Brian Fisher Print, Paint and Sculpture Blog

Beginning in 2003 PrintZero Studio, founded by Brian Lane and Jeremy Cody, has hosted and coordinated the exhibition and exchange of prints with the admirable intention of promoting the art of printmaking. Participating print artists must submit an edition of 15 small (5x7) prints created through any traditional printmaking process. There is no assigned theme. Each artist then receives in exchange 13 randomly selected prints and the opportunity to exhibit in a wonderful traveling venue. Past PrintZero Exchange shows have exhibited in Seattle WA, Portland OR, Miami FL, Homer AK, Laramie WY, Buffalo NY, Madison WI, and Naestved, Denmark. This year 383 participants representing 21 countries will be exhibited. My submission, Night Garden, is a simple linocut and visual exploration of a poem by a friend called “Madam of the Secret Garden” . The opening reception for PrintZero Studio’s Exchange 6 exhibition will be held on Saturday August 29 from 6-10pm, at Airport Way South,

Earlier this summer, VIGA, the Vashon Island Growers Association, invited regional artists to submit imagery, for reproduction, representative of island growers and garden produce. My Monotype, Cabbages and Kings was selected to advertise the VIGA markets as a promotional poster for 2009. Now Greg Wessel, manager of the Two Wall Gallery, has invited VIGA and all artists that participated in the competition to show their poster entries and related work. In addition to wonderful imagery, art patrons may also sample tasty food made from Vashon-grown produce at the opening. The show will hang through September and opens Friday, September 4th, 6pm at Two Wall Gallery, 17600 Vashon Hwy SW. Posted above are the two Monotype images, Cabbages and Kings and Harvest Kings that I will be exhibiting.  

George Wright, sculpture and director of the Heron's Nest Gallery on Vashon, invited seven artists to create work for an August show in the gallery. She chose Postcards from the Edge as theme and everyone has approached the subject quite differently. I frequently print at an almost postcard scale, particularly when I am searching for accidental compositions to develop as paintings or larger print imagery. The cards are 6 3/4 x 5 inches. Above are a few of the twenty Monotype and Collograph print images I made for the exhibit.

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