Filed under: Announcement, Art Shows, White Rabbit, interview | Tags: Caitlin Hackett, Wilderness
Untitled, ball point pen, water color, colored pencil, micron pen and ebony pencil, 56.4×57.2″
We hope you have some time to swing by Caitlin Hackett’s exhibition, Wilderness, this Friday night. Caitlin hit the ground running since her graduation from Pratt last year, and we’re super pleased to be featuring her work at the White Rabbit for the month of February. All of her works are on our online gallery here as well.
Opening reception:
Friday, February 5th
7-10pm
White Rabbit
145 E. Houston (btw Eldridge and Forsyth)
On view until March 9
Caitlin was kind enough to chat with Danielle Ezzo about what makes her creatures come to life and what keeps her busy these days — take a peak:
DE- Tell us about what inspires you?
CH- I am inspired in equal parts by science and fantasy, though I have always been inspired by the natural world, and the struggles that surround it. As I child I personified every tree and cat and stone, giving it a story and a life of it’s own, weaving a fantastical world around me filled with anthropomorphic creatures. I grew up on the “lost coast” of northern California, in a small town in the redwood forest. Growing up surrounded by the natural world, hiking and camping amongst the ancient trees and the rugged coast, it was easy to believe in the fantastical myths of faeries and ghouls, and combine them with what my father taught me about natural ecosystems. Now I continue to be inspired by these same sources, as well as the conflicts between humans and animals that arise due to our constant juggling of resources and near ceaseless expansion.
DE- What is the story behind your anthropomorphic creatures? How closely related to mythology are they, if at all?
CH- Ever since I was a child I always drew animals, and often I would invent species, going into great detail to create fantastical ecosystems for them, explaining how each aspect of their body helped them to survive in whatever world they lived in. I based these invented creatures both on real animals such as seals and bears, and also on mythological creatures. Growing up I was also exposed to a lot of local mythology, because the area of California I grew up in was also the traditional home of the Wiyot tribe, amongst many others. When I create my creatures now they come straight out of my head and may or may not end up representing my original idea once on paper, but this flexibility and transience in ideas is part of what makes it so enjoyable to make these monsters, they are never the same and they never come out exactly as I planned, much like the real world. Although I do not specifically or intentionally reference any mythology in my work now, I have certainly be influenced by it throughout my life, and those influences certainly have an affect upon, and show up in, my drawings.
DE- What’s your process look like?
CH- I most often work on more than one piece at a time, usually several smaller pieces and one large, because the large drawings take so long to complete I often get bored with them and need to work on other pieces as I go in order to release new ideas. I prefer to draw on the floor, but for the large drawings I have to put them all a wall for most of the process, but usually I move them back and forth between the wall and the floor to work on them. When I start a drawing I usually have a rough idea of what I want, and when it’s a smaller piece I usually just start right in without sketches, and see where it takes me. with my large drawings I often do smaller, rough sketches first, just to map out the composition, before I go into the piece, although even then the final drawing often ends up quite different from the original sketch. I work mostly in ball point pen and water color, and when I start a small drawing I often start with the ballpoint pen right away, unless I think the idea is going to change in which case I start with pencil. For the large pieces I always do a light sketch in pencil first, then go into it with the pen and ink. The water color is the final step of each drawing, and is often the part which takes the longest, as the first layer of paint I put on usually looks awful.
DE- Some of your works are quite large and exceptionally detailed. How long does a piece like your untitled two-headed bird drawing (see above) take to complete?
CH- That drawing took about six months to complete, at times I would work on it every day, and when I started to hate it too much I would pull out another piece of paper and start another drawing until I felt like I could look at it again. Even after I thought I had finished this drawing, I wound up going back into it again with more color a few months later. It’s hard to say that any of my drawings are ever really finished, with all of them I feel like I could go back in and do more, but the average time for completion for these large drawings is between four and six months. Now that I work and uphold a studio career the time it takes to complete a large drawing has been extended even longer, I spend so much time looking at these drawings that they become part of my dreams!
