march 2012

28 Artists For Humanity

54 Resa Blatman

66 Tim Fish

Table Of Contents March 201210 Mark Luiggi

40 Marian Dioguardi

28 Artists For Humanity

54 Resa Blatman

66 Tim Fish

Founder/Editor-In-Chief

Marketing

Photographer

Associate Web Designer

Associate Editor

Associate Curator

Contributing Writers

Darius Loftis

Claudia Puccio

Brianna Calello

David D’Alessandro

Kevin Hebb

Zoe Hyde

David Showalter Jr.

Carina Wine

Pete Cosmos

Kevin Hebb

Darius Loftis

Nicklaus Pereksta

Nick Rachielles

LuiggiInterview by David Showalter Jr.Photo by Ellen Wineberghttp://ellenweinberg.com/

Mark10

LuiggiMark

Take a moment to imagine a world where all of our dreams are trans-muted into reality. As much as we may easily become caught up in our own lives, it is imperative we take time for ourselves to make the life we want. The art created by Mark Luiggi is in its own category. This is a man who is his own special brand of artist and human being. He is experienced, wise as a result, and in touch with his own uni-verse. When I interviewed Mark I found myself at peace. It was one of those rare experiences in life, which gives a perfectly complete sense of wonder and amazement. Three hours passed by in mere mo-ments. I connected with his work on a deep, personal level. Mark is a kind-hearted, compassionate soul. He has a fanciful sense of humor encompassed by a dedication one can only find in an individual who has as much fervor as he does. He creates magic! I am extremely happy to have crossed paths with Mark. Throughout the interview he spent time creating an original piece of artwork for me, which I cher-ish. The day we met will stay with me for the rest of my life. It is my hope the readers find their own placidity and take time to appreciate the good we can find everywhere. Please enjoy a modest portrayal of an artist I respect with all my heart.

Page 13: “Life Saving Device” 8.25x5.5Page 14: “A Delicate Balance” 12x18

Page 15: “A Fine Education” 6x10Page 16: “Aeroport” 24x18 wc paperon wood

David Showalter: What made you want to participate in an interview with Abstraks?

Mark Luiggi: I kind of connect all over the place. I connect high; I connect low. Artists like my work and people who don’t know anything about art like my work. I really like that. That’s kind of fun. It’s part of my motivation. Now, everyone’s pretty much figured out that everyone is an individual and whatever they create is their art. Everyone is so completely different. I think now people embrace it and say: “Well, that’s your art.” I always get a kick out of that. I think I see that with some of the other artists I saw

in Abstraks; some people who really wanted to reach out and connect. I remember reading about a critic. He was very famous. He just retired. He said he went to someone’s studio and he didn’t know what the art was. He didn’t know if the chairs lean-ing against the wall were the art. He wasn’t sure what they were supposed to be discussing. Art had become so intellectual that no one knew what it was. It’s ridiculous.

DS: What is it that you do and have done?

ML: It’s a stream of consciousness; there’s a theater aspect to some of the things I do. I stage sets. I assemble it.

12 Abstraks March 2012

March 2012 Abstraks 17

I bring things in; I take things out. This was the foundation for what I did later. I did clocks. I was with the Society of Arts and Crafts. That’s where one of my clocks sold to Andre Previn. I was very pleased to have connected with someone like that. Then I got sidetracked. I was do-ing traditional watercolors. It was a great way to polish up my technique; learning how to do trees. [We giggle] I’m always trying to tap into how to make the magic happen. I made it a goal to get into the New England Watercolor Society. It’s very stodgy. I do watercolors at a fairly high level and [in his best Donnie Brasco im-personation] forget about it. They’re not interested. They wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot poll. They’re totally birch trees in the snow.

DS: Oh god. It’s like a Robert Frost poem.

ML: Right! That stuff can be beautiful. I have good respect for people that know what they’re doing. On the other hand, I realized there are ten kagillion people painting doorways of Beacon Hill. There’s no way to distin-guish yourself. For me, it’s like dream-ing up a world; whatever I want. I just paint whatever I want. I also come from editorial illustration. I’ve done a little bit of commercial illustration. That whole thing always appealed to me.

