Brian Fisher Print, Paint and Sculpture Blog

My cut steel sculpture "Aphrodite" exhibits Feb 7- March 1, 2020 at Roby King Gallery on Bainbridge Island in "A Trio of Print-makers".  Opening reception is Tonight, Feb. 7, 6-8 pm.  Aphrodite is the ancient Greek goddess associated with love, beauty, pleasure, passion and procreation.  
 I love the description of her in this version of “Give me that old time religion” made popular by folk musician Pete Seeger.
 Shall I worship Zarathustra 
just the way we use ta? 
 Be a Zarathustra Booster
 What a thing to be! Or maybe Aphrodite
 She’s beautiful but flighty
 and doesn’t wear a nighty, now there’s a sight to see. 
Or perhaps I’ll choose Apollo 
 a decent god to follow
 I’d grovel and I’d wallow
 Brought low on bended knee. 
Elohim or Yahweh?
 Allah or the highway? 
 I think I’ll just go my way.
 That’s good enough for me. 
Give me that old time religion 
Give me that old time religion
.... It's good enough for me!

The legends of Jason and the Argonauts are primal myths of Western culture.  The stories are older than those told by Homer though surviving texts were not written until centuries later. The oldest extant account, the third century B.C. Greek epic poem by Apollonius Rhodius, with additional material by the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Flaccus, has informed the imagery and design for many of my "Heroes Journey" Monotype Prints.  Now, I am interpreting those mythic and seminal narratives as gates. Above is my garden entrance before installation. At left is the design for the first of three entrance gates to my home, garden and studio.  Two of those gates will illustrate the Quest for the Golden Fleece and the Heroes of the Argonautica.  A third gate will depict the Hero Theseus and his epic adventures in the Labyrinth. The gates will be cut from from 12 gage steel and mounted within 1 1/2" steel frames.  I always enjoy cr...

While priming "Oceanus", my cut steel garden art this afternoon, I was excited by the white on almost white background and took this photo. In Greek myth Oceanus was the personification of the world-ocean and the Titan son of Uranus and Gaia.  My version of the world ocean is a perfect square! You can see and purchase “Oceanus” during the Spring 2012 Vashon Studio Tour , the first two weekends in May, 5-6, 12-13.

The Spring 2012 Vashon Island Art Studio Tour Brochurs have arrived and the online Vashon Island Art Tour web link has been launched.  Thank you Sy and Ric of Novak Creative, Inc., and Jan Wall, our outstanding, indefatigable, indomitable, coordinator and leader of many, many successful Vashon Island Art Studio Tours.   Thank you everyone who have been involved in making the Vashon Island Art Tour- Beautiful! Findable!  Possible!  I hope that it is a successful Art Studio Tour for artists and patrons alike.  Preview it now!  http://vashonislandartstudiotour.com/Spring2012/

The symbol often is more potent than the thing itself.  Through distillation Symbol can appear to become the thing itself.  I try to approach my art in that way.  A reduction and simplification of shape that still has meaning and still tells story. Wallace Stephens did it with words.  He says this poem is not an idea about a thing but the thing itself.  However it is his reality and his presentation of the thing itself.  It is still his idea.  In this poem he explores the nature of reality and is searching for the recognizable in the unknowable. "Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself." At the earliest ending of winter, In March, a scrawny cry from outside Seemed like a sound in his mind. He knew that he heard it, A bird's cry, at daylight or before, In the early March wind. The sun was rising at six, No longer a battered panache above snow... It would have been outside. It was not from the vast ventriloq...