I am an artist. My name is Chris Rusak. I write text.
(text was how I used to vent)

I have finished three rather labor intensive collages that are all completely abstract. I have begun a fourth now, integrating several types of media. I have generally been focused on the deconstruction of my personal beliefs while working. I found a sledgehammer and I’ve used it. The sledgehammer worries me, though. It requires great strength and I might not be able to keep using it.

I feel as if we are unfairly indoctrinated as children. We are generally forced into the belief systems of our parents, whether it be religious tradition or racist epithets, delicate habits or unhealthy escapes. Our continual exposure leads us to believe it is normal; normal in that this is what everyone else should be doing.

This is a hard task, deconstruction, as the external beliefs and ideas have now become wallpapered into the structure. One cannot simply raze and rebuild because to do so would remove all boundaries for the energy contained. Instead, one must carefully peel away when the structure is strong, leaving only the designs that seem fit, and when the structure is weak, one must appreciate the supple bandage that has held things together but now infecting the site.

This is the second in a continuing series of reviews from the periodical New American Paintings, a juried exhibition-in-print. You can read other reviews of New American Paintings by clicking through.

Issue #51 May 2004 featured artists from the Mid-Atlantic region. Tim McFarlane resides in Philadelphia and won place in the publication for his perpendicularly composed non-objective paintings. At left you see the addition of a bundle of white on top of the background of rather thick stripes, forming a new direction from his works four years ago. I feel like I am seeing a union of Ellsworth Kelly and Brice Marden when I view his current works. The carefully constructed backgrounds have now been disrupted, interrupted by gaggles of milky color, interference. There is a distinct separation between the viewer, the front fog, and the rear landscape. One could also perceive this work looking from the top down. This abstraction provides endless possibilities for self-reflection. Are we presented with an opportunity to unravel the knots we have in front of us, have we just viciously thrown our chess pieces all over the board and created a dust storm? Is this a quiet contemplation for chaos existing within reason? If you take some time to explore McFarlane’s site you’ll be able to compare his works and make determination for yourself. Personally, this work for me reflects a larger conscious that is frustrated with the state of affairs in the world today. Logic and order reside somewhere though it feels that we are all faced with the task of taking dust brush and pan and cleaning up as much as we can first. We simply cannot move forward into the clarity until we are faced with heating off the fog.

Dave Bown was a winner in issue #52 June 2004, a survey of the Southern states. His winning pieces were acrylic on shaped board, magnifications of American Express gold cards and the Seal of the Department of the Treasury from a one dollar bill. The boards were in the silhouettes of Monopoly houses. As you can see, his current works (one at right) are much different. They are smaller, about the size of a piece of writing paper. Exquisitely vivid as opposed to the limited scheme of gold, green, and black. Have we transcended capitalism here and moved into a more light focused realm? I really favor the current work section on his website, with the graph paper compositions up top and the saturated works below. A presentation of both the skeleton and full sized children an artist has created. Playing with perspective in both styles, an almost neo-Cubist-abstraction of math, as the artist himself states that these oscillations are the result of algorithms and derived coordinates from Phi. A real examination of nature’s beauty and natural disposition to fall into measurements and offshoots of the Golden Ratio. As one’s eye begins to play with the terminal points of the coordinates, the acute angle formations to create triangular juts, we create a dynamic set of implied shapes, triangular blanks that hover above the actual image. His color balance places him as an artist’s artist, someone who really understands the importance of color theory and its application.

New American Paintings is a bi-monthly exhibition-in-print published six times a year. Each issue covers a different region of the United States and judged by a different person each time. The artists published are considered winners of the juried competition. Three images of their works, a resume and an artist’s statement make up the composition of the periodical along with some minimal advertising that is placed at the end of the competition catalogue. Each issue retails for $20 and a two-year subscription is most economical at $149. I have subscribed for five years now and find it to be a terrific resource for seeing what the current state of art is and what ideas are coming to fruition in different parts of the country.

