graffiti art.” The Gold Coast Arts Center is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to promoting and supporting the arts through education, exhibition, performance and outreach. For over 20 years GCAC has brought the arts and arts in education experiences to tens of thousands of people throughout the region through its School for the Arts, which offers year-round classes in all visual and performing arts to students of all ages and abilities; public art gallery; concert and lecture series; outreach programs, which bring artist residencies; after-school programs, school assemblies, teacher training workshops and parentchild workshops to students, senior citizens, teachers and others in schools and in underserved communities throughout our region; film screening and discussion series and Gold Coast International Film Festival, in its 5th year this past Fall. The Arts Center is an affiliate of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts: Partners in Education Program and the National Gallery of Art.

Luis “Zimad” Lamboy – South Bronx-born in 1965, catalog image

– Meres One

SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 55

Ailene Fields’ Plea for Sanity and the Pure of Heart

Victor Forbes, Ailene Fields at CFM Gallery

Baba Yaga Eats Andy Warhol

Baba Yaga Eats:

Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Yves Klein, Robert Gober, Maurizio Cattelan, Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali, Claes Oldenberg, Rothko, Wolfgang Laib, Edvard Munch, James Turrell, Richard Serra, Fernando Botero, Christo, John Chamberlain, Andres Serrano with Baba Yaga and Baba Yaga’s Day Off.

An Homage to Mediocrity and Hype

Please contact us for a private personal viewing of

Ailene Fields “A Plea for Sanity”

in Chelsea, New York City. These bronze sculptures, four years in the making, are a commentary about the art world.

Leo Feroleto

Director CFM Gallery Chelsea/Six Summit Gallery/Fields Studios 917-573-0029 director@sixsummitgallery.com Page 56 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

I am a storyteller... in my childhood, one of the stories I was most taken with — and afraid of — was that of Baba Yaga, a witch and nature spirit of the forest of Eastern Europe, the place of my ancestors. I have always thought of myself as a child of the forest. Baba lived in this forest that I loved. As a child, I wanted to be worthy of the magical gifts she gave to heroes and the pure of‐heart. I did not want to be foolish nor unworthy, and eaten by this force of nature. As a sculptor, having attempted to capture the essence of many other tales, I always wanted to pay homage to Baba’s earth-mother wisdom. Finally, after many years, I sculpted her house to represent her power. Shortly thereafter, while sitting with Neil Zukerman (whose CFM Gallery has represented my work for many years) discussing the state of the art world in general I said, “Baba should eat everyone!” and so began this series of works that I hope examines and illuminates what I believe is terribly wrong with the business of art. Leo Feroleto will represent the collection. My hope is that after Baba’s finished eating, there will be more room in the forest for those who are pure of heart. This 19 sculpture series is meant to take the ‘art worldlings’ to task for their irresponsible behavior. It is to visualize the stupidity and lack of responsibility in the current art world that is foisting mediocre ‘shtick’ upon the public and calling it art - the hype being more important than the work being lauded. — Ailene Fields

The Definition of Art, or What is Art? A Diatribe By Neil Zukerman

Let’s begin with an unassailable definition. Art is Communication. The artist wishes to communicate something to the viewer and the viewer wants to understand what that message is. It is this writer's opinion that this definition strips the question, “What is Art?” to its essence. For obvious reasons the academics like to put everything into categories. It is easier to study assigned groupings then to recognize and address differences. Fortunately, however, artists come in all shapes and sizes as well as engender art in all shapes and sizes. They, by definition, can't be categorized. Many years ago, in my youth, a new denizen of "New York City" (!), I paid my hard-earned $2.50 and entered, for the only time in my life, the vaunted Whitney Museum. The first thing that greeted me was a 12' x 12' room, painted all white; walls, floor and ceiling. In the far corner I spied 6 bricks in a row. Curiosity being my driving force, I went over and looked at the tag. “6 Bricks in a Row.”!!! I turned around, walked out and have never again given them any of my money - or respect. The point of the story is that I do not accept, and will not accept, that six bricks in a row is anything more (or less) than 6 bricks in a row. I don't care what the critics, gallery owners or museum directors decree. When assaulted by a self-important 'expert' with the supercilious, continued on page 58

Once Upon A Time

ith a wit sharper than the business end of a carbide-tipped chisel and an eye slightly jaundiced by a life-time of dealing with artworldings who refuse to see, Ailene Fields (some four decades into a prolific and spectacular career) has carved out her place in the annals of art history. Let me put it this way: Ailene Fields is the most talented and creative person I have ever met in the art area and her body of work (readily visible in her monograph Out of the Nowhere, Into the Here) continues to, with a nod to Clyde Frazier, abound and astound. Fine Art Magazine Publisher Jamie Ellin Forbes recalls her initial encounter with the artist. “I met Ailene for the first time in the mid-1980s when she was exhibiting her sculptures at an international art fair. While I was walking the aisles at the event, the mystique and alchemy of these enlivened works caught my eye. Approaching the stone and bronze creations, I noticed that old mythic friends had come into being, accompanied by new imaginative creatures and animals imbued with the possibilities of unfettered imagination. Gathered together and arranged for presentation, these sculptures as abstracted symbolic figurative bronzes and works done in stone impressed me as masterful artistic compositions. “I can still remember the Ailene standing in her booth, connected to the atmosphere she and they created. I walked toward her to introduce myself, as if the muses had called me to witness the parade provided by the cornucopia of an imagination laid out for display. Halcyon, Leda and Cassandra may have been among the early works I was viewing. For the moment I was drawn into each one, participating in a symbiotic creative event between artist, artwork and art appreciator. As if they had risen from the common ground of universal dreamscape, the sculptures came to life. Bronze and stone rooted in classical style and form became a composite of whimsy and elegance molded together — the expression of her line dancing as each piece spoke to the fancy of my own imagination. Personalizing her accented universal vision of metaphor is the defining genius of Ailene Fields, which she couples with uncanny ability to breathe animation into the inanimate form. I was mesmerized.” Just when you think there are no more worlds for her to conquer, Ailene comes up with a doozy — some kind of structure prancing about on chicken legs. It turns out to be her take on Baba Yaga, a witch from the fairy tales of her childhood. What better commentary on today’s art/commerce conundrum than a series of sculptures offering up the giants of creativity as lunch meat for the nature spirit of the forest. So began four years of work that sheds light on what is truly happening in today’s market place. It’s a mean situation with art advisors flaunting the next big thing, or the new wave, or this movement or that hot spot. C’est la vie, you might say, and go back to the studio and just do what you have been doing all these years, but not Ailene. With a body of work that will one day reach 1,000 pieces, Ailene is at the point where her work is her play and the result is creativity-gone-wild. It is never-ending creativity in which a universe is built that waits to be inhabited by her imagination, upon which there are seemingly no restraints.

