Joan Marie Giampa Image Archaeologist™

Monday, May 13, 2013

Anagramation opening June 22 2013 at Red Caboose Gallery and online at Next Picasso

nagramation

Red Caboose Gallery is teaming up with The Next Picasso Gallery for a dual gallery opening on June 22nd, featuring new works by Joan Marie Giampa. The new work is based on an alphabet made up of tulip tree twigs. The title, Anagramation, was coined today by David Betz during an intense brainstorming session about the work on a very productive skype session.

Exerpt from Press Release by David Betz

Joan Marie Giampa’s latest series, which is the culmination of her long-term exploration of organic found objects and asemic writing. Anagramation 1 is an exhibition of 13 paintings depicting roughhewn letters of the Alphabet, in an organic, seemingly naturally occurring font, composed from forest floor detritus. The letters were initially configured from tulip tree twigs, gathered along local hiking trails, and then graphically rendered onto the canvas. Successive layers of painterly color were built up and then etched into, with the butt of a paint brush, creating exquisite surfaces, which seem more like the result of natural processes, like wind and water erosion, or soil stratification, than the human hand. Looking at the tulip tree twigs that formed part of her earlier vocabulary, in a fresh light Ms. Giampa realized, “they’re speaking to me and I’m listening. I’ve decided to configure them into letters for this series and… so the new work entails more of the tulip tree twig, but with a language all it's own.”

The paintings themselves can be presented in any number of groupings, with a multiplicity of potential meanings. Hence the exhibition’s title Anagramation. Anagrams can be traced back to the time of Moses, as "Themuru" or changing, which was used to find the hidden and mystical meaning in names. Each time you reconfigure the paintings in new combinations they take on fresh meanings, the sum total having far greater implications than the individual parts. Fully formed words, nonsense syllables, intriguing word fragments, hints of asemic writing, scat syllables, coded acronyms, hipster slang, Dada wordplay, are just some of the many possibilities in hanging these works… The exhibition will be rehung and reconfigured weekly to reflect the potentialities inherent in the letters.

Friday, May 10, 2013

Z

Y

X

W is for words...

Do we need to create a language to be abstract? I think not. I believe an artists language evolves as the artist evolves and every stroke, color, and texture extruded speaks a truth that is individual to the artist. I feel as if every painting is a bridge to the next painting. There is no time to reason when working. The term abstract is abstract to me in the sense that everything is abstract beyond the objective.

Art is subjective and subject to the analytical. It can be felt and experienced during the creative process as well as during the viewing process. I prefer to feel my way through the process and then analyze afterward--like most. It is difficult to analyze ones work. My teachers told me to leave that part to the people who do that best--curators and writers.

We know that symbols or pictures came before words and words can look like symbols, but our conscious mind likes to direct traffic and categorize the words into pictures and pictures in the words. Its a looping process kind of like Fibonacci's spiral. Language and art is a looping process for this artist. One feeds the other. As a trained visual communicator it was important to decipher the process--deconstruct in order to teach. In other words which came first--the picture or the word.

V

U

T

S

R

Q

P

O is for Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

N is for New or Next as in Next Picasso

N launches the Next Picasso campaign. Details coming.

M

L

K

J

I

H

G

Monday, April 1, 2013

D is for days left behind me...

Bishop Epic Golf Game...what a feeling...

Yesterday was one of those days in the studio that is like the scene in the movie "Caddy Shack", where the bishop has the greatest golf game of his life. He keeps winning. I had one of the most productive days ever as I completed four paintings. They all just seemed to come together and the timing could not be better. Below are the completed paintings.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Studio musings on the letter D...

Musings about the letter D and how the letters represent people in my life. The letters are actually portraits of people in my past.

The F word....

Alas the F word-
f-word n (sometimes capital; preceded by the) a euphemistic way of referring to the word fuck.

In our culture, F is the letter we relate to most regarding profanities and lewdness--case and point--"the f word"--WTF or LO FL or just FU.

I see the F made up of three simple twigs. F is for fun, future, face book and freedom. F is for facts and figures, familiarity, future, freedom, forgiveness and forever. F is for faith!