DE- The relationship between humans and animals generally seems to be a very important theme for you. Tell us about that…
CH- The interactions between humankind and the natural world have always interested me, I am fascinated by the idea of balance and boundaries between humans and animals, and the way in which we form these boundaries. I grew up surrounded by nature and was greatly influenced by it, when I draw I can’t help but draw creatures, they are the forms that come most naturally to me. I can see animal forms in almost anything, and the textures of fur and scales and skin will appear on the paper whether I intended them to or not, I can’t escape my desire to draw animals, and in drawing them, explore my own relationship to them. It is the collaboration with the viewer that has also helped me to study the relationship between humans and animals using my work, because everyone who has seen my drawings has had a different reaction and brought up a different story, legend, or scientific fact about the animal represented on the paper. No one ever has the same view of the same creature, we alter the very identities of the animals we see based on our own perspectives, and it is this ability to warp the metaphysical identity of animals that I allude to in my drawings.
Masquerade; ball point pen, micron pen, gold ink, colored pencil and water color
Available as an affordable, limited edition print on rag paper. Each edition has been individually hand-altered by the artist. Please inquire for pricing.
DE- When did your appreciation for nature start?
CH- At a very young age, thanks to my parents, by the time I was two years old I had backpacked in the Rocky Mountains (or at least my father had carried my twin sister and I in his backpack through the rocky mountains). As a child I was obsessed with animals, when I was very little I thought I was a cat, and would run around on all fours through our house and backyard. I was taught to respect nature from a very young age, and spent my youth camping in the wilderness of California, playing on the rugged beaches of the north Pacific and exploring the many rivers that weave through the hills of Humboldt County. I cannot remember a time when I did not love the natural world or want to be a part of it.
DE- Many artists consider watercolor the hardest of all the painting mediums to work with. What are your impressions? Tips?
CH- Water color is certainly difficult to use at times, especially on a very large scale, I have to use 4 inch brushes to color in the back grounds of my larger drawings. I find water color to be relatively easy to use on a smaller scale, but it takes many layers of paint to color in my big drawings. I usually start with one layer of color and then build it up slowly, and the first layer of paint almost always looks terrible. The only tips I can really give are to have a lot of patience, and accept that it won’t look good right away! I love the luminosity of watercolor, and the way it reacts to the paper. I love working on paper, and watercolor suits the paper well, even if it’s challenging to work with at times.
DE- Do you have any pets, and do they ever take a role in your artwork?
CH- I have a cat in California, named after Mt. Shasta, he’s a giant tabby cat who my Dad and I found in a cardboard box in our town center when he was a kitten. Both of my room mates have cats which I helped them to get here in Brooklyn, one we adopted from the shelter when he was a kitten, the other I found on the side of the road and brought home last summer. I have always loved cats, and will no doubt be a crazy old cat lady some day! I am very interested in capturing textures in my drawings, and have furry pets has certainly been a good resource given how much fur I have in each drawing.
DE- Where can we see your work in 2010? Any exciting plans?
CH- The show at White Rabbit is the last one of seven shows that I’ve had since graduating from Pratt last May, currently I have no shows planned out after this one but hopefully that will change soon. I will have 10-16 drawings appearing in the sixth addition of the ColorInkBook, coming out this year though.
DE- Who are some of your favorite artists today?
CH- Some of my favorite artists are Walton Ford, Rune Olsen, Hannah Dougherty, Christopher Reiger, and Marlene McCarty.
Recently, Anagnorisis artist, Molly Bosley was featured in Gawker Media’s Gawker Artists here. It has also come to our attention that Steve Ellis, who showed with us in our Art of the Automobile group show back in September, was also recently snapped up by the popular online media hub.
Incidentally, Molly Crabapple is in there, too. But her artwork’s been popping up everywhere these days.
