vgasman • illuminage studio

By coincidence, two galleries where I show work are both presenting exhibits this fall addressing social justice concerns of our time.

Coming To America at Santa Fe’s Art On Barcelona Gallery poses an invitation to look, think and enter into conversation about immigration. Fifteen artists answered the call to offer 31 pieces of artwork.

For this exhibit, I am showing 2,000 Years of Flight showcasing refugees of note whose contributions to the world are considerable. The value we place on them contrasts with a political attitude that demeans persons now appearing at our southern border looking for the same opportunity for a better life as were the people shown in this artwork.

COMING TO AMERICA
September/October 2019
Artists’ Reception: October 6  1-3pm
Performance Event: October 13  3-5pm

Art On Barcelona Gallery
107 W Barcelona St, Santa Fe, NM

Gallery35 in New York City has launched We Bend, Not Break, an exhibit by 13 artists focusing on the perseverance of African-Americans and other historically and currently marginalized groups!
My work,  The Struggle Continues and Fabric of Progress is described at the gallery website: http://www.gallery35nyc.com.

WE BEND, NOT BREAK
September 8-October 20, 2019
Artists’ Reception: September 21  6-8pm
Closing Reception: October 19   6-8pm

Gallery35
30 E 35th St, New York, NY

What is Zozobra?

AKA “Old Man Gloom, “he” is a 50-foot tall cloth behemoth stuffed with papers upon which Santa Feans have written their glooms from the past year. He is then placed at the far end of an athletic field to meet his fate as throngs of locals and visitors chant “burn him!” This is the 95th time this tradition has marked the beginning of the annual Fiestas de Santa Fe.

Zozobra head, 2015; Burn Zozobra, 2014 viewed just after I moved to Santa Fe!

How did I win?

Earlier in the summer I entered an art competition for the Seventies-themed 2019 poster and T-shirt. It was a labor of love transforming this ugly creature into a disco icon! Even after being notified that my John Travolta look-alike would be silkscreened onto the official adult T-shirt, I had to keep design top secret until the unveiling just one week before the Burning of Zozobra.

The unveiling at ZozoFest; modeling the fringed shirt!

Read more about all the winning Zozobra artists at https://burnzozobra.com/2019-official-zozobra-artists/

Back in the 1990s, when the World Wide Web was a new and exciting territory, I joined a wonderful organization called Webgrrls which offered meetings and classes in downtown Manhattan. There I learned enough rudimentary HTML to create my first simple websites! Their lack of “bells and whistles” was more than offset by lots of links—and eyecatching colorful art!

AncientworksGallery.com was one of those early endeavors, created to showcase my growing line of “arT-shirts”—and later complementary jewelry—which featured “unique designs inspired by the petroglyphs, paintings, potter and sculpture of ancient peoples throughout the world.” Unfortunately—and mysteriously— that site has somehow disappeared from cyberspace! 

But now, seven of my original thematic prehistoric composites can be re-visited in a new gallery page right on this website. A slide show features the designs, along with their titles and their ancient origins. Be sure to visit!

The early days: (left) arT-Shirts for sale at Ocean Grove, NJ Crafts Festival, late 1990s and (right) hard at work on jewelry in NYC, circa 2004.

Creating art for a color-themed exhibit can be an artistic challenge, but coming up with ideas for Gallery35’s BLUE exhibit was a breeze! The color blue is abundant in our lexicon—blues music, a blue moon and birds with blue feet!

While all my pieces exemplify BLUE, their styles are widely divergent! 

Blue Footed Boopies, the most graphic of the three, was inspired by photographs of these amazing birds that I took during a trip to the Galapagos Islands. Their striking blue feet stand out in a stylized montage.  

Bluesy Boogie is a distortion of my drawings of musicians I have encountered in various venues and locations—blended together artistically using digital painting techniques—in an imaginary blues session. 

Blue Dog Blue Moon, a composite of photos and drawings, was inspired by my life in the New Mexican high desert, where coyotes live amongst us. The stylized coyote is based on a wood carving by another talented artist.

A long-time exhibitor and chairperson of Gallery35, I am again looking forward to my annual trip to NYC. I hope to see all my “back East” friends at the Closing Reception of BLUE on June 15th.

BLUE
May 3-June 15, 2019

Closing Reception: June 15  6-8PM

Gallery35
30 E 35th St
New York, NY 10016

My design for Barbara Kahn’s most recent production in 2019.