Baba Yaga Eats Claes Oldenburg

Bacchus SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 57

“it is great because no one has ever done that before” or “He [sic] was the first person to do it.” My response is, unless it was actually something that warranted being done, “why did they bother?” Different to be different is only different. It is not art! It’s my opinion that the elevation of mediocrity and empty expression posing as art does nothing so much as turn off the general public to the true challenges and enjoyment that Art could afford them. They are constantly being told, “Oh, you don't have the necessary (fillin-the-blank) to understand this,” Not being assertive or educated enough or too polite to reply, “Bull----,” the masses are then excluded . . . and another club is created. Think about it. Clubs are formed, usually by people who were excluded by another club, so that they can then find someone to exclude from their club. If someone does not understand what they are looking at; if someone needs a written explanation as to what they are looking at; they are not the one who is deficient, it is, in the end, the artist who did not successfully communicate. Maybe someday there will be different words to differentiate between ‘good’ artists and ‘bad’ artists. The word ‘artist’ will apply to only those who actually not only have something to say, but also have the skills to say it effectively. One without the other is useless. Whether it is music, visual art, dance, the written word, or some other form of communication, if the audience does not understand it intellectually, viscerally or emotionally, it is the artist who has failed, not the audience. Andy Warhol saw this more clearly than any other artist of his generation. When the pundits started to eulogize his tongue-in-cheek, amusing pastiches and turn them into a “new movement in art,” he consciously started pushing the envelope to see just how far the ‘art worldlings’ - thank you Tom Wolfe for the phrase - would go in their fervor to show how they ‘knew’ and everyone else “just didn’t understand.” Ronnie Cutrone’s pissing on paintings was not “a social statePage 58 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

Coy Gryphon

ment” or even a “pushing of mores.” It was Warhol seeing how far he could go in his quest to make fun of the new art establishment. He was waiting for them to get the joke. They didn’t. His final word on the subject was to leave a large bequest to the New York Academy of Art with the proviso that they must continue teaching figure drawing. Somewhere along the line, untalented people made it ‘in’ to be inept. Express how you feel! Throw the paint! You don't need to know how to use the materials! Just let it hang out! Throw an egg against a canvas and say, “That's how I feel!” No need to know technique. It is passé. Is it any wonder that more money is being spent to restore artwork from the 1950’s forward then is needed for all of the art work generated before that time? As a footnote to my Whitney Museum anecdote I add that when the ‘cutting -edge’ gallery exodus to Chelsea began in the ’90’s, I went to see what was going on. I stepped into Mary Boone’s gallery and was greeted with a 10' x 10' room all painted white; walls, floor, ceiling. In the corner there were nine bricks in a row. Forty years and three more bricks. Now that is what I call artistic growth! There has been a movement in the last 20 years, to, once again, venerate those artists who did not lose their way; who honed their skills; knew how to paint and properly prepare their painting surfaces. An atmosphere wherein Beauty is less and less being considered ‘kitsch’ and artists are beginning to stop feeling that there is something wrong with them because they are passionate about creating beauty. Although Art does not have to be beautiful to be art, it does need to be both meaningful and well executed. One without the other is not art, it is an opinion. It is currently only a grass-roots effort, but more and more people are starting to realize that the Emperor is naked and that the ‘experts’ are not as pure of heart as they would like us to believe. Maybe we do have the ability to judge for ourselves. Originally Published in Fine Art Magazine, Spring, 2006

Puss N Boots

A Wonderful Tale

Velveteen Rabbit

Sanctum Porta SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 59

Bob Romano, David DeVault, Steve Zaluski, Tom Cardoza, Bert Seides hanging Zaluski sculpture at the gift shop barn at the landmark Havens Homestead

Ketcham Inn Foundation Launches SunStorm Arts & Cultural Center

ert Seides, President and CEO of the Ketcham Inn Foundation, recently announced the formation of two important cultural institutions on the landmark premises that house the historic Terry Ketcham Inn, an important stop on the Manhattan-to-Montauk stage coach route dating back to pre-colonial times: the SunStorm Arts & Cultural Center and The Museum of Fine Art, Long Island. “With the formation of these two new and exciting organizations, we are expanding our mission exponentially to create what will be a meeting place and headquarters for a wide variety of arts programs that will be educational, practical, entertaining and uplifting,” commented Mr. Seides. “Our Director, Jamie Ellin Forbes, brings a life-time of participation in the arts on Long Island that began with the formation of SunStorm, Long Island’s Newspaper of the Arts in 1975 which has grown to the internationally recognized glossy Fine Art Magazine that has never lost touch with its Long Island roots. The center will also be the new home of the Jamie Forbes Gallery.” Mr. Seides has established the deep respect of the historical museum and foundation-based communities during his 26 year tenure, which is still going strong. The Ketcham Inn Foundation, Inc. interprets over 300 years of history on the South Shore of Long Island. Founded in 1989, the Foundation's mission is to restore the Terry-Ketcham Inn, former stagecoach stop between Manhattan and Sag Harbor during the 18th century, and open it as a Living History Museum and Cultural Center for our community and future generations to enjoy The Ketcham Inn restoration project, still a work-in-progress, opened to the public Page 60 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

Bert Seides and Marilyn Goldberg of Museum Masters International at historic Ketcham Inn

in 2015 and hosts a myriad of activities in the landmark building and grounds — everything from historical re-enactments replete with colonial style feasts to classic car shows. The SunStorm Arts and Cultural Center’s premiere exhibition featured noted sculptors Steve Zaluski and Brian Wasarhaley along with artists Isack Kousnsky, Michele Bramlett, Constantin Bokov and photographs by Jamie Forbes. Working tirelessly with extreme dedication, Mr. Seides has attained support from The Robert David Lion Gardner Foundation; The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation; Suffolk County Real Estate; Suffolk County Parks, National Trust and the Preservation League of New York State. “Since our inception in 1975, we have always had the vision of developing a full spectrum arts center that reflects the dynamics of our magazine,” commented Ms. Forbes, a long-time resident of Center Moriches. In partnership with Victor Forbes, co-founder of SunStorm and it’s parent company, SunStorm Arts Publishing Co.,