The first issue I received was #45 May 2003 covering the Mid-Atlantic region. The highlight from the selected winners was Joshua Ferry, then hailing from Southern New Jersey. His winning work was non-objective, but as you will now see on his website he is also producing works highlighting the relationship in size between the State of Maine and the State of Iraq, and subsequently, the relationship in size of life in America and a war overseas. There are influences from Jasper Johns and Ed Ruscha in those works, but it is still his non-objective pieces that spin my eyes. I Will Follow, an acrylic on canvas work, is a stack of color on a nondescript grey ground that appears to contain some similar rectangular relief. In a very simple yet delicious manner, Ferry sets up both depth and height, a comparison between the brightly colored pieces of information and the rather depressing background behind the piece… non-objective but closely related to the more politically charged paintings below. A presentation of facts and surrounding evidence. Brightly colored data stacking up for the public, displaying the hard-to-avoid statistics of a war that contains too much grey spaces to justify the cause. Bandaged information providing relief to the creator, to facilitate the usage of the ground.

Issue #46 July 2003 covered the Southern states and winner Paul Aho composed beautiful, Gerhard Richter-like abstractions. Working with polar mediums, acrylic and oil, Aho weaves dense fabric on wood in vivid color schemes that excite and confuse the viewer. Illusions of depth and precedent confound, we get wrapped up inside the separations between the fields and soon find ourselves covered in his blankets. There are some pieces displayed on his website that do not appeal to me, for instance, those compositions that contain the curly-q / French curves in them as I feel they unfairly distract from the natural movement he creates by working in a grid-like environment, however, they do provide an extreme sense of contrast for certain viewers to run with. Perhaps his patrons or collectors favor these works, or maybe they are just stepping stones to a new dynamicism in his works. Regardless, these are pleasing works that allow us the gateway for temporary escape, a rest from our own lives and a chance to get caught up in the strings of abstraction, a way to look outward while viewing the reflections from inward.

Hi faithful readers. Had to check out for a few days, had to pay rent and buy groceries, and went out to a bar for the first time in about 5 weeks. I’m also going to check out this weekend, as well.

But don’t forget that Paul Hayes gives his artist talk at SFAC tonight.

And next week I’m going to do a review of New American Paintings, a bi-monthly exhibition in print that I have subscribed to for some time now.

Go enjoy yourselves.

If life is like color and there are complimentary moments to balance it all out, the good with the bad, the bright with the dark, then right now I’m making sun-kissed lemonade. The weather in San Francisco was ridiculous the past few days, heat in the high nineties, anxiety to match, insane molten sunsets, onyx-like waves at Ocean Beach. Beautiful and difficult.

I just want to check out. I try to deplete my calendar and it fills up as quick as the page was turned. How do you say no to your friends when you adore and love them so much? It feels like shaving off skin to deny us time together. If nothing else, spending my time grinding away stress on a bicycle has been a high point. Biking should be mandatory. Bike manufacturers should receive subsidies like farmers do. Taxes from heavy polluters and unnecessary SUVs should subsidize zero-emissions travel for youth to get them into the habit now. Things could be so much cleaner.

July is just around the corner and my vacation from work isn’t scheduled until August. It seems as though everyone is visiting or returning home in between that period, too. Last night, during a decompression walk, I had the idea to just take the summer off. Stop trying to put all my energy into making art and just say no to creativity. I immediately began to think about how to conceptualize and visualize the process directly after the first thought, so we all already know what a failure that choice could become.

Lemonade.

I have been rather productive. After much fickle-pouting, I have managed to change my discipline and let go of parts of my old routine. I accept less excuses from myself regarding appropriate work times, widened my foresight on scheduling time to work, and each week reduce by small amounts the pieces or experiences my life doesn’t require. It is gratifying.

I have found, with great contrast, that simple and effective meditation, even in small, concentrated doses of five minutes, make a huge and significant impact on my day-to-day life when compared to skipping the practice.

I have a sudden obsession with pink symbolic items: doors, rollers, squares. Pink is popping up throughout my life unexpectedly but with grand welcome. However, I am not working with the color pink.

New images are on the way, the ability to comment will just magically appear at some unforeseen moment, and now, at the end of this short post, an art quote:

“I’m amazed and excited and fascinated about the way things are thrust at us, the way this invisible screen that’s a couple of feet in front of our mind and our senses is attacked by radio and television and visual communications, through things larger than life, the impact of things thrown at us, at such speed and with such force that painting and the attitudes toward painting and communication through doing painting now seem very old fashioned…” - James Rosenquist, from the book American Artists On Art: From 1940 To 1980 edited by Ellen H. Johnson, excerpted from G. R. Swenson “‘What is Pop Art?’ Answers from 8 Painters,” Part 1, Art News (November 1963)