During my years as a New Yorker (1995–2014) and going forward, I have been privileged to design the promotional graphics for my good friend Barbara Kahn’s annual productions at Theater for the New City. Barbara was recently included in the Performing Arts Legacy Project highlighting her illustrious career, accomplishments and awards. I was pleased to find an entire page on that website https://performingartslegacy.org/kahn/theater-for-the-new-city-poster-designs/  showing just about all of the designs I created for Barbara’s plays. A great trip down memory lane!

Once again I will be joining my fellow Gallery35 artists in a group exhibit simply called NATURE. 

For this exhibit I dove into my trove of previous works that featured the natural world. From an earlier series, I created a new digital montage— In Wings of Flight— by arranging butterflies and moths along the color spectrum, my subjects being the most dramatic mounted specimens I could find in an insect museum. This piece will be joined by two other montages—Pining Away and  Of Lilies and Lizards—created from my nature shots during a trip “down under.” 

NATURE
March 3–May 5, 2019
Artists’ Reception: March 16  6-8pm
Closing Reception: April 27   6-8pm
Gallery35
30 E 35th St • NYC

Once again I am joining Gallery35 artists in presenting our newest exhibit, INTERIORS, providing a doorway to eleven artists’ visions of what lies within.

For my part, I am exhibiting work created from photographs I took of the interior of a Ra Paulette man-made cave soon after moving to New Mexico. Ra Paulette is an American cave sculptor based in New Mexico who digs into hillsides to sculpt elaborate artistic spaces inside mountains. Since he began sculpting in 1990, he has dug over a dozen caves in New Mexico, this one a liveable space with electricity and running water. The views are fascinating as well as artistically exquisite.

If you are in New York City, you are invited to take advantage of two festive receptions where you can view all of the artwork and meet the artists.

INTERIORS
January 13-March 3, 2019
Artists’ Reception: January 26  6-8 pm
Closing Reception: February 23  6-8 pm

Gallery35
30 E 35th Street (bet Park and Madison)
New York, NY 10016

During November and December, I am pleased to be showing work at the Art On Barcelona gallery in Santa Fe with my fellow artist, Ken Horst. His contemporary but primitive tribal wood carvings are a complement to my AncientWorks series—a collection inspired by the art of ancient and prehistoric peoples throughout the world.

Beginning in 1990, I began creating thematic composites of petroglyphs, paintings, pottery and sculpture for silk screened “arT-shirts”—and a related line of jewelry—to market in craft shows. Later, adding backgrounds for several of the designs, I created a new gallery series for an exhibition in New York City. For Timeless Treasures in Santa Fe, I chose to re-render twelve of the most popular designs— once again giving new life to those ancient works.

TIMELESS TREASURES: Primitive Art of Now and Long Ago
November/December 2018
Reception November 18  1:00-3:00 pm
Art On Barcelona, Santa Fe, NM

Exhibiting my work at Gallery35 in NYC has always challenged me to grow as an artist. Form & Formless—an exhibit meant to contrast work which is totally figurative, totally nonrepresentational, and all degrees between—inspired me to continue to stretch my ability to work abstractly. Using the magical tools of the digital media, I chose southwest imagery of a chile ristra, a coyote and a skull, transforming them with texture and color into subjects that are still recognizable but far from realistic.

I will be joined by 14 artists in this group show and am excited to be able to attend the Closing Reception during my annual trip east.

FORM & FORMLESS
May 5 – June 9, 2018
Artists’ Reception: May 12  6-8 pm
Closing Reception: June 9  6-8pm

Gallery35
30 E 35th Street
New York, NY 10016

I have continued to use my new technique of combining sketchbook drawings with digital imagery (described in my previous post) for an entirely new series, Women of the Old West. I again began by hand-drawing the images of three women—this time using historical photos as references— using pencil and paper. The sketches of these women, who were actual cowgirls in bygone times, were been coupled with stylized, manipulated photos of real places I snapped in and around Santa Fe and Cerrillos, NM. Only the women’s clothing (and horse) are opaque, allowing the backgrounds to be blended with the rest of the drawings.

I plan to add two more trios of women—Native Americans and Early Settlers— to complete the entire “Women of the Old West” series. I will post each as it is completed. Watch for them!.