Inc., Ms. Forbes directed a series of art galleries on Long Island, beginning in 1977 at Hicksville’s Mid Island Plaza. Most recently, the duo operated a gallery in Southampton. They also coordinated The Nassau County Celebration of the Arts in the early 1980s, which featured a wealth of cultural activity over a three day span at the Nassau Museum’s 140 acre grounds. For their activities and participation in Long Island’s cultural activities, they received awards and citations from both Nassau and Suffolk counties as well as the Long Island Parks and Recreation commission. Additionally, SunStorm’s printing division was recognized on numerous occasions by the Long Island Graphic Arts Association for quality printing. “Our new affiliation now allows us to present a world class museum on the premises that will expand on our current mission, which is to restore and maintain the HavensTerry-Ketcham Inn as a House-Museum of 18th Century Life in the Moriches Bay Area,” continues Mr. Seides. “With Jamie Ellin Forbes’ experience as a museum director and curator of exhibitions of major international importance, the expansion and development of our museum, under her guidance, will make the Ketcham Inn a formidable stop on Long Island’s museum trail. Development of programs and projects is currently underway for the Summer 2016 season and beyond that will include exciting events and exhibitions to attract a wide range of visitors to our historic locale and certainly boost interest in the historic and beautiful Center Moriches region, a few short miles from the Hamptons.” For further information contact: Jamie Ellin Forbes (631) 339-0152 or Bert Seides (631) 878-1855 or visit www.ketchaminn.org

MICHELE BRAMLETT

Puppy Lullabye, illustration from The Sweetest Way Home

Born in Ventura, California, Michele Bramlett has been painting for as long as she can remember. She is the eldest daughter of Delaney Bramlett of Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, a soul-powered rock & roll group from the late 60s, early 70s, and Patty Stanley, an amazing wood carver/folk artist. A third generation born Cherokee (Tsalagi),

STEVE ZALUSKI

“I love to experiment and to create art never seen before … to be an original.” I was born in Amityville, NY on Oct. 17,1952, on a colorful day and I have strived to bring more color to the world through my art ever since, beginning with paintings and later painted, welded aluminum, kinetic sculptures. I graduated from W. Babylon High School in 1970 with honors and a four year Regents scholarship which I used to get my BA from SUNY@ Stony Brook in 1974. I studied engineering, psychology, sociology, life drawing, painting, metal sculpture and video. I love the ocean and bay here on Long Island where I swim, fish, sail and surf in the saltwater. I've explored the coasts of America, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Australia and Fiji. My first experiments with painting were expressionistic seascapes, concentrating on the drama of lights, darks and moods. I sold them at local galleries and on Fire Island. After studying painting with Pop artist Malcolm Morley at Stony Brook, I experimented with abstract art and conceptual work as well. While sharing studio space with another sculptor, I learned how to weld and fabricate sculpture in aluminum, bronze and stainless steel. I’ve exhibited my art at many galleries across America, for the last 40 years and in Hong Kong, too and created simplified human figures to express my celebration of life, they move with the wind in harmony…geometric abstracts and free flowing improvised shapes also move with the wind. I play harmonica and improvise songs while I roll inside the “SPHERE OF HOPE” at art fairs around the country, Canada and in parades, bringing entertainment to the art world, performance art. I have over 30 videos on Youtube of my adventures with the sphere. My creations are all over the world and grace many homes, businesses, libraries, shopping malls, night clubs, corporations, hospitals and medical centers, as they are spiritually uplifting, happy, fun! Collectors include; NIKE, AT&T, Pfizer, Astra Zeneca, Bank of America, Citadel Equities, Carlisle Capital.. Robert Wood Johnson Memorial Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Jack Welch and Robert Wise.

Cover illustration for Victor Forbes’ children’s book The Sweetest Way Home, acrylic on board, 18" x 18"

she is strongly influenced by her own Native American culture. “I have a desire to communicate to others the beauty of our world, the hope for oneness, the promise of love, and the joy of Spirit. I know as Human Beings we have a huge responsibility. We have been appointed keepers of Earth and all It’s inhabitants, and I believe from Aboriginal cultures and the sweet song of Spirit we can learn to live in balance.” Visit Michele on Facebook for her latest music and art news.

Steve Zaluski SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 61

BRIAN WASARHALEY

Brian Wasarhaley received a BFA from Stony Brook University. During his final year at Stony Brook, he began working at the Joel Meisner & Company Fine Art Bronze Casting Foundry, which later became Elliot Gantz & Company. Over the course of the next several years, Brian rose to the position of General Manager of the production and finishing operations at the foundry. During that time he worked with many distinguished artists such as George Gach, Frederick Hart, and Joel Perlman. During his 39 year career Brian has used his talents to work with these artists to achieve their vision in bronze and other medium. Today, Brian is using his skills and artistry to fulfill his personal desire of creating unique sculptures of his own. He is currently using his skills to create vibrant and exciting welded steel sculptures in abstract and figurative ways. Brian resides in Huntington with his wife Judie.

ISACK KOUSNSKY

Isack Kousnsky is the founder of IAZ Art Gallery in NYC. Kousnsky was born in Haifa, Israel in the nineteen fifties. Upon moving to New York in the early eighties, Kousnsky joined the burgeoning downtown art scene in the East Village. Today Kousnsky is a well-known artist in the Florida and New York art community. Isack’s artwork is praised, collected and published in magazines such as: Town & Country, Home & Design, Fine Art and many others. His work has also appeared on film and television, such as Oliver Stone’s Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps & The Style Network.

JAMIE ELLIN FORBES

SEAGULL, Jamie Ellin Forbes, photograph face-mounted on acrylic with Black sintra backing on moab metallic pearl paper, 8” x 12” Page 62 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

Born on Long Island, Jamie Ellin Forbes considers herself a “Backyard Portrait Environmentalist. My pictures are of creatures that fly, many times are endangered or rescued. Animals and insects become subjects within the portrait snapped. I celebrate my experience time spent observing them. When shooting, I seek my subjects quiet response, their permission to capture. When possible, I make eye contact to lock in to the now of the moment’s energy to capture the life force, the beauty of the Zen now. As co-owner and co-founder of SunStorm Arts Publishing Co. since 1975 and Publisher of Fine Art Magazine, I have exhibited and displayed art worldwide at international venues in London, Cannes, Paris, Geneva, Nice, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago as well as in the Hamptons and New York City.

