Weekend Guide 6.25.09

Grab your lipstick AND your Harley - it's Pride Weekend in SF. Don't forget to fly your colors when you checkout the colors from these local artists:

Openings and Events

Katie Gilmartin at Under One Roof for "Print Kissing" benefit on Thursday, June 25 from 6-8pm

Ongoing Shows

Katie Gilmartin at City Art Gallery through June 27

Erika Meriaux at Aspect Gallery through June

John Haines at CIIS through June

Leslie Morgan at Studio Gallery through July 12

Leslie Morgan at Zonal through July

Dale Eastman and Philippe Jestin at Gensler through August 14

For more shows featuring artists interviewed on Arteaser, check out the Arteaser Calendar.

John Wentz

We've been on a little bit of a hiatus here at Arteaser, so thanks for sticking around. I met up with John Wentz at the Palace Hotel some time ago, where we bonded over Donald in Mathmagic Land and I got the story behind his "Adaptive Radiation" series.

Some might argue that science and religion do not mix, but they do have something in common - they both tackle big questions, albeit in very different ways. For John Wentz, both modes of thought were influential to his art as he grew up in the East Bay, attending Catholic school:

"When I was growing up, my mom [...] went to nursing school in Fremont, but we didn't have a lot of money and she couldn't afford day care, so she took me with her and she would give me her anatomy books to draw to keep me busy"

While drawing from anatomy books may have been a more subtle driver, Wentz recalls comic books as a conscious source of inspiration to draw. Although he did not realize it at the time, the comic book stories had a spiritual appeal:

"First thing I remember was drawing [...] I remember my first two comic books were Spiderman #6 and Batman #4, and that just really sparked [my interest in] drawing. [...] Comic books kind of served that side of me, that religious side"

After graduating high school, Wentz lived a transient life for a couple years, but was always drawing. Fascinated by questions of faith and spirituality, he considered pursuing a religious life, but came to other conclusions:

"I actually wanted to be a priest for a while - I went back to that, the religious thing - I wanted to be a Buddhist monk... Then I wound up studying world religion and [...] I realized that role of comic books, how they kind of serve in a lot of ways that function. They have the same archetypes as you find in any great hero myth [...] I realized it was a modern day mythology"

Eventually, Wentz decided to pursue a degree at the Academy of Art after seeing a friend's progress. Ever the rebel, he quickly learned that his first choice of majoring in Illustration was not for him and switched to Fine Art:

"To me at that point it was like, 'Oh, somebody telling me what to do? No, I don't want to do that.' It was that simplified for me so I immediately switched over to Fine Art"

Traditionally a pen and ink draftsman, Wentz first began painting while working at Tower Records, where he air-brushed album cover posters in large scale. While at the Academy, his instruction was in more traditional oil painting and after graduating he regularly sold his work. But before long, Wentz had another crisis of faith, as it were, and temporarily ceased to paint. A chronic insomniac, Wentz eventually saw a documentary on late night television on the Caves of Lascaux:

"Looking at this cave art - which was completely beautiful - in an area that probably at that time you risked death going in there to see, let alone make that art, [I couldn't help but start] thinking about who they were making it for, why they were making it, what compelled them to make it... There didn't seem any hesitance in it, but they were risking life and limb"

Meanwhile, Wentz had been reading Carl Jung and found his ideas about archetypes the collective unconsciousness very interesting with regard to the common experience he had observed between religion and comic books. Finally, Wentz had an epiphany while observing the chronic chatting, texting, and tweeting of his fellow San Franciscans:

"The essence is communication. We did it back then [with the cave drawings], we did it before language and now we're still finding ways to communicate. No matter what kind of technology springs up, we find a way to communicate through it. So that coupled with the Jung book just brought me back to comic books"

Having restored his faith in painting through a combination of cave drawings, psychology readings, and communication habits, Wentz began work on a series of paintings exploring comic book archetypes:

"The first paintings I did in the series were very illustrative of [Jung's concept of a mythological vocabulary]"

Using familiar comic characters, Wentz combines the comic style and realism. He used his adolescent nephew as the primary non-comic subject, representing familiar coming-of-age challenges:

"He turns to video games. When I was a kid I turned to comic books [...] So it was a nice contrast: it was dialogue between our childhoods, it was a dialogue between realism and pop art or realism and comic art. But it didn't make sense [if I put it in a specific landscape]. I wanted it to be a dialogue between just the two of them"

Like the cave drawings on stark, rocky surfaces, Wentz orients his subjects on largely blank, white surface to keep attention on the dialogue. On this approach, he was influenced by the golden backgrounds in Byzantine art, seen on a trip to Italy:

"The environment is all gold and the idea behind that was to tell the viewer that these figures were in a spiritual realm [...] If I put them in this all white background, that would maybe also hint that this is in a psychological realm, this isn't a real place. This isn't even a comic book. It's a blank slate"