Filed under: Anagnorisis Picks, Announcement, Art Shows, Gallery | Tags: alternative processes, Dan Estabrook, exhibition, jacksonville, mixed media, museum of contemporary art, photography, salt prints
Remember “Black Waves” by the artist Dan Estabrook which graced the flyer for our exhibition, The Little Deaths? How could you forget? For the privileged who are Jacksonville locals please check out his show, Forever and Never, at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Florida open now through March 14th, 2010. Take a peak!
The Big Hand, 2006. watercolor and gouache on salt print. 14” x 11”
Filed under: Anagnorisis Picks, Announcement | Tags: gawker artists, molly bosley
We’re happy to see that Molly Bosley, who has participated in two of our exhibitions, is featured on the Gawker Media website Gawker Artists. Take a look and see!
She also has a brand spanking new website that you can peruse by clicking here.
detail of In the Aftermath, ballpoint pen, water color, colored pencil, ebony pencil and gesso; 56.4×67.2″
Anagnorisis Fine Arts is very excited to announce our upcoming exhibit of the work of Caitlin Hackett. This wonderful show will be on view from February 5th through March 9th. You can preview the work at our online gallery by clicking here. Please join us for the opening reception:
White Rabbit
145 East Houston Street
between Forsyth and Eldridge
New York, NY
F-Train to the Second Avenue Station
Friday, February 5th, 7-10pm
Artist’s Statement: I can still gallop on all fours. I don’t mean the usual crawl on hands and knees of childhood, what I mean is both hands and feet on the ground running, like a horse or a cat. I used to gallop up and down the hallways of my house inexhaustibly. It’s the ungainly but irresistible desire for the physical sensation of running, to feel the pull of the earth pound per pound. I wanted to touch the ground, to slide my hands over the body of it. For the same reason I am attracted to animals, and to bodies. Textures of fur, the ripple of muscles, the way the small bones in hands move like piano keys beneath the thin skin. This same desire to touch draws me to paper, every different tooth and the way each paper takes line, how watercolor paint can spill and bloom across the different surfaces.
With my art I question what is natural; are we (human beings) still a part of nature? If so, does that make all that we have created, cities, vehicles, factories, all technology, part of nature as well? As we move into an increasingly plastic, electronic, and robotic culture how can we define our own fundamental nature as the nature of the world around us changes and our metaphysical identity evolves into something beyond the human as an animal? As we separate from our animal nature, will we be able to still see and understand the importance of other animals and our relationship to them? As we are able to remove ourselves from our own physical bodies and come to experience life through the metaphysical, the digital, and the psychic, how will this distance from our own bodies and the physical experience of the world affect our relationship with nature and the way we see creatures who exist completely within their physical bodies and are defined by their physical needs?
Caitlin’s work is also in Anagnorisis’ Little Deaths group exhibit at Shadow’s Space gallery until mid-February.
Filed under: Art Shows
Sculpture of birds made out of old records by Paul Villinski
On New Years Eve, at the amazing loft party where Anagnorisis Fine Arts hung some of its artists’ work, I got word that my friend, artist Ted Reiderer, was putting together an art installation in the old Tower Records space on Broadway in NYC.
Ted, who I know from my stint with the Antagonist Movement not too long ago, creates sculptures, paintings and more using a wide variety of mediums. His work unfailingly centers around punk rock of the seventies and the cultural ramifications of such a movement. His work is intelligent and attractive. It’s aesthetic appeal is very modern with, perhaps, just a hint of pop.
The exhibit at Tower Records, Never Can Say Goodbye, is a wonderful idea for many reasons. Curated by Manon Slome of No Longer Empty, Steven Evans of the Dia Art Foundation and Asher Remy-Toledo also of No Longer Empty, it features work by multiple multimedia artists. Each work explores the ways our culture accessed music in the not-too-distant past. For many years Tower Records was the best place to go to buy music you needed for your collection no matter what genre or mode (they still sold cassettes years after CDs had become the norm). The place had five (?) floors and a multitude of eyecandy. This New York location closed down several years ago due to the proliferation of online sales, and, to make the closing more tragic, the entire building has sat unused ever since as if to rebel against the new ways of the world as much as it can.