Be sure to check out the full article in our March print issue!Available through our store.

Interview by Kevin HebbPhotographer Nicklaus Pereksta

Artists For28 Humanity

Artists ForHumanity

hat justifies the “art world” as something worth understand-ing? Where does it stop and where does it meet back up with “reality”? Is art something that can be taught? Are there such things as bad paint-ings? When does the phrase “The Art of…” start to get overstated? So many questions and thousands of clichés later we are left with the daunting truth that art remains an inescapable - and often necessary - part of everyday life. Even to me, the idea of discussing art past an aesthet-ic standpoint conjures up a feeling of loftiness that often turns me away from most gallery openings. To some, art is the relationship between the work and the viewer – allowing one to take from a piece their own story. Some (let’s be honest, most) people buy art from department stores to decorate their homes. Scott Mc-Cloud said: “Art, as I see it, is any human activity which doesn’t grow out of either of our species’ two basic instincts: survival and reproduc-tion.” Andy Warhol famously said (by way of Marshall McLuhan): “Art is anything you can get away with.” Whatever your stance may be, you cannot deny that people have really gone out of their way to keep the idea of art alive.

It is no big secret that when deal-ing with balancing a budget, the first

things that need to go are the frivo-lous, the impractical or even the less popular. From the administrative side that makes absolute sense. You can easiest avoid rebellion and maintain balance when the least amount of people are effected. Less people are involved with drama than football; you do the math. The problem with assigning a dollar’s worth to anything is that it literally displays what the organization values more. Far too often that appointment of value is used to create social classes within that organization, leaving you with self-segregated lunchrooms where the Goth kids stay clear of the jocks. Is it right? Who is to blame? An es-

W



Interview by David D’Alessandro

Marian40 Dioguardi

MarianDioguardi

Marian Dioguardi: A Colorful Life As I traveled to Boston’s South End on the Red Line, my excitement to meet Marian Dioguardi began to grow. I knew very little about her, but what I had gathered from her short bio on her website (mariandioguardi.com) had piqued my interest. She was born in East Boston, and I was thrilled to meet an artist who had stayed close to her roots. However, I was even more fascinated to discover how a woman who started out in gemstone buying and undercover investigations (yea, that’s right, under-cover investigations!) had developed into a successful, skilled painter. When I walked into the studio Mar-ian shares with her husband, the first reaction I had was how bright it was inside. I quickly realized that my eyes were playing tricks on me. It was an overcast, dull February afternoon and it wasn’t sunlight that dazzled me, but rather the dozens of brilliant, boldly colored paintings hanging on the walls. The works appeared to fill the studio with light almost as if they were phosphorescent. But before I really had a chance to examine them, I heard a cheerful voice say, “You must be Dave.” Sitting in front of me was a dark-haired, unassuming woman with a

giant smile that constantly remained throughout our meeting. I ap-proached her and stuck out my hand to introduce myself. As she grasped it, she gasped slightly and said, “Oh, your hands are so cold! Is it nasty out?” I responded rather noncommittally, mumbling something about how it wasn’t that bad for February, it was nice to meet her and that I hoped she had had a good day thus far.

“Good day? I usually have good days,” she replied nonchalantly. And with that statement, I began to understand the artist behind the beautiful, “glow-ing” pictures surrounding me.


Page 43: “Homage to Venus of Willendorf ” Oil on Cradled Panel, 2011, 20 x 28 inPage 44: “We Want Jell-O (set of four)” Oil on Cradled Panel, 2010, 6 x 6 in


Interview by Carina Wine

Resa54 Blatman

Blatman

eauty is finally back, and it is hard not to notice. Not that beauty ever went away entirely; we will always crave and venerate beautiful things. “Pretty” has made its way back into the lexicon of everyday talk to describe desirable objects in a way that has not happened in a long time. Right now it is quite acceptable for everyone to love really pretty things.

