Shonan International Abstract Art Exhibition 2018
湘南国際抽象アート展2018
Artist
Carl Heyward
USA
USA
Carl Heyward
artist / writer / curator / founder GLOBAL ART PROJECT
"...in my case, the whole enterprise is questioned upon each studio session as an existential tight rope walk above an abyss...as if I need to reclaim or be reclaimed by the process, the magic, the high that produces satisfactory work...it is a psychic muscle whose presence can't be counted upon, but conjured ...a weather report of the soul, and sometimes it ain't sunny and bright."
artist/writer in San Francisco; exhibited mixed-media paintings and artists’ books internationally; collected by institutions and individuals:The Sackner Archives, Califia Books, The New Museum of Art (NY), SF Museum Modern Art Library, SF Art Institute, SF Academy of Art University, Yale University Art Library, The Australian National Gallery and Sonoma County Museum of Modern Art ;taught History of Art Criticism, Film /Video Production ;Thesis Writing & Presentation@SF Academy of Art University MFA Program; Artspeak ABC TV and Viacom SF, interviews and conversation with performance demonstrations. Artspeak distributed by MWF Video NY@Video Data Bank Rochester School of Art. His work in performance includes collaborative grants New Performance, National Endowment for the Arts; Rene Yanez /Fusion Visual Theater. Arts interviews include Diamonda Galas, Frank Zappa, Carolee Schneemann (Interventions and Imaging Her Own Erotics/ Art Papers interviews), The Dark Bob, Philip Glass, Robert Wilson, Karen Finley, John Sex, Luis Valdez (High Performance interview/The Citizen Artist) and John Giorno. Work in print & electronic journalism: appearances in Rolling Stone, Artweek, Artscribe International, SF Bayview Newspaper, Art Com, Metier. Served on Advisory Board Artists’ Television Access, SF Art Institute’s Artists’ Committee; alternate for the California Arts Commission and received an NEA Arts Administration Fellowship; exhibited at Bonnafont Gallery, SF (new mixed-media works) July 2011 and SHATTERED exhibition at Marin MOCA curated by arts critic Kenneth Baker; exhibited in Italy: BUS PORTRAITS April 2013 Garage 21 Ceglie Mesapica ;DOUBLE SOLO EXHIBITIONS: Mixed-Media Works at Scaramuzza Contemporary Arts in Lecce curated by Monica Lisi; WINTER HOURS at Glass Door Gallery San Francisco November 2013; EMERGING ARTISTS OF THE BAY AREA juried by SF Examiner Art Critic through April 13th, 2014 at Marin Museum of Contemporary Art; Two-person exhibition with Crane at Pambula, New South Wales in 2015: ZIMBABWE (two-step); THE DRAWING BOX exhibitions in Mumbai, Ireland and other international sites; travels KNEE(jerk) FRAGMENTATION Project. July - August 2014 : GLOBAL ART PROJECT at Ca 'Zanardi Pallazo Gallery and workshops; Salento-Lecce 3rd Biennale at Palazzo Vernazza (Italy) and ART IN THE ROTUNDA workshops in Treviso, Italy; Marin Museum of Modern Art mixed-media workshops August 2014. GAP II Mazatlan, Mexico Carlos Buelna Gallery @ Museo de Arte Moderno de Mazatlan, March 2015; LIGHT WORKS, Milano, Italy; LIVE WORMS Gallery group show SF, Ca Feb 205; GAP III Lecce, Italy Sept-Oct 2015 @ Fondo Veri Gallery, Monna Lisa Studio Workshops & Cittidano Gallery; UNLEASHED Gallery, Redwood City, Ca three-person exhibition Nov 2015; ROOM ART GALLERY, Mill Valley, Ca Global Art Project By Colaborative Means Retrospective March 1- April 30, 2016; SF International Arts Festival 100 Years Dada Here and Now May 20- June 5, 2016 Cowell Theater and Gallery 308, GAP IV Venezia Art House @ Palazzo Ca'Zanardi, Venice, Italy July 27- August 21, 2016. Solo exhibition The Rellik, Benicia, Ca Jan-April 2017, Flood Mansion January-February 2017, GAP V Mazatlan, Mexico March 2- April 25, 2017, Ruby Livingdesign, Mill Valley, Ca, Spring 2017, Poligious Issues Netherlands, Austria, Slovenia and Belgium Sept 2017-18, Metamorphosis, Hof Van Ryhove, March-April 2018, GAP VII SENEGAL exhibitions, workshops, collaborative studio work Dec 23 - Jan 25 Dakar, Senegal (global art project)
Selected Exhibitions:
Solo
2017
Arts Benicia @ The Rellik Gallery, California
Rubyliving Design, California
2013
THE BUS PORTRAITS ( photography) , UCCIO BIONDI GALLERY/ GARAGE 21, Ceglie Messapica, Italy
CARL HEYWARD SOLO MIXED -MEDIA, Scaramuzza Artecontemporanea, Lecce, Italy
Group
2018:
GAP VII SENEGAL, Sobo Bade Galleries, Dakar, Senegal
"Metamorphosis- Contemporary Transitions", Hof Van Ryhove , Ghent, Belgium
"Expo Internazionale Italy Astrattismo : Sguardi" INTERNATIONAL ABSTRACTION, Montemurlo, Italy
2017:
"Poligious Issues" Netherlands, Austria, Slovenia and Belgium 2017-18,
"In Dialogue Beyond Worlds " Two Person Exhibition, Syufy Gallery, Flood Mansion, San Francisco
GAP V Baupres Gallery, Mazatlan, Mexico
GAP IV Venezia Art House @ Palazzo Ca'Zanardi, Venice, Italy
ROOM ART GALLERY, GLOBAL ART PROJECT "By Collaborative Means" Retrospective (artist /curator), Mill Valley, Ca
SF International Arts Fest 100 Year Anniversary Dada Here and Now Cowell Theater & Gallery 308 (artist/curator), SF,Ca
SIMPATICO two person exhibition, THE FOURTH WALL GALLERY , Oakland, Ca.
