Cacophony Series: 22”x30”, drawing and watercolor on 90# white Stonehenge. Except for, Cacophony: Night Train, drawing and watercolor on 90# black Stonehenge collaged onto white Stonehenge, and Cacophony: Desert Crust, drawing on 90# black Stonehenge.

Photo credit: Jack Kulawik, jackkulawik [at] gmail [dot] com

A continued investigation of linear ideas. Taking the lines for walks to see where they go.

Photo credit: Jack Kulawik, jackkulawik [at] gmail [dot] com

I was a recipient of a Residency for Studios Midwest sponsored by the Galesburg Civic Arts Center, July 2018. In collaboration with Knox College, the five residents were given the use of the new Art Department building. I took the first floor sculpture room with its big tables to spread out on. Immediately, I worked on large drawings, 30”x44” on white Stonehenge, fulfilling a long-standing ambition to make a coherent series of large drawings.

With this series Planar Violations, I am aiming for a stripped down vocabulary leading both and perhaps contradictorily to clarity and mystery.

“I choose the mark … because I can more clearly formulate a discourse that may easily be read. The mark because it traces a vital tension in relation to other marks, which collectively become more significant and complete an inner process … The mark because it determines alternative spaces that could appear interconnected, creating the possibility of perceiving various planes, conceptually ordered and with a non-objective rigour that I would define as the ‘objective of reduction’.”

Photo credit: Jack Kulawik, jackkulawik [at] gmail [dot] com

Gestures Series, 8″x8″, oil and cold wax on clayboard.

Photo credit: Jack Kulawik, jackkulawik [at] gmail [dot] com

ABOUT THIS SERIES

I did a workshop in oil and cold wax to re-encounter working in oils. These Gestures are some of the results of that exploration.

Tendrils Series, 22″x30″, watercolor with iridescence, marked with graphite, prismacolor, ebony, oil stick on 90# black Stonehenge. Nos. 1011 and 1012 are collages.

Photo credit: Jack Kulawik, jackkulawik [at] gmail [dot] com

ABOUT THIS SERIES

Returned yet again to a black substrate, picking up threads metaphorically from previous places looking at negative spaces, surfaces, undulations, disturbances.

INQUIRIES

The Nevica Project
3717 N. Ravenswood, Unit 115W
Chicago, Il 60613
Phone: 406.360.0164
Web: thenevicaproject.com

ABOUT THIS SERIES

After a number of years here in the southwest the colors and layers of the earth’s deposition and evolution have seeped into my imagination.

Geologies Series, 22″x30″ or 30″x22″, graphite pencil, conte, prismacolor, erasure, pencil shavings and smudge on 140# Fabriano Artistico.

Photo credit: Jack Kulawik, jackkulawik [at] gmail [dot] com

INQUIRIES

About this Series

After I spent the summer of 2016 working on paintings on canvas, I decided in the fall to return to mark making on paper in a new format for me, longitudinal. I cut 22″x30″ sheets of 90# Stonehenge in half for the first series of pieces. I also decided to limit my palette to mostly black and grey tones with hints of color. As I progressed, I switched to 140# Fabriano Artistico, which is a wonderfully luscious surface to work on, for Series II.

I had originally named this group of drawings Long Short. On further thought, I changed the name to Bonitas Canciones, Beautiful Songs, sung by Mili Bermejo, whose jazz songs I listen to often. Her voice is in the background of these pieces.

Please note that the weight difference between the two papers isn’t a matter of quality or heft, but the “basis weight” between papers intended primarily for printmaking (Stonehenge) or for drawing/watercolor (Fabriano).

• Bonitas Canciones Series I, 11″x30″, graphite pencil, conte, prismacolor, erasure, pencil shavings and smudge on 90# Stonehenge – created 2016 and 2017.
• Bonitas Canciones Series II, 11”x30” on 140# Fabriano Artistico and are made with marks that include: pencil, graphite, charcoal, Sumi-E ink, watercolor, ebony, oil stick, pastel, conté crayon, and prismacolor. Created 2017.

Photo credit: Jack Kulawik, jackkulawik [at] gmail [dot] com

Inquiries

About this Series

These paintings have four colors from different sources, each called caput mortuum, head of death. Each is clearly hematite, iron oxide, iron being the 9th most common element in the universe.In alchemy, caput mortuum (alternately called nigredo) signified a useless substance left over from a chemical operation such as sublimation and the epitome of decline and decay; alchemists represented this residue with a stylized human skull, a literal death’s head.

Inquiries

The Nevica Project
3717 N. Ravenswood, Unit 115W
Chicago, Il 60613
Phone: 406.360.0164
Web: thenevicaproject.com

About this Series

“Mostly 9H” Series, each 8×8″ plus black satin frame, graphite, charcoal, conte crayon on gessoed clayboard.

“Black”, October 22, 2015 opening reception, close November 28th, Space Gallery, 400 Santa Fe Drive, Denver. Conceptualized by Sharon Swidler, curated by Jo Marks Aardsma.

“…I was no longer working with black…but with the material of black, the surfaces of black, created a light. And this light is a secret light. A light that is not obvious. It was coming out of the black….”– Pierre Soulages

“This show interests itself in the ‘non-objective’: art that is not representational, that contains no recognizable figures or objects, art that has no intentional derivation from any concrete matter.The work for this show was selected because each artist uses black, not as negative space, but as an opening from which to reveal what lies at the edge of vision.”—Jo Marks Aardsma

Inquiries

Contact: Michael Burnett
Web: Space Gallery
Address: 400 Santa Fe Drive, Denver CO

About this Series

Recently exhibited at Conrad Wilde Gallery, 101 W. 6th Street, Tucson AZ, “Geologic Time,” 2/7—2/28, 2015.

Inquiries

Web: www.conradwildegallery.com
Tel: 520/622-8997
Contact: Miles Conrad