Sculptor Steve Zaluski with Jamie Ellin Forbes, Director of the SunStorm Arts & Cultural Center at premiere exhibition at the Ketcham Inn Foundation

Scott and Bonnie Bredes

Brian and Judie Wasarhaley

Bert Seides, President of the Ketchanm Inn Foundation with artist Isack Kousnsky

Carol Vallone, Bert Siedes

Anatoli Kharlanov and Isack Kousnsky relax after hanging the exhibition

Noted Soho artist of yore, Constantin Bokov, was remembered with his Clock, and other works. SunStorm/Fine Art â&#x20AC;˘ Summer 2016 â&#x20AC;˘ Page 63

Hot Pink Marilyn (2014), 1.5 H x 1 W’ & larger sizes-”Stars’ Angels’ Series”-Gilda Oliver Digital Art Prints/Paintings/Sculpture

GILDA OLIVER digital paintings and prints

Lurie Gallery

2736 S La Cienega Blvd, Culver City, CA 90034 www.luriegallery.com

Santa Fe CVB Convention Center, home of Art Santa Fe

Art Santa Fe Returns for 16th Year

Holy Fire-Holy Water by Rhett Lynch

Art Santa Fe ( July 7-10, 2016) is an annual four-day gathering of exceptional artists and galleries from around the world exploring top-notch modern and contemporary art in Santa Fe, the second largest art market in the United States. The juried contemporary art show provides a unique opportunity for exhibitors and attendees alike to honor the region’s deeply rooted cultural traditions while launching into the future with cutting-edge artwork and inspiring events. Art Santa Fe has over 15 years of experience and was ranked fourth in a national USA Today 10 Best Reader’s Choice Award contest for “Best U.S. Art Festival” in 2015. The Opening Night VIP Party is Thursday, July 7, 5 p.m. – 9 p.m. For more information, visit www.artsantafe.com. Page 66 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

Siri Hollander gets a sculpture ready for Art Santa Fe, courtesy Redwood Media Group

About Redwood Media Group Since 2009, Redwood Media Group (RMG) has been revolutionizing the global fine art community by helping artists and gallery owners grow their businesses through fine art exhibitions and publications, art business education, mentoring, marketing, and social media. Today, RMG owns and operates six fine art shows: Artexpo New York, Art San Diego, Spectrum Indian Wells, Spectrum Miami, Art Santa Fe, and Red Dot Art Fair. Artexpo New York, the world’s largest fine art trade show attracts more than 30,000 art enthusiasts every year, including 4,500 industry buyers. Spectrum Miami and RMG’s newest acquisition, Red Dot Art Fair, take place during Miami Art Week, an annual attraction that draws over 80,000 art collectors to the city. Over the past seven years, RMG has welcomed hundreds of thousands of visitors to their events, sold millions of dollars' worth of art, and helped thousands of unrepresented and established artists launch or grow their careers. www.redwoodmg.com

The ArtHamptons scene, 2015

Showcasing work from emerging artists and modern masters presented by more than 50 art galleries from around the world, Art Hamptons kicks off the summer season with an Opening Night VIP Preview and reception on Thursday, June 23. The fair runs through Sunday, June 26. As the region’s original and longestrunning art fair, Art Hamptons returns to the private estate grounds of Maria and Kenneth Fishel in Bridgehampton for its 9th edition. The Opening Night Preview benefits both LongHouse Reserve and the Samuel Waxman Cancer Foundation. The fair is set to present a series of VIP events, special programming, and panel discussions, as well as a selection of leading galleries from the US and around the world, showcasing artwork from emerging artists and modern masters alike. http://www.arthamptons.com/

Gillian Hyland, The Unknown, 2015, photography on Diasec, represented by Galerie Bruno Massa

Hannah Yata (detail) Haven Gallery

The longest-standing art fair in the Hamptons

Andrea Kowch (detail) RJD Gallery SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 67