Women have always admired “pretty” on dresses, faces, bed sheets and sheet cakes, but now everyone is freely confessing to loving pretty as well. “I don’t really need a new phone but I got one because it’s so pretty!” “A well-marbled steak is a thing of beauty.” “I love shiny objects!” “My new truck is fucking beautiful.”

Instagram coats all of our modern photos with a lovely haze, while HD everything promises to pummel you with beauty. And don’t even get me started on how a show like The Vam-pire Diaries even exists.

All of this pretty comes with a price. Actors starve while Rubenesque pick-up trucks binge on fuel. Smart-phones are a whole industry built on planned obsolesce and cause cell phone antenna to barnacle the skyline. Wilderness is drilled, gold is scraped from the seabed and gas is

fracked out of the ground.

“Fracking”, the practice of injecting porous rock deep underground with water to flush out deposits of natural gas, might be an odd topic to begin an artist’s profile with. When I go to see Resa Blatman at her studio on a mild winter day in Somerville, frack-ing is the first subject that comes up.

“I am very passionate about the envi-ronment.” Resa says within moments of me getting my coat off at her hom-ey workspace. “Do you know what is happening in Pennsylvania?”

“Companies are pulling out these vast amounts of gas out of the earth. They push water underground to take out the gas, but then the water is filled with chemicals and salt. It pollutes everything around it. Rivers are dying, people can’t drink the wa-ter coming out of their own taps.”

Resa finds fracking disturbing, and its effects disturbingly common. She sees environmental devastation being inflicted on the planet as a form of heresy. “Everything we come from is what we are destroying. It goes against our human nature but we do it anyway.”

The two of us sit on a couch that directly faces her largest and most

B


Page 57: “Spinneret” oil on laser-cut panel, 43.5h x 46.5w inchesPage 58: “Little Sparkly 3” oil, acrylic, beads, and glitter on laser-cut panel, 11h x 23w inches

recent piece. Called “The Fall”, it is a massive triptych the size of a sofa, with glowing veins of pink spiraling across a sooty rectangle. The title is one part inside joke with her hus-band and one part Biblical reference.

My thoughts immediately jump to Lucifer being cast from Heaven and falling below to create Hell. Resa is instead referencing the moment when humans become self-aware sin-ners and are expelled from the Gar-den of Eden. “Some people believe in religion. My religion is this earth.”

“The Fall” is a dense mat of images evoking rot, sores, decay, and poison. It is also really, really pretty.

Rendered in naturalistic detail are a dozen species of birds packed into the center tangle in the process of flying, feeding or dying. Seeds, petals, pods and fruit crowd in. A cracking crust of paint sits atop parts of the canvas contrasting with the almost florescent loveliness of Resa’s pinks, oranges, and greens. Tiny gold beads glitter almost imperceptibly on the surface with minuscule sparkle.

Resa’s education and experience spans many forms. As a little girl, when people asked her what she wanted to be, Resa always said that she wanted to be an artist. She

describes herself as someone who always “colored in the lines” even as a kid. Born in Long Beach, NY, she grew up largely in Florida and then moved to Florence where she lived, learned and worked.

“People ask me what I do, and I tell them I am a painter. I’ve been very precise about saying that because the word “artist” encompasses so many things. There are all sorts of artists and I pride myself on being a painter. Painting is the oldest visual art form along with drawing, from cave art till now. And because it is so old, people can often be critical about painting and painters because you can say, ‘It

March 2012 Abstraks 59

Page 60: “Scintillating Swamp” oil, acrylic, beads, glitter, and graphite on laser-cut panel, 42h x 60w inchesPage 61: “Woven” oil, acrylic and glitter on laser-cut panel, 32h x 59w inches


