Artist21: Tony Orrico

I've been looking at Tony Orrico's work a lot lately. He combines ritual and meditative practices along with the dimensions of his body to create his art. He also incorporates performance art, creating many of his pieces in front of an audience. Hours of repeated actions go into the pieces. Orrico will do the same motions over and over again for a certain period of time or certain number of repetitions and then move onto the next motion. He often moves his entire body, working like organic clockwork.

His previous work as a dancer contributes heavily to his style as well. Each movement to create his drawings is like the steps in a rehearsed dance. Yoga is also important as it further aids in his ability to control his body and hold poses and contributes to the physical endurance needed for the hours he spends moving his body. All of these different properties and procedures coalesce to make Orrico's art. His work strikes me as more of an expression of a process and preexisting properties than a major expression of concept. His process is the concept in this case.

Artist20: Roberto Ferri

Traditional painter Roberto Ferri is a Renaissance and Baroque style artist working in the modern world. He employs highly detailed figures cast in dramatic lighting, exhibiting moments of passion, death and mysticism. Most of his art places itself firmly in realism (with a touch of the aforementioned dramatic lighting and contrast). What really interests me is when he steps out of the traditional subject matter - e.g. figures in robes sharing an embrace or a half-clothed soldier sweeping a woman onto his horse - and takes on mysticism and touches on surrealism. He does so in a consistently creative manner while still maintaining his old-style craft.

Through his more surreal side, Ferri depicts material that the Baroque and Renaissance artists never did. Yes, the older painters showed mythology and religious scenes quite often, but Ferri has taken it to a different level, applying more modern, visceral concepts of mythology. It's really cool to see the older painters working through Ferri so visibly while applying their craft to the more visually intense and visceral tendencies in modern art. Through him, the Baroque and Renaissance artists are able to address subject matter in a way they either wouldn't or couldn't in their time.

Artist20: Kate MacDowell

Ceramicist Kate MacDowell has achieved something new and interesting using concepts and materials old and common. Working primarily with porcelain, she carves out human structures - generally body parts - morphed and combined with nonhuman organisms to create some really interesting stuff. The central concept driving her work, according to her artist's statement, has to do with humanity's influence and role in the natural world. She focuses the negative effects of current technology and society. Humanity and nature are portrayed as one in her work, but she makes the union purposefully "uncomfortable" in an effort to communicate her feelings about the dangers of human-imposed change on the environment.



The figures and organisms portrayed are often dead, in some stage of dilapidation, showing the association between humanity's interaction with nature and death/pain.

 MacDowell communicates a common concept in a skillful and innovative way. She certainly achieves the morbid discomfort she strives to communicate and does so in a strangely tasteful way. The porcelain, clean and sterile, brings a sort of quiet, fossilized pain to her pieces that really stood out to me. Definitely a cool find and something to learn from for senior sem.