Hamptons Contemporary Design+Décor Fair A Stunning Success

Elks Fairground in Southampton, site of Hamptons Contemporary Design+Décor Fair

The first ever luxury design show staged on the East End James DeMartis, Artisan Designer: “It has been fantastic! It has proved to be a stunning success, as thousands flocked June 3-5 to been very busy, and I think for the first ever event of its kind here it the inaugural Hamptons Contemporary Design+Décor Fair at the has been a huge success. I am very happy to be here!” Elks Fairground in Southampton. Literally tens of millions of dollars of design and décor products The brainchild of art fair guru Rick Friedman, attendees had the were on display including items as unique as a million dollar Steinway opportunity to experience the latest in offered by Sonny’s Art Case Pianos to a state-of-the-art luxury home décor from $65,000 Palm fossil wall hanging from both national and international brands to the Green River Stone Company. one-of-a-kind artisan pieces. An eclectic Hamptons Contemporary mix of over 160 exhibitors in the 55,000 c o n n e c t e d f e l l ow d e s i g n t r a d e sq. ft. interior/exterior pavilion wowed professionals while offering the the capacity crowds with everything opportunity for exhibitors to reach local related to both indoor and outdoor East End business owners with many of living from furniture to appliances, rugs them successfully placing their products to window treatments, billiard tables to and services for the first time in the home theater innovations, landscaping coveted Hamptons luxury marketplace. alternatives to luxury patio solutions, and For example, Brooklyn based Erikson so much more. Aesthetics will be the featured furniture Friedman was thrilled with both designer in the display windows of the the success of and turnout at the fair. uber-popular Sylvester & Co. on Main “I am very pleased that thousands of Street in Sag Harbor this summer. Hamptonites benefited from products With the June 3rd ribbon cutting that enhanced the beautification of their of the first luxury design fair ever held estates, and we see the broader approach in the Hamptons by Rick Friedman, Cindy Lou Wakefield & Hampton Contemporary Founder of living with art as a trend in 2016 and who was joined by Southampton Town and CEO Rick Friedman thereafter. It was exhilarating for me to Supervisor Jay Scheiderman, ARF Board hear ‘Wow!’ and ‘Look at that!’ uttered so often by fairgoers as they Member Alex Papachristidis, and Southampton School District strolled the aisles. Our goal was to pack as much shock and awe into Superintendent Dr. Nicolas Dyno (Co-Founder of Hamptons the Southampton design pavilion as possible and we succeeded.” Contemporary’s other designated charity the Southampton Exhibitor testimonials certainly supported Friedman’s Education Foundation), the 1,250+ opening night attendees walked assessment and enthusiasm as numerous design professionals shared into a fair of unmatched proportions and absolutely first class style, their experiences at the fair: even by Hamptons standards. Doug Nappi of Dragonfly Landscape Design: “It is going very The Opening Night Preview was hosted by Architectural Digest well! We have made a lot of connections, have a lot of leads, and have to benefit the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons (ARF). The AD meetings already scheduled. I do not know how you could ask for more!” host committee included luminaries of the design world including Cristiano Ghiazza of Eurotrend Furniture: “The fair has Jonathan Adler & Simon Doonan, Chesie Breen, Alexa Hampton, over-exceeded our expectations! The crowds have been great, the Celerie Kemble, Scott Nelson, Ann & John Pyne, Elizabeth Pyne, organization has been fantastic! It has been great and we look forward Vicente Wolf, and Thom Filicia, who adopted a dog from the ARF to next year.” Mobile Adoption Trailer that was onsite at the fair. The evening Gary Ciuffo of Ciuffo Cabinetry: “I think it is a wonderful event. included a silent auction that continued throughout the fair, featuring It brought the right people to the table!” a limited edition lithograph by James Rosenquist, along with other Elizabeth Goldfeder of Reflectel: “We have had a tremendous donations from select exhibitors, to benefit ARF. response, it has been very, very positive. We are very happy!” Other notables in attendance included Cindy Lou Wakefield, Page 68 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

Animal Rescue Fund (ARF) to the rescue. ARF’s Mobile Adoption Trailer was onsite at the fair. ARF actively rescues cats and dogs, provides quality care and offers sanctuary until loving homes can be found. Phone: 631-537-0400; Email: info@arfhamptons.org

Cousins Jeff & Brian Roeder of Blatt Billards.

Rick Friedman, Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Scheiderman, Dr. Nicolas Dyno

actress Tina Louise & Rob Florio, AD Publisher Giulio Capua, Douglas Elliman Chairman Howard Lorber, Frank & Bonnie Lautenberg, art dealer Arne Glimcher, designer Marshall Watson, HC&G power ladies Marianne Howatson and Pamela Eldridge, Dr. Lewis Feder, Irma & Ken Herzog, Dede & Shane Gotthelf, Cheri Kaufman & Bill Schlight, Jesse Nash, Ilona & Jeff Roth, Roberta & Edgar von Schlossberg and Ziel & Helene Feldman, among numerous others. Guests were entertained by the spins of DJ Marg and feted with delights by Cheffe Collette of the Inn Spot on the Bay. Along with cocktails and champagne, the evening featured Robert DiNiro’s endorsed VDKA 6100 and Cheech Marin’s Tres Papalote Mezcal, among other luxury spirit brands like The Balvenie Single Malt Scotch in vertical tastings and Brinley Gold Shipwreck Rum. Highlights of the Fair were Regional Media S ponsor HC&G Magazine ’s (Hamptons Cottages & Gardens) 15th Anniversary Celebration at their stunning

PHOTOS BY JAMIE ELLIN FORBES

Douglas MacKaye Harrington with Alan & Joy Marks

lounge booth. The American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) Outdoor Lounge was the destination for the Beach Magazine VIP Reception featuring Roxine Brown of Harmonia, Inc. discussing the use of color and travel as inspiration and local terrain and other definers as guides to a plan for garden design. Also in their lounge, the ASID held 30-minute Shop Talk “Hamptons Summer Design Trends” roundtable discussions throughout the weekend. 25A Magazine hosted a “Design Secrets” panel discussion at their booth that was moderated by the magazine’s Publisher & CEO Chase Backer and included Real Housewives of NYC star and Madame Paulette owner John Mahdessian, lifestyle expert Tracy Stern, and “Million Dollar Contractor” TV Star Stephen Fanuka. There was also a fabulous after-party hosted by Long Island Pulse at the Southampton Social Club. Also ongoing throughout the fair’s weekend schedule was the Sylvester & Co. partnership with Pointed Leaf Press to bring in world-renowned authors in design and

architecture for special book signing events at their booth. The closing event of the fair was the Coming Home Charity Party in celebration of the Hamptons Contemporary suppor ted non-profit S outhampton Education Foundation, which provides thirdparty financial support for scholarships and other valuable programs for the students and educators in the Southampton community. The event included a limited edition signed screen-print by Larry Rivers for auction and donated by Fair Founder Rick Friedman. The Hamptons Contemporar y Design+Décor Fair has undoubtedly raised the bar for all Hamptons summer fairs in style, size, and programming. As founder Rick Friedman noted, “With our inaugural fair, Hamptons Contemporary has established the Hamptons as a Mecca for design, and the fair is now being internationally recognized and evaluated by luxury brands and esteemed design and décor professionals around the world. http://www.hamptonscontemporary.com/

“Give me the luxuries in life and I will willingly do without the necessities.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 69

