by D. Dominick Lombardi
As someone who has kept a sharp eye on the New York City art scene since the early 1970s, I mu Continue reading “University of Tennessee, Knoxville Gallery Tour”
University of Tennessee, Knoxville Gallery Tour
“Say, sea,” @ happylucky no. 1
by D. Dominick Lombardi
I am always impressed by how a spirited art gallery exhibition can enliven the most dismal of days. Even with many of the nearby stores shuttered on one particular block of Nostrand Avenue, Say, sea at happylucky no. 1 gallery easily brightens my chilly and overcast Sunday afternoon. Continue reading ““Say, sea,” @ happylucky no. 1”
Three New Exhibitions at the Hammond Museum & Japanese Stroll Garden
by D. Dominick Lombardi
With three exhibitions opening at the Hammond Museum, the big surprise is the work of Sam Bartman. Born in Brooklyn, NY in 1922, Bartman has spent the last 60 years of his life creating stirring paintings that combine some of the most the incompatible materials. In experimenting with what he calls his “special sauce”, Bartman has somehow tamed a mix of resins, varnishes, motor oil, glitter and automotive paints with oils and acrylics that results in everything from endlessly crackling surfaces and minute swirling storms of color. There are even the occasional brushstrokes that push the variously drying materials around leaving fossil like impressions of battered brush hairs sorrowfully spent in a furious wake of swished paint. Continue reading “Three New Exhibitions at the Hammond Museum & Japanese Stroll Garden”
Photo-A-GoGo
by Dominick Lombardi
Photo-A-GoGo presents art that has photography as an element, whether it is predominant or used as a minor accent, to show how the creative process now parallels or responds to the ubiquitous social digital/exchange mentality. We have the MIME, Instagram, Snapchat, all the ways we express or project our ideas or self-image – so the photograph, instead of being “worth a thousand words” is now as common as a mosquito in July. However, that does not mean that art or the intention behind it or the imagery utilized is, in the end, benign. Continue reading “Photo-A-GoGo”
The Tale of Auguste’s Brain
by D. Dominick Lombardi
It was probably somewhere around 1987 when I read a quote attributed to Auguste Renoir in an art magazine. I don’t recall the exact passage, but he likened his paintbrush to his penis when discussing why he so obsessed over capturing the erotic aspects of a woman’s flesh. A month or so later I made a drawing, I was in my pseudo Post Modern stage making sculptures that looked like they could have been executed in the nineteen teens, twenties or thirties, and the subject was my interpretation of Renoir’s sensual sentiment about his female nudes. Continue reading “The Tale of Auguste’s Brain”