The Byzantines' use of sacred geometry was also influential, particularly as Wentz began to move from the smaller, graphite early pieces to larger paintings with greater compositional demands. Technically, he had first encountered the idea in childhood watching Disney's Donald in Mathmagic Land, but recalled the concepts while teaching an anatomy class for the Academy, which included using the Golden Ratio:

"I started thinking about anatomy, [and asking], 'Well, what's the anatomy of a painting?' If I could strip off the flesh and the muscles, we have the skeleton - that's our foundation [...] Where would [compositional elements] be located? That got me back into sacred geometry"

That sacred geometry had historically been seen as a means higher powers meant that it solved not only an aesthetic question of composition, but also fit with his mythological themes. Wentz began plotting the shapes that echoed the shapes of the figures in the piece:

"What I wanted them to at least kind of look like, if not represent, would be mythological stories. Like something you would see in a cave or would see inside a pyramid, where you just see these characters on a black space interacting with each other, that has some kind of meaning to it [...] There is a formula to this hero story, to the myth"

Keep watching the Arteaser Calendar for future shows featuring John Wentz.

Weekend Recap 6.21.09

We headed over to Fecal Face Dot Gallery (FFDG) for the latest installment of their "In-N-Out" series, which featured Brett Amory:

I really enjoyed a new series of small paintings (above) based on a dream:

Amory also had a couple of new pieces from the "Waiting" series up:

Sadly, the show was only up for four days and is already down. As the name implies, the "In-N-Out" series are week long shows with openings on Thursdays.

Amory (below right) was in attendance taking questions. If you missed the FFDG show, keep watching the Arteaser Calendar to find out about future Bay Area shows with Amory's work:

On Friday, I ventured back to Hayes Valley for the opening of "Dive In" at Zonal:

Featuring aquatic themed prints and paintings by Leslie Morgan, the show will be up through July:

The nostalgic elements of Morgan's work fit well with Zonal's aesthetic:

Live music by Grinn & Barrett:

Most of the work in the show was paintings over photographs, including some from the "Pool Glee" series:

A couple of Morgan's oil paintings from the "In-Sync" series were downstairs:

Grab your suit and don't forget the sunscreen!

Weekend Guide 6.18.09

Ye best be parking ye'self in Hayes Valley this weekend, where all the action be found. Arrgh!:

Openings and Events

Brett Amory at Fecal Face Dot Gallery on Thursday, June 18 from 6-9pm

Leslie Morgan at Zonal on Friday, June 19, from 6-8pm

Katie Gilmartin at City Art Gallery for "Commie Homo-Loving Perverts" reading on Friday, June 19 from 7-10pm

Ongoing Shows

Mike Kimball at NOMA/Tenderloing CBD Gallery through June 23

Katie Gilmartin at City Art Gallery through June 27

Erika Meriaux at Aspect Gallery through June

John Haines at CIIS through June

Leslie Morgan at Studio Gallery through July 12

Dale Eastman and Philippe Jestin at Gensler through August 14

For more shows featuring artists interviewed on Arteaser, check out the Arteaser Calendar.

Weekend Guide 6.11.09

In case you missed out last week, there is one more weekend of East Bay Open Studios, as well as plenty more art to see:

Openings and Events

Fernando Reyes in Estuary Art Attack on Friday, June 12 from 6-9pm

East Bay Open Studios on Saturday and Sunday from 11am-6pm

• Mike Kimball at Laney College Fine Arts Annex
  
• Fernando Reyes in Jingletown

Leslie Morgan at Studio Gallery on Sunday, June 14 from 2-6pm

Ongoing Shows

Mike Kimball at Pro Arts Gallery through June 14

Mike Kimball at NOMA/Tenderloing CBD Gallery through June 23

Katie Gilmartin at City Art Gallery through June 27

Erika Meriaux at Aspect Gallery through June

John Haines at CIIS through June

Dale Eastman and Philippe Jestin at Gensler through August 14

For more shows featuring artists interviewed on Arteaser, check out the Arteaser Calendar.

Weekend Guide 6.4.09

East Bay Open Studios kicks off this weekend, but there's plenty to do on both sides of the bay:

Openings and Events

Mike Kimball at Pro Arts Gallery on Thursday, June 4 8-10pm

Katie Gilmartin at City Art Gallery on Friday, June 5 7-10pm

Brett Amory at the Southern Exposure Annual Auction on Saturday, June 6 6-10:30pm

East Bay Open Studios on Saturday and Sunday from 11am-6pm

• Mike Kimball at Laney College Fine Arts Annex
  
• Fernando Reyes in Jingletown
  

Ongoing Shows

Leslie Morgan at Studio Gallery through June 7

Fernando Reyes at ACCI Gallery through June 7

Mike Kimball at NOMA/Tenderloing CBD Gallery through June 23

Erika Meriaux at Aspect Gallery through June

John Haines at CIIS through June

Dale Eastman and Philippe Jestin at Gensler through August 14

For more shows featuring artists interviewed on Arteaser, check out the Arteaser Calendar.