In comes No Longer Empty to save the day. From the exhibit’s site:
Never Can Say Goodbye illuminates the economic and social changes caused by the emergence of the Internet as the dominant means of music distribution. In its heyday, Tower Records was sales central for indie and contemporary music, as well as a gathering place for musicians and music lovers. Today, in its place, is a virtual landscape without architecture, sales staff, and community traffic. Freely downloading selected songs have created an empty space where a music store once thrived.
As I mentioned, I knew I wasn’t going to make the opening party, but I did manage to get a sneak peek while they were still installing the show. Teds work, Never Records, “an installation complete with record bins, album covers, music posters and a performance stage” is interactive. As you flip through the records, you read through what could be lyrics split up amongst each cover design. I was also really excited about Paul Villinski’s sculpture of birds rising up above a pile of records (pictured above). Overall the show is crisp, intelligent and fun.
This show is one of those exhibits that merits a visit not only by any art lover, but also by all music lovers, New Yorkers and tourists alike. All will find something to love and enjoy. Those of you who frequented the store in its day will not only get an eyefull of great art, but will also have the chance to reminisce a bit.
There are several events attached to the exhibit including musical performances and a lecture. This show is not to be missed!! The exhibit which opened this past Friday, January 15th, will be up until February 13 (hours are Wed – Sun 12pm- 7pm). The old store, in case you don’t remember, is on the corner of Broadway and East 4th Street. More information can be found by clicking here.
Anagnorisis is pleased to invite you to its first show of 2010! You can view a preview of this exhibit online here. If you have any questions about the artist or his work, please let us know.
Hats and Evil, oil on canvas
Opening reception:
White Rabbit
145 East Houston St.
New York, NY
F-Train’s 2nd Ave Station
Friday January 8, 7-10pm
On view through Feb 2, 2010
Artist’s Statement: “My central motive when creating is to free myself from preconception and the tyranny of Meaning, i.e. the human impulse to categorize. I believe that painting should not merely express the artist but should ideally also allow the viewer to derive several unique interpretations and reactions whilst simultaneously freeing that viewer from the perceived obligation to discover the artist’s original intent; something that often even the artist does not or can not know. In short, Art says as much about the viewer as the it does about the Artist.”
Bio: Born on March 23, 1979 in Camaiore, a small town near the coast of the Tuscan province of Lucca in northern Italy, Luke Jackson’s family lived in the house that his father, renowned artist Harry Jackson, built in 1954. Luke’s high school education took place in Cody, Wyoming, Seattle, Washington, and Bath, Maine. He did his college foundation studies in Florence, Italy at S.A.C.I. in 1998 and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts at UWE Bristol, England in 2002. In Bristol, Luke studied for several years under his mentor, Terence Wilson Fletcher. Luke has been living and working in New York since July 2004.
Filed under: illustration
Singer by Teetering Bulb
Earned a Silver Award from Spectrum Fantastic Art Annual
I met the fantastic duo that makes up Teetering Bulb (illustrators Kurt Huggins and Zelda Devon), several years ago after they’d been living in New York for about a year. We bonded instantly on our common love for the obscure and odd found objects or curio. Both Zelda and I have a crazy habit of nailing oddities onto our wall that we’ve found randomly on the street and we’re all big fans of Observatory.
I’ve been privy to watching the steadily growing success of the Bulb. Kurt and Zelda’s work is fantastically rendered, but also instantly mesmerizing. The concepts and composition elevate the quality of their work to levels higher than most illustrators that proliferate the market today, IMO. Maybe I’m biased because of their charm. You should make your own opinion!
I am excited to announce that tor.com has taken a strong interest in their work and has published two of their short graphic stories onto the web. I would like to invite you to enjoy their latest creations, The Tempest Awakens and King of an Endless Sky.
To keep up with Teetering Bulb, you can visit them on their website.