Art Miami Launches New Palm Beach Fair City of West Palm Beach Unanimously Approves A Three Year Commitment To Host Fair. Residents and Visiting Collectors Now Have The Opportunity To Acquire Investment Quality Blue Chip Contemporary and Post War Works of Art from 60 Top International Galleries One day after receiving a unanimous vote of confidence from the City of West Palm Beach Commissioners, the ownership team of Art Miami announced the launch of the Palm Beach Modern and Contemporary Art Fair. The City of West Palm Beach is the Official Host City of the Fair and has granted the Art Miami group a three-year term on the city’s Tent Site to produce the event. The Palm Beac h Moder n and Contemporary Fair which will kick off the Art Fair season by being first in the market, and will run from January 12-15, 2017. The VIP Private Preview will take place on Thursday January 12th and will benefit a local charity to be announced at a later date. The ownership team of the Palm Beach Modern and Contemporary Fair is committed to launching and producing a new world-class art fair in West Palm Beach during the height of high season to fill a current void in the Palm Beach collecting scene. “We are extremely thankful to City of West Palm Beach Mayor Jeri Muoio and the city’s Commission for their unanimous support. We are confident that the Palm Beach Modern and Contemporary Fair will be a long–term positive force for local businesses, residents, and the cultural landscape of the region. We are excited about calling downtown West Palm Beach home for our network of leading international galleries and international collectors to interact in an intimate environment to acquire the very best works from the 20th and 21st centuries during the height of season,” said Nick Korniloff Palm Beach Modern and Contemporary Founder and Partner. “We are thrilled the city of West Palm Beach will be the Host City and bring the Art Miami quality, brand, style and ambience this upcoming January. Hosting a fair of this caliber falls in line with the City’s continued initiatives around cultural events that provide a positive impact for the entire community,” said Mayor Jeri Muoio. For marketing, sponsorship or partnership opportunities, please contact Pamela Cohen, 561-322-5611 or pamela@art-miami.com. Page 70 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

Angela Gram White Lion (2015) courtesy of New York Academy of Art. The “Call of the Wild" exhibit will feature drawings, paintings and sculptures by academy alumni that focus on the natural world and the animal kingdom and is co-curated by David Kratz and Brooke Shields.

Brooke Shields & Kevin O'Leary Present Unique Exhibitions at ArtSouthampton

After a phenomenally successful fourth edition, Art Southampton, the premier international contemporary and modern art fair in the Hamptons, will return July 7 – 11, at the height of the summer social and cultural season. The elegant, air conditioned Pavilion will showcase emergent, cutting edge and modern works, along with a focus on design, paintings, photography, prints, drawings, video art, sculpture, and indoor and outdoor curated projects of the highest quality. The fair quickly has become the ‘can’t miss’ event of the summer for all serious collectors, museum Art Southampton, the season’s most acclaimed contemporary and modern art fair, will celebrate its fifth installment on the grounds of Nova's Ark Project (60 Millstone Road, Bridgehampton, NY ) beginning July 7thand continuing through the 11th.Presented by Art Miami, this edition of the annual fair will feature over 70 prominent international galleries and showcase tens of millions of dollars’ worth of the finest museum quality art, sculpture, and photography from the 20thand 21stcenturies. The 2016 fair kicks-off with a VIP Preview Party, which will benefit the Parrish Art Museum and Southampton Hospital, on Thursday evening. Prominent collectors, curators, designers and decorators will have a sneak peak at this year’s offerings, which include blue chip modern and contemporary works from iconic artists and the emerging, mid-career, Post War and Pop eras. The fair also will highlight some of the East End's most prolific past and present artists, including Perry Burns, Eric Fischl, Raymond Hendler, Jeff Muhs, Charlotte Park, Susan Vecsey and Esteban Vicente. Brooke Shields w ill co-curate The New York Academy of Art exhibition, Call of the Wild, w ith Academy President David Kratz. The show will feature paintings and sculptures by academy alumni that focus on the natural world and the animal kingdom. Shark Tank host Kevin O’Leary w ill be on hand opening night to introduce his contemporary photography exhibition Irreconcilable Images, presented by Gallery Valentine. S ales of O’Leary’s photographs in the curated installation will benefit the Perry J. Cohen Foundation and aspiring Teenage Entrepreneurs. For further information about all the Art Miami fairs (including ArtSouthampton), visit http://www.artmiamifair.com/

Monumental Quan, Palace Hotel, New York City

Carole Feuerman’s “Best Year Yet” “This is my best year ever,” said Carole A. Feuerman in a recent interview with Fine Art publisher Jamie Ellin Forbes, a long-time admirer of Ms. Feuerman’s work dating back to the 1980s when she was showing in Soho at Henoch Gallery and working out of her Roslyn, Long Island studio which was more akin to a laboratory than an atelier. “I had more than five shows going simultaneously starting with the Venice Biennale. I selected a park on the Grand Canal to be like Feuerman Park with my sculptures on display. People seem to know me world wide,” she continued. “Simultaneous to this, I recently had a solo show on the waterfront in Hong Kong Harbor City, the largest shopping mall in Asia, sponsored the show with seven large sculptures sited where the Star Ferry comes in so thousands and thousands of people could see the sculpture from both sides of Hong Kong. They built a tremendous swimming pool with a video installation and three pieces were displayed in it. I had 50 interviews in two days and the show was covered worldwide by the Associated Press. I was amazed because I had never shown there before.”

By JAMIE ELLIN FORBES

After this show closed, it moved to a museum in Korea, about two and a half hours from Seoul for a group show on Hyper-realism where two galleries were devoted strictly to Carole’s pieces.

Anybody who knew Carole from the beginning as I did is not surprised by this great success. What I find fascinating is that the artwork is more stellar than ever. What gave you the drive to do this? “I have actually had a lot of challenges in life, starting from growing up in a dysfunctional family with a lot of mental illness, a bad marriage, sick children (now they’re well, thank God). My parents didn’t want to support my college career because they didn’t want to support my art. Then in 1999 I almost lost my hand. I had become so used to overcoming things struggling to achieve I was emotionally and mentally equipped to get through it and get ahead of it. I used these setbacks like a diving board, a jumping off point to go to the next level. I always had this feeling that nothing was going to stop me. I always look at my work as good but not as great as I can do. This is important to me, and maybe to other artists because if you think you have done something great, you may not as an artist seek to do something better.” You’re a risk taker and your work has done nothing but grow and it is better than ever. You keep stepping forward. SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 71

On view at C24 Gallery, Chelsea, New York City (Left to Right): Releve, 1981-2016, Oil on Resin, 80” x 26” x 28”; Leda and the Swan, 2015, Lacquer on Resin, 42” x 80” x 90”; Capri, Catalina, and Moran Tryptich, 2016, Diamond Dust Silkscreen on Canvas, 26” x 52” each; Monumental Quan, 2015, Painted Bronze and Stainless Steel, 67” x 60” x 43”

Hero and Leander, a solo exhibition featuring a new body of work by hyperrealist sculptor Carole A. Feuerman held the fort down at the new C24 gallery from the Art Miami New York show through the opening of the Hamptons art season. Hero and Leander is a Greek mythological story of Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite, who lived in a tower off a waterway and Leander, a young man from the opposite side of the strait. Leander fell in love with Hero and would swim every night across the waterway to be with her. Hero would light a lamp at the top of her tower to guide his way. Two new monumental bronze sculptures, Monumental Dancer, bronze, 16 feet high and Beyond the Golden Mean, bronze, 18 feet high, have been made expecially for this exhibition. Appearing behind these two significant sculptures is a thirty-foot interactive video called Wall of Water produced by Michelangelo Bastiani. Leda and the Swan, one of the highlights in the exhibition, returned from the 2015 Venice Biennale and was never before exhibited in the US. Outfitted in a 1920’s bathing suit with swarvoski crystals, the resin sculpture depicts a reinterpretation of the classic Greek tale of Leda. According to the myth, Zeus seduces Leda while disguised as a swan, and Leda bears Helen of Troy from this encounter. In Feuerman’s own words, the sculpture “embraces the eroticism associated with much of Greek mythology, while telling the story of deceit and treachery.” A featured sculp-ture is DurgaMa, inspired by the Hindu goddess Durga. The bronze figure sits in complete tranquility on a sacred lotus flower. She is the symbol of birth, rebirth and survival, which is a common theme present in much of Feuerman’s work. The lotus flower can live for over a thousand years and along with Durga’s universal powers, she can withstand all that the world throws her way. Feuerman’s works explore classicism while presenting common themes that occur in our everyday lives. The sculpPage 72 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

C24 Gallery guests with Michelangelo Bastiani interactive video

tures tell powerful stories are experiences the artist has encountered in her own life that she feels compelled to tell. One can relate to them as we all struggle to overcome similar personal obstacles. Evoking inward emotions, Feuerman invites the spectator to identify with the narrative they see before them. Swimming and water have fascinated her all of her life as she has always been captivated by how the water droplets form patterns over the skin.

Olympus, a portrait of USA gold medalist Lauren Perdue, showcases a hyper-real sculpture of the swimmer installed outside in a custom-designed lap pool by Carole. A. Feuerman

The Golden Mean - Peekskill NY SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 73

BORN TO PAINT

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

- Pablo Picasso

f “Child is Father to the Man”, as the saying goes, than Charles Carson, sire to the artist/ prodigy Anthony Yann Carson, has an interesting life ahead of him as his boy comes of age and begins to experience the rigors of a painter’s life. With no thought to the business of art at this point, his body of works are not youthful outbursts but wellthought out abstractions in color, form and composition that are far beyond his years. When Carson sent us these works for our opinion, our initial response was that of a positive nature, that they were strong, dynamic and rife with an abundance of energy and color. We did not know they were executed by the nine year-old son of an established master painter who is recognized around the world for his dynamic compositions for which the critics had to create a new expression: “Carsonism.” Young Yann embraces this tradition and has already produced a well-crafted collection that contains tangible elements that embrace the continuum of those who came before him in the context of art history and pave new ground as only an artist with a clean slate and Page 74 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

no formal knowledge can produce. For someone who has not yet lived a decade, the experiences in his father’s studio have already proven to be an education far beyond that any art school could provide. Sitting in his diaper, paint brush in hand, earnestly dabbing paint on his father’s wooden palette, Yann Anthony Carson gives the impression that even at a few months of age he had a confidence and understanding of what he was doing even then. As time progressed, his work took on a form of its own, original yet derivative. He picked up on the Carsonism quite naturally, of course, and this born talent manifests with his natural proclivity toward applying oil on canvas. The resulting abstractions indicate not only a promising future but a bright present. Certainly he will become an artist to be reckoned with but even today, at this age, we can enjoy and learn from his understanding of the depth of color and original blending of the color wheel into coherent expressions and renderings. In this young lad, we can see a strength and confidence that is as promising as it is rare. Thoughtful and thought-provoking paintings are the result . Born October 27, 2006, as an infant he was very observant and sensitive. From an early age, he loved playing with the colors and painting with brush and spatula, performing a multitude of gestures seeking inspiration from his father. “In his first month of

Napoléon, 12” x 10”

the image one can sense a three-pointed hat and a man of small stature with his hand concealed in his cloak. War-monger or national treasure, we are treated to an interpretation that allows us to decide for ourselves. Yann Carson takes us there, but the choice is ours. One wonders what he really thinks of his subject matter. In Poissons (below), for example, he offers his rendition and variation on one of his father’s favorite themes: the ocean. A few simple lines draw the fish out of the underwater background, perhaps coral reefs and vegetation make for not only a solid painting, but follow along the call for ecological initiatives begun by his father.

Abstrait, 60” x 30”, oil on canvas Abstrait, 60” x 30”, oil on canvas

life,” commented Charles, “he was fascinated by a framed mosaic I painted. Whenever he was at his table — the painting was in his direct line of view — one could sense the joy and good mood from his smile. This particular image aroused more curiosity, unlike other paintings that seemed only to bring him no response. In other words, from an early age, he had this desire in him, an admiration of and a fascination for the art.” In the 60 x 30 inch abstract (above), form, composition and color embrace each other fulfilling their harmonic mission with a comforting azure background, reminiscent of sea and sky with touches of reds, whites, greens and yellow to indicate the flow of energy, perhaps, from the sun to the verdant earth below, with a dark form central to the image that may be a mountain range or even the earth itself...or maybe not. Further along is a rendition of Napoleon, a venture into portraiture that shows the artist as historian. His take on the much-maligned yet heroic figure is as conflicted as the Emperor himself. Somewhere in

Poissons, 20”x 20” SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 75

Abstrait, 12’ x 10’, oil on canvas

In the abstract above, Yann explores an alternative range of colors and sentiment, using deep yellows to build a universe bursting with energy and ready to explode. Again, an element of peace, represented by the cyan form in the lower right speaks to, perhaps, the creation of the Universe and in the painting (right, young Carson takes a look into the fiery depths of dare I say it, hell. Flames are bursting from what seems like molten lava, but we are again soothed by a deep blue motif that offers hope. With À mon père (above right) the artist ventures into portraiture to create a beautiful image of a face — is it his or his father’s? — that emerges from a placid background of shimmering pinks, blues and oranges that convey a message of harmony, peace, comfort and hope. Yann has accompanied his father to art galleries, the major museums (Musée du Louvre, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Musée d’art De Marseille, Museum of Contemporary Art, Havana; Museum of Modern Art, Bogota, etc.) and numerous international art shows such as: Art Basel, Spectrum, Art Palm Beach, Art Miami, Artexpo in New York, Exhibition of Fine Art in Paris, the galas Academia XXI of the International Academy of Fine Arts of Quebec, which have definitely contributed to the development of his creativity and his passion for art. Page 76 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