2015:
GAP II Mazatlan Carlos Buelna Gallery @ Museo de Arte Moderno de Mazatlan,Mexico
LIGHT WORKS Milano, Italy
LIVE WORMS Gallery SF, Ca.
GAP III Lecce Three Sites: @ Fondo Veri Gallery @ Monna Lisa Studios @ Cittidano Gallery, Lecce, Italy
UNLEASHED GALLERY, three-person exhibition, Redwood City, Ca.
2014:
EMERGING ARTISTS OF THE BAY AREA, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Novato, California
I am a native of Washington DC and lived there till I was twelve years old. Middle Class background of educators; Father was, eventually, an Epidemiologist and worked at the Federal Center for Disease Control; education, academics and discipline were stressed, though, as is usually is the case, my brother and I rebelled, to a great extent supported by the cultural revolution that was the sixties. We were/are both musicians an d played everything from strip clubs, to school dances, stadium shows, opened for major acts, recorded and all that; heady stuff for 13-14 year olds, certainly. He, my brother Kent, actually inspired mixed-media found object research as a kid, drawing psychedelic manadla-like abstractions while I had no drawing skills nor aptitude. He was called a 'scavenger" for his penchant of bringing home rusted bottle caps, bits of shiny things and interesting paper he picked up on the street. Ironically, his predilection foreshadowed my own adoption of this habit and informed my early assemblage work.
As a musician and leader of aggregations, I soon tired of what was, in effect, a marriage of sorts with 3-4-5 mates and opted for the solitary pursuit of writing and art practice.
While we went to school with the sons and daughters of diplomats and corporate executives in DC, it all seemed matter of fact a result of living in the nation's capitol, matter of fact till we moved to Atlanta and experienced a cultural disconnect that was extreme and disturbing. Gone was the multi-cultural homogeneity of our early youth replaced by the racial tensions of a transition that still has ramifications in this country, if not the world, as that necessary evolution continues. Instead of being surrounded by classmates from Egypt, of Chinese and international descent, the melting pot was a simmering of the historical conflict between black and white, the unfortunate legacy of slavery, racism and inequality that was stark, though, to a great extent, in the throes of decline.
I look back at that period and am thankful for having witnessed and taken part in that revolution, though at the time I existed in a twilight zone of awe and disbelief. All in all, it matured me, brought me to deal with the American reality, tempered expectation of natural inclusion and, finally, allowed me to appreciate the value of difference and the necessity of acceptance and humility. It is no exaggeration to say that some of my closet friends originate from that period and many still reside in the Southern United States. These young iconoclasts who had the courage to defy seemingly inbred habits and expressions of hatred and fear of the "other". I came to learn that regions and environments that are most restrictive and repressive are also fertile ground for free-spirited thinkers who believe in the connectivity of the human experience and realize that one of the gifts of diversity is the reciprocal gift of mutual growth.
I saw my first art, a painting by an Aunt, Aunt Edna, the matriarch of the family, a health care practitioner, writer, educator who painted as a sideline. Her's was the first art I saw and it left an impression; small abstract pieces, perhaps representative of landscapes; I could not judge it, I had nothing to compare it with, but as an item, as a manifestation of the creative impulse, as an artifact of human possibility, it was fascinating to me. I remember staring at it for hours and could not figure what I was looking at and perhaps that sense of not knowing was the most fascinating part. I can't remember ever questioning her about it nor anyone else in the family but a seed of curiosity was sewn. Upon return visits I returned to the piece with the same befuddlement and attraction. Year later as an adult with a little more " sophistication" about the whole enterprise, I realized that it was not very good, but it served as a valuable impetus for me and the memory of that mystery still serves as a comfort and point of creative entry.