Walton Ford, New Work at Paul Kasmin Gallery
The Royal Menagerie at the Tower of London – 3 December 1830
Oh, what a travesty to miss this exhibit!! Thanks to Morbid Anatomy, I’ve been spared just such a disappointment. Walton Ford’s newest works are currently up at Paul Kasmin Gallery until December 23rd.
Chris Berens, The Only Living Boy in New York at Sloan Fine Art
Utopiary
Alix Sloan has done a wonderful thing by bringing New Yorkers a solo show of this Dutch artist’s work for the first time. Berens’ dreamlike imagery is unresistible! His work will be at Sloan starting on Wednesday, December 16th (don’t miss the opening reception!) until January 23, 2010.
Craig LaRotonda, From the Ashes of Angels at Last Rites Gallery
The Resolution
Craig LaRotonda, who has shown work with Anagnorisis on a couple of occasions, has created for this show some new works that seem to be leading him in new and wonderful directions. From the Ashes of Angels will be on display until December 27th.
Visit The Little Deaths online gallery by clicking here
Flyer artwork by Dan Estabrook
Anagnorisis Fine Arts and Shadow’s Space are pleased to announce an exhibition featuring works that explore the visceral and intellectual foundations behind the well-known French term, “La Petit Mort” or “The Little Death”. Dramatically referring to orgasmic fainting spells or spiritual release, the term evokes the darker, and perhaps more realistic aspects of lust and love. One could possibly say that, through its association with death, it could also hint at the adverse emotions associated with intimacy.
Exploring various interpretations of The Little Deaths are artworks created by a wide range of outstanding artists, from some who are just beginning to show their work to those whose names are recognized internationally. The collection is eclectic, yet the artists, many of whom have created new works exclusively for the exhibit, were carefully chosen for the sensual elements inherent in their artistic styles.
All works are viewable on our online gallery: artanagnorisis/Gallery_TheLittleDeaths.html
Show Highlights:
Seasoned artists such as Roger Ballen, Christopher Conte, Christian Rex van Minnen and Carrie Ann Baade will punctuate the show with their highly developed signature styles. Ballen’s uncomfortable and real compositions, Baade’s wonderfully allegorical oil paintings, Conte’s bio-mechanical sculpture and van Minnen’s lush and visceral oil paintings have captured the attention of many collectors around the world. The sensual works of the relatively unknown artists, Alex Passapera and Caitlin Hackett, explore themes of animal instinct in human nature. Both artists are very new to exhibiting their work, yet show strong potential for success. Passapera’s detailed ink or pigmented figures are often humans depicted with or mutating into animal forms in sweeping lines and grotesque forms. Hackett’s grotesque animals drawn with ball-point pen and other mediums are exquisitely detailed and delicate, reminiscent of age-old Japanese prints.
Participating artists: Christian Rex van Minnen, Anastasia Alexandrin, Carrie Ann Baade, Roger Ballen, Eduardo Benedetto, Molly Bosley, Dana Bunker, Christopher Conte, Clayton Cubitt, Jonathan Davies, Cam de Leon, Dan Estabrook, Danielle Ezzo, Lori Field, Heather Gargon, Chambliss Giobbi, Celicia Granata, Caitlin Hackett, Scott Holloway, Tina Imel, John Kolbek, Craig LaRotonda, Samantha Levin, Julie Anne Mann, Nia Mora, Dan Ouellette, Alex Passapera, Jeanette Rodrigez, Erin Colleen Williams
“The Little Deaths” runs from December 4th, 2009 through January 29th, 2010, at Shadow’s Space located at 1248 N Front St (@ Thompson St., Girard stop on the Market Frankford Line) Philadelphia, PA. The opening reception, on Friday December 4th from 6 to 9 pm, is free and open to the public.
For more information, contact Anagnorisis at 646.712.2820 or art@artanagnorisis.com – or Shadow’s Space through email (contact@shadowsspace.com) or by telephone at 215.425.1275.
A small sampling of the exhibit:
