Black Pearls

Petronilla HohenwARTer

blue sky stuff

about the artist

Petronilla - This is me

163cm tall, blue eyes, brown hair, healthy enough to feel happy in my own body, born in 1965 in Waldkirchen, a small rural town in the Bavarian forests. I grew up surrounded by mountains and nature, far removed from the hustle and bustle of city life. An unassuming provincial town where life has a different rhythm; things move at a slower pace, it takes longer to adapt to and adopt life’s changes and developments.

I was the eldest of three children. My brother Markus died at the young age of 20 and I have a sister Sandra, 8 years my junior, who is very dear to me. My parents ran their own business and looking back, I had a very normal childhood, nothing out of the ordinary. I attended a convent boarding school and my early years were shaped by the strict Roman-Catholic ethos of the school and its teachers. Early on, the confines and constraints of this environment set me on the path to find a creative outlet for my feelings, but at this stage this was expressed in a conventional and unrevolutionary way.

I worked in social pedagogy in this same rural town for several years, but I soon started to ask myself: is this really EVERYTHING? Life had more to offer. So, in 1993, I bid farewell to my hitherto safe life and embarked on a journey within myself and into the wider world, in search of something as yet unknown. I needed to learn, be alive, independent, free, and face whatever consequences this new life would bring.

I was unafraid, ready to take risks and follow my intuition. With a healthy dose of blind optimism to boot, I took on extraordinary challenges. I travelled to the USA, Southeast Asia and Europe, furthering my education and gathering experiences in different areas of life (physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and creative). This enabled me to explore and embrace other perspectives and worlds, and in so doing, to discover the truth within me and find a spiritual home in the new life I had chosen for myself.

I have had many mentors along the way. In nearly all cases, our paths crossed by chance, yet they all shaped me and my personal development significantly. Even though some experiences were emotionally and mentally painful, the past 15 years of INDEPENDENCE were infused with an energy that gave me the inner strength and confidence to pursue this path. I made a conscious decision to pursue this fulfilling and enriching life as an artist. I wanted to use my art to explore the SOMETHING that I could not see; to reflect it, make it visual, quite simply to reveal it. This SOMETHING has many definitions throughout the world: strength, energy, basic trust, love, power, God, and it is at the heart of us all, irrespective of the religion, philosophy, continent and culture in which we feel at home.

With this in mind, I want to thank all those people who have accompanied, moved, formed, shaped, encouraged and supported me, each in their own individual way.

What do I want the DESTINATION of my journey to be? I want the authenticity and truth at the heart of all my work to speak to these people, with ever more intensity, and be a visual doorway and pathfinder to a reality hidden within ourselves.

In contemporary terms, my art is a journey - an expedition into a colourful, emotionally expressive world, a quest to become aware of one’s SELF.If you can approach my images and statements with spontaneity, courage, joy, vitality and openness, I hope you can emerge feeling stronger, more aware, more whole.

In the spirit of positive ZEN and a healthy ZEST for everything that life has to offer,

<JUMP + JUST DO IT> I / you / we can only WIN!

© Petronilla Hohenwarter September 2010

Featured black pearls – art and artists....

Talent Pool - Jon Sass

Jon Sass

... was born under the name Jonathan McClain Sass in the Bronx, and grew up in Harlem, New York City. As a celebrated tubist, Jon is widely recognized today as one of the most creative virtuosos in the music industry.

He began studying his instrument at the age of 14. While admiring Howard Johnson's music and following him around and listening to his mother's records and following the bass lines of groups like "Earth, Wind and Fire" or James Brown, with his tuba, Jon studied privately with Sam Pilafian. Other teachers were

Howard Johnson, Joe Daley, Warren Deck and Bob Stewart. Within four years later Jon graduated from New York's Music and Art High School, presently the La Guardia School for the Performing Arts.

To date he has made over 70 recordings. Currently working as a solo artist, Jon has crossed over from playing collaborations with artists and groups such as the Vienna Art Orchestra, Boston Symphony-Empire Brass, Art of Brass Vienna, Circum, Austrian Brass Connection, Ray Anderson, Peter Wolf, Ricky Ford, Erika Stucky, Sud Pool, Henry Threadgill, Michelle Rosewoman, David Murray, Sunny Murray, Butch Morris, Leon Thomas, Vince Mendoza, Peter Erskine, Linda Tillery and the Heritage Cultural Choir, Howard Johnson, Arkady Shilkloper, Gideon Kremer. Feature programs together with Bobby Shew, Ivan Neville, Hans Theessink, Millagros Pinera, Wolfgang Puschnig, Wolfram Berger, and many more. Jon has also performed solo and recorded with Several Wind Symphonies. Jon has also written arrangements for the James Brown Horns.

Jon’s music:

"I never considered myself a jazz or classical musician, but foremost an artist."

Living in Europe - in Vienna - for many years, only increased Jon's stylistic flexibility and his ability to feel at home with and crossover between classical music, Jazz and Avantgarde. With his early musical roots embedded in R&B, Soul, Groove, Funk and Blues, especially when it comes to his identification with singers and bass players of this type of music, Jon is best known for his distinctive, soulful sound - for example on the 3 "Heavy Tuba and Jon Sass"-recordings, to name just a few.