I copied paintings in oil of Dali works. His paintings reminded me of the dream state and I copied his clouds as an advancement and shift from comic and cartoon culture. These works began to be shown in galleries which, of course, was encouraging to a fourteen year old, but I had no clue what I was doing and stumbled upon techniques intuitively finding satisfaction in the process of discovery, a sentiment which remains with me to this day. Not knowing but doing by forging ahead and embracing the process allowing the surprise.
I will say that Rauschenberg became a big influence while in grade school. Field trips to museums and national monuments, science and art museums, all that was available to us in the Wash DC public school system. The following is a recent recounting of sorts and appreciation of Rauschenberg:
r o b e r t / B O B :
rauschen / B E R G :
you know...I saw the goat I saw the goat and saw the tire and saw the color and the flatness and fatness and saw nothing else and the smell is of taxidermy even in the early sixties to a fourth fith sixth grader either national gallery or corcoran ( if it was up and running then) saw the angora goat MONOGRAM meaning what...junk house trash heap humor three stooges in the museum and what child sees and says and laughs at the mental jig saw puzzle comic book heart of the thing and wants to touch and moves on to another crumbling COMBINE even then and wants to know but there is no one to ask being hustled out by indifferent teacher indifferent guards and nothing in the books an incidental sideshow to post-eisenhower blandness due to eiesenhower blandness and truman a-bomb and this is my dc hometown capitol of the known universe at the time and the only threat was the russian nuclearity and pending doom that these pieces exploded... hey this ain't the mona lisa and no interesting pathology like van gough's detached ear no attachment to anything known to kindergarten mind gone to ready made or cut up method had not discovered howl or the african beats kaufman and jones nothing like that yet on the radar but this damn goat with the tire yak it might be and smelly believe me in the museum can you beat that and what was to come and is to come and come it must....better eat public school pot of strachy paste and tear off wood from the green lined paper : THANK YOU PAPA ROB
I have been a practicing, exhibiting artist since the early 1970's having been a musician in my teen years. Art has always played an important role in my development and has positively shaped my view of the world allowing expression, definition and explanation of the world and my place in it in ways more effective than simple verbal or written means.I believe that a salient moment came while a sophomore in college at Ga State U where I thought to become a therapist employing an empathy for those who suffered (not unlike myself) from trauma, depression, cultural and social alienation ( I am a 66 year old African-American male) and other emotional ailments. One day the professor seemed stumped by a question and responded with "well, it's not an exact science...", which smacked of the old nudge-nudge wink-wink and smacked of a dishonesty; was disheartening especially those days of Nixon-Reagan, Watergate, Viet Nam and social and cultural upheaval. I worked in radio professionally at the time as well and had the opportunity to interview a number of musicians who also painted and expressed themselves through the visual arts. This lead to writing stints for Rolling Stone, High Performance, Artweek, Artscribe International and Art Papers and other arts publications. With a collaborator, Richard Kwang, a Hong Kong native, I rekindled a love for photo & film creating a number of works in my art classes. This led to manipulation of images creating mixed media woven works combining duplicates of a single image into surrealist visual landscapes.This preoccupation replaced music as a vehicle of expression, though I pursued a degree in Political Science. Art became everything for me despite the pressure from my well intended Epidemiologist Dad who admonished me to pursue academic goals and make art and music a hobby...I was well aware that this was my calling and compromised and by day was student at night was in a studio or darkroom creating art.Influences such as Rauschenberg, Tapies, Dali, the Expressionists, minimalists nurtured me. My own research via arts interviews and article writing as well as as academic papers on the creative process confirmed that my ideas were "valid" in that much of my education in the arts followed a self-designed program, leading to workshops in Rochester NY at Visual Studies Workshop, print making classes at Sf Art Institute and eventually teaching in the MFA program at SF Academy of Art University and serving as an adviser to painters as I taught Film & Video Production, Thesis Writing & Presentation...I currently conduct mixed media workshops all over the world as an independent artist and as part of GAP (GLOBAL ART PROJECT); in the US at Marin MOCA, Arts Benicia and The Arsenal in SF Bay Area. I have a Mentoring Program for private individual sessions.
