Brian Fisher Print, Paint and Sculpture Blog

Trojan Horse Achilles Rage This weekend is the 19th annual Vashon Island Garden Tour and the island is humming. This much anticipated tour benefits Vashon Allied Arts. Six island homes open their garden gates and welcome plant and garden design enthusiasts on Saturday and Sunday June 27 and 28, 10 AM to 5 PM. For all the details visit www.VashonAlledArts.org. There are lectures by Karen Baer, on Friday night, a sunset garden dinner at the home of landscape designer Daniel Klein with guest speaker Valerie Easton, a wonderful exhibit at the Blue Heron gallery of sculpture by Mike Urban, watercolors by Donna Botten, paintings in oil by Kristen Reitz-Green, and not to be missed, a chamber music concert by world renowned cellists Rowena Hammill and Doug Davis with piano accompaniment by Francoise Regnat. Who could ask for anything more? How about a chance to bid on an artist-created mailbox. Twenty island artist have turned ordinary mailboxes into works of art. ...

And so, the world turns . In archaic Greek cosmological explanations of the heavens the Telamones became one and and the one was Atlas . Described as the sufferer or bearer of the heavens, Atlas was a second generation Titan. His brothers, Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Menoitios were all sons of Iapetos and Asia, or perhaps Iapetos and Klymene. Homer, in the Odyssey, writes,"Atlas the baleful, (oloophron); knows the depths of all the seas, and he, no other, guards (or holds) the tall pillars that keep the sky and earth apart." After Atlas leads a failed revolt against the Olympian gods Zeus condemns him to this fate and he becomes the one who turns the heavens on their axis, causing the stars to revolve.  I have been playing with compositions for digital prints with Atlas as subject.  Above is an example.

I am making progress on Telamones , the video cabinet commission, and presently working out the painted pattern that will be applied to the outside. I still need to give it another coat of gesso before I begin transferring the pattern and painting. The specifications changed from a wall mounted flat screen to one that sits on a table and so the design also changed to accommodate the base that is part of the flat screen video and a roof element to visually balance the base. I think it is starting to look pretty fun.

I have been listening to Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel as I work on a new comission. The book is constructed around letters from his daughter Sour Maria Celeste and is about Galileo Galilei's life as the foremost Italian scholar of the seventeenth century, his earth shaking discoveries, all framed by his eventual clash with Catholic doctrine. I am often drawn to the investigation of definition as subject or the edges of redefinition. The place where one myth is replaced by another or the explanation that reflects current discovery and the truths of a new epoch take hold. The science and art of Italy in the seventeenth century were all about new truths and redefinition of the accepted truth. While listening to Galileo's Daughter I have been working on several images and a commission who's subject is “Pillars of the World.” These originally began with a Monotype print titled Telamones. Telamones are the male equivalent of the female Caryatids...

 Today I have been looking through older work trying to decide what I might show in Vashon Allied Arts Archives Art Sale at the Blue Heron Gallery. I came up with several collaged monoprints from a series dating from and referencing the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In 2003 we were being bombarded by euphemisms to sell and provide cover for war. Preemptive War , promoting a war to prevent war is a good example, as is Collateral Damage , people killed in military actions who were not the intended target. How about Enhanced Interrogation ? I mean torture. I was offended and thought a print series highlighting these tittles of misdirection and militarization of the US media was an appropriate response. The print titled I Don't Know But I've been Told , (originally words from a military marching cadence,) is about people's willingness to believe. Without question, they march in the direction they are told. The...