Oct 6th, 2020 • 8 minute read
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Curations with Jordan Holms: Round Up
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The circle is one of the most widely used forms in art, but also one of the most difficult to execute with both precision and nuance. As one of the oldest geometric symbols across many time periods and cultures, the circle has extensive meanings attached to it. It represents unity, wholeness, totality, perfection, infinity, eternity, timelessness, cyclicity. Pythagoras referred to the circle as “the most perfect of creative forms, without beginning or end, without sides or corners.”
This week’s curation looks at a selection of paintings, drawings, prints and mixed media works chosen by Art in Res artist and curator, Jordan Holms, that take up circles and spheres as formal explorations of shape, visual metaphors, expressive gestures, and conceptual frameworks.
Orbs
This oil pastel drawing by artist Igor Sokol conveys a striking amount of physical weight. The red, yellow, and pink orbs feel fleshy and heavy. Their colors vibrate against the piercing cobalt blue ground. This work, titled Still Life with Apples, is enticing because it operates as both a minimalist still life –– three apples on a table top, but also a compelling abstract composition. The artist states: I create my work based on my perception of the physical laws of structure, form and color. I use varied combinations of colors, interactions of light and shadows which help me build the depth of both composition and idea. In my opinion, these elements are always in conflict as they challenge our intelligence to interpret the “reality”.
While in the midst of achieving his degree in Fine Arts & Graphic Design, in Ukraine, Igor started his career as Graphic Designer. However, reiterating the same patterns and color blocks was not satisfying his mission for creative exploration. Once he moved to New York at 21, he found this priority fulfilled by pursuing painting. Now, in his home studio in Ridgewood, New York, the artist actively experiments with different mediums and investigates other methods of expressing himself.
Loops
Perhaps this drawing by Lynette Therese Sauer doesn’t technically feature circles, but the cursive loops that compose this work, titled Six Syllables, are too mesmerizing to not include in this curation. Both playful and meditative, the hot pink curlicues stacked atop one another are reminiscent of early days spent playing with slinkies (or practicing your cursive!). The “circles” in this work speak to the passage of time and velocity, but also emotive expression. The artist writes that this work is part of an ongoing series of meditative drawings - in their creation, they serve as a support for contemplation.
Lynnette Therese Sauer is a visual artist, arts administrator, and museum educator who lives in Brooklyn, NY and works in her Ridgewood studio, both located on Lenape land. Her paintings and drawings use observation of patterns to consider spiritual practices of attention, embodiment, and communion.
Childhood
This painting by Brian Jerome, titled Holding Onto a Sacred Comfort, uses the circle as a means of conveying both motion and emotion with a hurried rush of blue. This work is reminiscent of Cy Twombly, with its frenetic marks that verge on alphabetic at times. Clouded in a white haze, the frantic marks hover in space like figures unto themselves bursting with emotion. Embracing an automatic way of mark-making, the work is reminiscent of childrens’ impulsive wall drawings; it’s about time and timelessness. The artist states about the work: In times of such stress sociologically, and politically, this was an attempt to remember the joys and comforts of early childhood and a loving family.
Brian Jerome began to focus on multimedia, abstract painting and engaged in critical aesthetic theory and art history during his MFA at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. His work began to draw heavy influence from a curiosity of language and linguistics, emotive expression, and the symbology of Carl Jung. His work has attempted to make a bridge between subjective, internal dialogue and the failure of conventional language to express the fullness of the human condition. Jerome currently lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania since 2008.
Visitors
Comet by artist Karen Fitzgerald is a material exploration of color and form. Here the circle plays an unabashedly central role in the composition, floating center stage. The circle functions as both an object and a means of exploring the properties of oil paint. It is also a meditation on things infinitely vaster than us. About her work, the artist says, "Sometimes I begin a painting with no idea. I play for a while, and then something will assert its presence. I pay attention, and work with the whatever-it-is to bring it into visibility. I had not thought about comets for quite some time, but in the 1970's a famous comet visited the Western hemisphere and I remember taking time to go out in the evening to see it. They are visitors that have their own rarities."
Karen is a visual artist living and working in NYC. She was raised on a dairy farm in the Midwest and it is this early and close association with the natural world that threads through her work. She is focused on the energy that suffuses our world, as well as the Universe: her work explores energy in its myriad manifestations.
Spheres
This mixed media work by artist Adam Langehough embraces the circle and its potential to create form through repetition. In this work the artist has taken up seemingly unrelated everyday objects and materials and placed them in conversation to create something exceptional. An electric blue mass of balls protrude from the surface of the work, while bright green rope snakes in amongst the spheres. Despite the color, the crowd of spheres still seem to reference the body, like Eva Hesse’s sculptures. Untitled Blue is humorous and playful, with a vaguely ominous undercurrent.