Art has allowed me to travel the world ...I am the founder of GAP an international collaborative group of 30 artists from 12 countries. Our work reflects individual, personal and global concerns. We create and exhibit work that allows freedom of expression via opportunity to communicate beyond language and culture with diverse artists in Mexico, Italy, Belgium, Africa etc. sites of our workshops, demos, workshops and studio environs. We are linked by mixed-media practice, which may be reduced to working with the materials at hand and has antecedents in collage, assemblage, found-object and related practice. GAP ( global art project ) a group of international artists working lin various media, promoting collaboration, experimentation and mutual development of art practice meet in Mazatlan, Mexico at Museo de Arte de Mazatlan, Marin MOCA , The Arsenal in Benicia, Ca., Tonio Jazz Festival, and Ca' Zanardi (GAP Venice JULY 2014). 2015: two rotating exhibitions at Gallery Cittadino and Fondo Verri augmented by intensive private mixed-media workshops at Monna Lisa studio.
This is an international, multi-cultural, multi-national, pan-ethnic conglomerate.The diverse group of artists share a common interest in what I term FRAGMENTATION: the taking of disparate elements (FRAGS) not ordinarily associated with art practice and combining them with creative passion in the belief in democratization of the art process from inception to execution to presentation to acquisition. GAP champions collaborative activity as a vehicle for stimulation and enhanced creative discovery having experienced the rewards of group interaction and the illuminating effect in enhancing personal practice.
Having corresponded for a number of years via electronic social media, the nascent GAP members initiated exchanges of shards of paper, fabric, photos...found objects, whatever caught our fancy and built, initially depending upon the vagaries of international postal systems, vibrant surprising collages, paintings and constructions reflecting the international flavor of the gathered, exchanged, rotated and deconstructed elements; the sensibility and selection of the artists, one adding a frag here ,another a mark there, in an adding and subtraction, expansion and reduction of aesthetic impulses in exercises that produced works on fabric, paper and canvas in the spirit of FLUXUS, COBRA and EXQUISITE CORPSE, perhaps the spiritual antecedents of GAP activity. We are slated for a residencies in Dakar, Senegal Dec - Jan 2018.
I have flourished as an artist through the collaborative environment provided by GAP and benefit from this practice which informs my own more solitary investigations in the production of solo works.
Time passes and with consistency and paying attention there is a dissolution between life and art practice...of life style...art becomes life and art practice informs choices, perspective and understanding of the world and place in it.
All art is a political act .
I keep it simple.
I continue working as an artist because it remains interesting and nourishes my curiosity. It is a way to make sense of the world offering solace and gives clues to purpose or potential. It forecasts event spiritual, psychological personally and globally, in my experience. It is an anthropological tool allowing reflection of self and the universe tracking the sublime, the painful , the poignant and the ridiculous, you know, business as usual.
My relationship to figurative art is reflected in the work I do only as a photographer concerned initially with technical proficiency and mimicking those who came before me. The fluidity of the hand and materials, of almost being automatic...of organizing chaos is what is important to me. Realism, figurative work and duplication of reality, so to speak, already exists in reality and there are hordes of artists who do it better than I do and that's fine. I am not directed that way. Very rarely, as opposed to my early collage-based work, does a figure appear. Those works, out of Dada or topical concerns are what they are and are of that time.
There is a sense in my work process when there arises a certain fluidity that I know that I am on the right track and it often is the case,that I have no clue what I am doing and I like that. It is only days weeks, months, even years later that I can see what was happening, both the result but more importantly the process. The process is the most important thing to me , the ritual of making and preparing the thinking and cessation of thought or goals other than simply to do. That process is unique in each session yet strangely the same. The best work comes from abandoning expectation and just becoming a manipulator of materials; learning to trust self and the process; building confidence that no matter what moves I make or how the materials respond on any particular day, that I " can figure it out" or it me.
I always was interested in creativity in the arts and creativity in living. Fromm, Fritz Perls, Vonnegut, Kesey, Burroughs, Gysin, Achebe, the Beats, Baraka, Tutuola, Malcolm X, Ishmael Reed all influenced me in terms of revolutionary thought, compassionate handling of difficult cultural realities, escapism, drug use a revolutionary act, as authors providing a wider view of multi cultural and ethnic points of view, of absurdist and humorous reconciliation of painful truths.
I have a conscious desire to produce work that is authentic, that really comes from me; work that I identify and can viewed as reflective of whom I am; unvarnished raw and, at times, hopefully, elegant. That contrast, dichotomy produces both something original but also allows an entry into possibilities around the identity of the moment that shifts and evolves or diminishes or is strengthened in time. The notion of no/ MIND in my work and workshops is central to my practice, allowing what happens in my interaction with materials to exist in a laboratory, as a series of ongoing experiments that continue for as long as I am interested in them or until I exhaust any set of materials.