Current Show

Grey Cube Gallery proudly presents the third Black & White show for the month of April 2022. The show encompassed a range of artistic styles and mediums (oil on canvas, acrylic, watercolor, pastel, charcoal, ink, graphite, cotton, photography, digital). Each submission has been judged based on the following elements of artistic expression: orginality and quality of art, overall design, creativity, interpretation of the theme, demonstration of artistic ability and usage of medium. Out of all entries, 125 artworks were shortlisted for inclusion in the show. The competition attracted entries from many countries across the world: USA, South Korea, Canada, Kazakhstan, Taiawan, India, France, Germany, Poland, China, Ireland, Italy, Hong Kong and Romania. Enjoy the show and thank you for expressing an interest in our competition.

These 3-D collages from my "Sensuous Stripes" series are abstract works using details cropped from my photographs of people wearing striped clothing. I print out sections of images on acid free matte photo paper to use as collage material. I manipulate my striped print-outs into 3 dimensional forms that play with real and illusionistic space. I use book cloth to extend and connect the stripes. I love the abstract power of the striped patterns when combined in myriad configurations. What fascinates me in stripes is how rigid patterns of parallel lines become organic and undulating when seen on the human form.

These drawings are intended as portraits based on identity. Portraiture hinges on the question of whom deserves to be shown. Beginning with religious and royal iconography, produced under systems of patronage, portraits were meant to immortalize the divine, powerful, and wealthy. However, what it means to make a portrait — its subject, form, method, and medium — has expanded beyond those previous confines. There has been a democratization of both subject matter, and practitioners. In reconceptualizing many of the old categories, as well as ushering in a variety of new ones, successive generations of artists have interrogated our received images of race, class, beauty, gender, sexuality. These portraits are meant to examine mortality and vitality as a currency in our contemporary culture.

Primarily trained, and spending 20+ years as a sculptor age began knocking at my door. I never thought about turning 65 (now 70) and all that would entail, years of welding, grinding, and the heavy lifting of big steel sculptures started to requiring shoulder surgeries, hand problems… so as everything gradually caught up with me, I began to think of other materials that would extend my art-making career another 25 or 30 years. A long time ago I used to build large 6-foot by 6-foot (and larger) kites using American quilt patterns sewing them in rip-stop nylon, I have flown and exhibited them around the world. As I had already spent an inordinate amount of time on a sewing machine, fabric seemed to be a logical material to return to. As there are more than a few very talented Quilters in the world, I didn’t want to replicate their tremendous virtuosity. So, I returned to my sculpture sketchbooks (and I have lots of sketchbooks, in almost every room of the house). These were full of drawings using value to create the illusion of 3-dimensional pieces. I began to replicate these pencil drawings with thread painting techniques. To do so I had to figure out a way to blend the grey values of thread to recreate the ones in the drawings. By playing with the sewing machines, I found I was able to increase the tension on the upper arm and decrease the tension on the lower bobbin, by winding the screw a little bit backwards which allowed me to pull the thread from the bottom to the top and create blending that was almost pointillism. I also removed the feed dogs from 2 of the 3 machines I work with at this time; I am not sewing, I'm painting.