À mon père , 12” x 10”, oil on canvas

Abstrait, 12” x 10”, Oil on canvas

Father and son at the Atelier, Paris, 2013

The pleasure of experienceing such enthusiasm enmeshed in a skill set far beyond his years is inspiring. The spirit of creativity lives on. It is more than refreshing to watch this little boy fervently conjuring beauty since his birth. We can be touched that such a youth can lead us to follow our own dreams, do our work as play and glorify the Spirit which has given us life with goodness and elegance unfettered by the horrors that abound. Hope is an ever-fleeting glimpse of perfection; perfection that can be found in a van Gogh brushtroke, a Ruthian swing with a baseball bat, a delicate stroke of chisel to stone or a thoughtful couplet that brings us nearer our destiny. Who is to say what the future holds for Yann Anthony Carson? Certainly we look forward to following him as he matures and develops and we are equally certain that if he continues along this path he will find himself in museums, galleries and textbooks. He is at work and at play in creativity and no critic can tell you what tomorrow may bring. —VICTOR BENNETT FORBES

Abstrait, 10” x 12”, oil on canvas SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 77

YANELIS REYNALDO CARSON

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Abstract - 36" x 36" - Oil on canvas

Abstract - 20" x 60" - Oil on canvas

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SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016 • Page 77

Paul "Bear" Bryant - Mighty Man of Valor

The Long Shadow Of Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant By Dr. E. Gaylon McCollough

JAMIE ELLIN FORBES PHOTO

Published by Compass Press, Gulf Shores, Alabama

One of my favorite things about art fairs is the opportunity to meet and make friends with a wide variety of folk. This once again happened at Artexpo New York when I came across Susan and Gaylon McCollough. Susan’s art work was interesting and powerful and her persona as a Southern belle was made even more interesting when I found out she was born in my home borough — The Land of the Bronx. She left there at the age of five when her family The sportswriter in the gym, moved to Alabama where she eventually met her husband, Coach Bryant, McCollough and teammate, 1964 De Witt Clinton HS, 1966 a world renown plastic surgeon. In speaking over the course of the weekend, I found out Susan was a teen-age beauty queen and Gaylon was the starting center on Alabama’s national champion football team — The Crimson Tide — with a star quarterback who would later become known as “Broadway Joe”, whose “guaranteed” Superbowl victory over the heavily favored Baltimore Colts cemented the NFL-AFL merger which defines American football as we know it today. Reminiscing with Gaylon about his life in sports, especially his closeness with Coach Bryant, brought to mind my salad days as Sports Editor of The Clinton News when I interviewed our own Doc Weidman, sans rubber hose, 1967 legendary coach, Doc Weidman. Doc was a strict disciplinarian over E. Gaylon McCollough, star center his three decades at the helm of a couple of Bronx high schools ( James Monroe and my alma mater De Witt Clinton) and was known for carrying a small rubber hose with which he would lovingly swat the butts of his charges who were not properly assuming their positions. It certainly made for good results as one of his Clinton teams went undefeated and unscored on! Gaylon told me about Bryant’s penchant for charging down from his command post high above the With my high school newspaper practice field when he felt the necessity to place his powerful boot of faculty advisor, Ada Chirles, now knowledge upon the seat of education of a slacking school boy athlete. 92, at the recent DWC Alumni dinner Doc, however, was very kind to me in our interview and my article about his retirement resonates to this day. I went on to independently publish and edit the 1968 DWC High School Football Yearbook in which I walked up and down Fordham Road and Jerome Avenue selling ads, wrote the articles and brought it all to a printer. I also learned about hard knocks when the teachers went on strike and half the football season was wiped out along with single copy sales of my product! ESPN could produce a different kind of Hard Knocks series about that event. Meeting the McColloughs brought all this into our conversation and I was excited to receive and Coach Bryant (front left) celebrates the 1964 National Championship read the good doctor’s book, an in-depth, inside look at one of American sports’ legendary figures. trophy with a group of his players: “Getting old just isn’t in his game plan,” writes Dr. McCollough in his intimate and loving Ray Perkins, Ray Ogden, Gaylon portrayal of his mentor. A noted plastic surgeon who was an Academic All American center on the McCollough and Joe Namath national champion team in 1964 (that featured his good friend Joe Willie Namath as star quarterback), the author brings us behind the scenes and into the ups, downs and machinations of this empire builder. A confidante of Bryant (who incidentally was not very fond of his “Bear” moniker), Dr. McCollough is uniquely qualified to write a revealing book about the University of Alabama’s football program and set the record straight regarding Bryant’s retirement from coaching and the process of replacing him with someone who could take over the reins after he relinquished power. In The Long Shadow, we come away with a greater appreciation for the enduring impact one man of vision can have on a team, a society and a country. We also see, from the inside, how troubling times ensued for the school when such a larger-than-life individual leaves an “abysmal vacuum” that can only be filled “if and when another legend emerges from the shadows.” In addition to playing for Bryant, Dr. McCollough had another interesting role in Coach Bryant’s life. He reports that Bear “liked making money almost as much as he did wining football games.” It was, according to the author, “another way to keep score in the Game of Life.” As the coach of some 300 triumphs, Bryant wanted to excel in that as well. However, as his legend grew, so did the lines in his face and as he was approaching Amos Alonzo Stagg’s magic number of 315 victories to ensure his place as the winning-est coach in Division 1 football history, offers poured in from Coca Cola and Ford to represent those companies in television commercials. The coach turned to his former player, who also happened to be listed among “The Best Doctors in America” and “America’s Top Plastic Surgeons” and asked him to perform a neck and face lift. This became a rather clandestine operation, but the Coach pulled through despite some health issues and went on to sell many sodas and automobiles. As Dr. McCollough aptly notes, everything he learned from his years under Bryant can be summed up in these tried and true words: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” The McColloughs at Artexpo Sounds a lot like the art business to this sportswriter. —VICTOR FORBES Page 79 • SunStorm/Fine Art • Summer 2016

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