Adam Langehough was born in New York City and he currently lives and works in Providence, RI. He received his BA in Psychology from Clark University in 2005, minoring in Studio Art with a focus on painting. Working across several mediums, his artwork is often an exploration of sociological concepts, sometimes merging sculpture and painting while employing the use of unconventional, albeit ordinary materials.
Cosmic
Not unlike the work of Karen Fitzgerald, Ephemeris #5 by Robert Cameron Connelly brings the circle into focus in its most cosmic form. A familiar sight, this work is reminiscent of a telescopic photograph of some distant, unidentified celestial body. It riffs off of photographs in old magazines about space travel or even the iconic cover of Whole Earth Catalogue. Its expansive minimalism is underscored by the organic smattering of star-like marks that freckle the composition. The artist describes his most recent work as exploring the mythos of humanity and existence, rendering his own contemplations of self and self's unfathomable role in this cosmically infinite space into immersive images.
Robert Cameron Connelly is an Austin, Texas based experimental large format photographer who often employs processes that meld analog photography with painting. Connelly received his BFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2013 and is Art in Res' first photographer to be represented on our site.
Cycles
This small cyanotype by artist Ella Barnes features another familiar spherical object that holds lots of symbolic significance: the moon. The moon is often representative of regeneration, change, and the passage of time. About her process, the artist states: "Cyanotype is a photographic printing process invented in 1842 that produces a cyan blue print when exposed to UV light. I employ this method in the traditional way using sunlight to print on textile and paper. Each photogram is produced under unique weather and chemical conditions that ultimately guide the resulting composition." The soothing, pale ceruleans in this work are also reminiscent of ocean tides, which are influenced by the moon’s cycles. As such, the artist’s work is both technically and conceptually concerned with the influences of natural cycles.
Ella Barnes is a multimedia artist based in New York City. Through the cyanotype process, she combines drawing with photography, interchangeably interrogating dichotomies of concept and matter. She finds inspiration in the moments where medium leads the creation of composition. Her work navigates the idea of seeing as feeling and feeling as seeing.
Balance
Many works that take up the circle as subject matter tend towards blues and earth tones, which is what drew me to this work by Jared Nathan Crane, titled Kind of Pink, because it leans in quite the opposite direction. In this mixed media work, texture is of the utmost importance. The rich, heavy color of the six circles in the lower half perfectly balances the thick, gummy texture of the upper half of the composition. This work is really about a material exploration of the circle and its possibilities. Each amorphous circle feels significant and weighty, like it was always meant to be exactly where it is.
Jared Nathan Crane is a visual artist based in Richmond, Virginia. He has taught beginning and advanced undergraduate courses in painting and photography and has shown his work in solo and group exhibitions in New York City and Richmond, Virginia. He is currently an instructor in the Art Foundations program at VCUarts.
Bringing it Together
Although the circle may be one of the most frequent and seemingly “simplest” geometric forms found in art and architecture, as well as in the natural world, it is certainly not easy to execute in art without seemingly overly contrived. If we are to agree with Pythagoras, that the circle is in fact akin to perfection, then it is no easy task to represent perfection in one’s work with subtlety and nuance, but all of these artists successfully do just that, through varying approaches. Some artists in this curation like Lynette Therese Sauer and Brian Jerome take a textual approach to the circle, using it as a linguistic tool. While Igor Sokol uses the circle to articulate everyday, organically occurring spheres like apples, Karen Fitzgerald, Robert Cameron Connelly, and Ella Barnes use it to explore cosmic spheres like comets, the sun and the moon. Others use the circle as the basis for a purely material exploration, like in the work of Adam Langehough or Jared Nathan Crane.
About Jordan Holms
Jordan Holms is an interdisciplinary artist who works primarily in painting, sculpture, and textiles. Her work examines how space is materialized, organized, and made to mean. She has exhibited internationally in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada and her work is held in multiple private collections. In addition to a solo exhibition at Marrow Gallery, her paintings have been included in a group show at SFMoMA Artists Gallery, a number of MFA survey exhibitions, featured at BAMPFA, and in Adidas’s San Francisco Market Street storefront. Most recently, Holms was a recipient of the Vermont Studio Center Artist Grant, where she was an artist-in-residence in February 2020. She is also a 2016-2019 recipient of the San Francisco Art Institute’s Graduate Fellowship Award. She earned a Master of Fine Arts and Master of Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2019, where she graduated with honors. Holms lives and works in San Francisco, California.