The Eyes Have It!

"Eyes are the Windows to Our Souls"

This famous quote has a mysterious origin, but one person that has been thought to have coined it is Leonardo Da Vinci. Many artists use they eye as a symbol, as do various cultures. The evil eye in the middle east protects you. The eyes on the temples of Katmandu are God watching over you. The hand in the middle of the palm can be found in the earliest of art going back to ancient Egyptian times as a symbol of protection against perceived evil.

I like to use eyes as a symbol in my work. I feel comfortable in the world of Surrealism and the use of symbology. I like the idea of concept, visual poetry and hidden subtle images triggering meaning. The photo below is a detail from my latest work for the Dali Museum Event, Liquid Desires. The name of the art work is "Wet Dreams". The work is now in the collection of an Orlando Physician and shares its space with a Chihuly! It is partly a reflection of what the eye sees, as Dali portrayed in several of his pieces.

In the detail of Alternate Universe you can see how I used eyes again as a symbol in my work. On the far left are the eyes of Galileo, in the center are the eyes of the Mona Lisa, and on the far right are the eyes of Einstein. The rusted metal strip with multiple transfers, glass and mirrors is as a sentence to a paragraph. The paragraph being the larger section of the art work.

Some eyes are so identifiable that they are iconic. When using popular icons one can not help but think of Andy Warhol and his Pop Art portraiture. Elvis peers out at you in the top photo while a young Leonardo looks out at us in the last photo.

TRANSFERS PRINTED ON CLAY

Printing Images on Clay

These pots were a cooperative effort. The pots were thrown by Kathy Penia. The transfers and design were mine.

The small disk to the left above is a test tile I did to see how overlaying more than one transfer on top of another would work. I am pleased with the effect. All of this is a practice for my mixed media world, but I love doing pottery. Clay is so tactile, it totally involves all ones senses in the act of making art.

The young woman on the pot above is my Mother when she was in college. The insects are a nod to her love of biology and science. With aging and the effects of a stroke, I lose bits of the Mother I knew. These pots are in honor of her and the amazing person she was. It is my way of dealing with loss and sadness. At 98 and a half, she is still a formidable person in her own way. There are many things that motivate an artist to do art. It is self expression when we make art. We create often because of our emotions: Such as love, happiness, compassion, fright and horror, and sadness.

The glaze is an antique green, that give speckles of brown. It is a cone 6 and was sprayed on. We found if we sprayed the glaze the image would not run. If we applied it with a brush, the ink in the transfers ran and blurred.