FishInterview by Zoe Hyde

Tim66

From the very first moment I walk into Tim Fish’s studio space, I can tell that he is a meticulous, detail-oriented person. From the way the colors of his 70’s modern furniture correspond with the hardcover books on his desk, to the arranged antique lunch boxes and action figures gleaming from behind glass paneled cupboards scattered around the room. At one point, during the middle of our interview, I look up and notice there is mint-colored sand streaming through an hourglass that he must have set in motion moments before I even arrived. Tim is kind enough not to berate me for being late; he of-fers me coffee from the kitchen, newly renovated by himself and his father. A self-made illustrator and writer, Tim is less interested in sweeping the sometimes awkward, sometimes painful aspects of life under the carpet than he is keen to put those aspects on display in all their tumultuous glory. While we chat, it seems to me that what Tim Fish would like most is to tell compelling stories about people the way they really are; subject to the choppy narratives of reality, perhaps bumbling over their own choices and opportunities.

Zoe: When did you first become interested in comics?

Tim: I was 4, and I learned how to read from Batman comics. I was a fan of the Batman TV show and Batman cartoons, and the Flinstone cartoons, so it was really animation that got me into comics. The story is that I was running through the hall with some magic markers, my mom said, “nope. Sit down, here are some crayons, start drawing on this paper.” So I started drawing at a very young age, and always focused on the comic book area, more or less. In terms of actually doing real comics that I shared with people, that was when I was in college doing comics for the

school paper and mini-comics for my friends. I guess I started working on comics seriously about 10 years ago.

Zoe: Did you ever dabble in anima-tion?

Tim: I did try, yes. It’s very time consuming. It wasn’t all that inter-esting to me; the technical aspect to it I found daunting - in terms of how many frames per second you needed - so it just wasn’t what I gravitated towards. I found over time I was a decent storyteller, which, in the comic book world, is fairly easy. Whether it’s animation or you’re a filmmaker, there’s so much work that goes into any process, whereas com-


Page 69: “ Splash page from “LDR” published in Marvel Comics’ NATION X #2

ics can be an alone thing. Not that I want to barricade myself off from other people, but I have the ability to tell the story I want to tell, the way I want to tell it, without other people slowing me down or pushing me into a different direction. It’s definitely a ‘this is my project’ type of thing.

Zoe: What is your art background?

Tim: I’m self-taught. I was, I would say discouraged, by the art education process, whether it was particular art teachers I had when I was young or whatever memory filter I have on the situation, but the message was more or less that I shouldn’t be proud of my work. So I stopped caring about it for a long time, and then fell into the trap that many young artists fall into, which is, you don’t really want to put the time into learning what you need to learn, and everyone tells you you should learn, and in hindsight you can say ‘yes, I should have learned that’, but that was not really what I wanted to hear. Perhaps that was some of the feedback I was getting earlier on, phrased in a way that I found of-fensive. Anyway, I ended up doing that on my own, when I knew I wanted to get more serious about comics, and I did a lot of self study involving look at books, and understanding, ‘okay, I need to work on perspective, study how perspective is done, and then

practice’. So it definitely was a lot of self study and practice. A lot of artists get obsessed with drawing and re-drawing a page, but I was definitely in the mode of ’ every page is a learning experience, and the next one will be better’.

Zoe: That’s interesting because I feel like the art of comics is so math-ematical, more mathematical than, say, painting or drawing or any of the traditional “fine arts”.

Tim: Well I will say, anything that’s like DC Marvel, you’re absolutely right. The formula, the mathematics of it, anything that is independent side has


Page 71: Web comic “Bonnie N. Collide”Page 72-74: 5 page complete story “The Voodoo You Do So Well” published in a few anthologies


Thank you for reading Abstraks!For general inquiries please email, [email protected] and we’ll respond back at our earliest convenience.

Submissions

Contributers: If you would like to be a con-tributing writer or photogra-pher - to conduct an interview, write an article, or cover an event - and you believe it fits our criteria, please email us at [email protected] for consideration. Please attach samples of any past writing or photography.

Submissions for being featured: To be considered as a featured artist in Abstraks we ask that you send an email to [email protected] with attachments of your work, or a link to your work. While we appreciate all submissions, we cannot respond to all of them. We will review every submis-sion and will contact you if you are selected.

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