Posts Tagged ‘larry bell’

Artist of the moment………….Dewain Valentine

{ March 30, 2015 @ 2:07 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Dewain Valentine is an American artist renown for his minimalist style. Dewain Valentine was born in Fort Collins, Colorado in the year 1936.

The artist was inspired by modern painters including Larry Bell and Ken Price.

Many sculptures are made of fiberglass and/or resin. For subject matter Valentine often refers to skies. Valentine is sometimes associated with the Light and Space movement.

Valentine helped to develop a special resin that for the first time allowed artists to work with sculptures larger than 50 pounds. Valentine also prefers a very smooth finish, to give the appearance of being new and machine built.

Below the surface of Valentine’s work is discussed in further detail with more examples shown:

The artist is based out of Gardena, California.

Valentine is part of the collections of the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City,  and the Denver Museum of Art.

The artist is a past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Price range information: Large disks by Valentine can reach the $1 million dollar mark. Smaller table top size works range from a few thousand to $35,000.

Valentine gives the viewer a wonderful combination of basic geometric shapes with cutting edge materials that he helped to invent! A wonderful example of modern art.

D

 

Artist of the moment……Larry Bell

{ March 15, 2013 @ 1:15 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Larry Bell is an artist renown for working with light and one basic geometric shape, the cube. Rivers makes many different cubes with unique materials. A cube might be covered in vaporised metals and quartz. So the viewer also gets to enjoy the way light reflects off the paper. Larry Bell was born in Chicago, Illinois in the year 1939. Bell works and lives out of Sante Fe, New Mexico and Venice, California. For his artistic education Bell attended the Chouinard Institute.
In this clip a show at the San Diego Museum of Art featuring Bell.

In addition to the boxes Bell enjoys making drawings with vapor. These works are similar to a hologram in the way they reflect light and change as the viewer moves about. With his process it allows for random images, very abstract to appear. As an acrylic artist its similar to using 99% rubbing alcohol and adding it atop a wet glaze to produce free flowing shapes. The main ingredient in his technique is the use of a certain type of film called PET film. Bell first applies the film to paper which is then coated. After working with this method many years he varied it slightly by using cut paper from remnants of scraps from, past works. Bell would make a very large collage from the scraps. These are my personal favorite of the artist’s work because of the many ways the light is reflected.
Bell also developed a style of using a computer to animate stick figures. He then made sculptures out of bronze of the figures. The animated stick figure is also used by the artist Julien Opie.
Bell now has mixed his various methods and developed new works that feature a cube that are not enclosed with metal. Another addition is the additive of vaporized metals to the surface.The process takes place in a vacuum chamber.
Price range information: Highest priced are the glass cubes reaching up to $600,000. Drawings with vapor range from $2,000 to $5,000. Works made with aluminum range from $20,000 to $100,000.
A true artist makes the ordinary extra-ordinary! I have never been so intrigued by a square.Though never seeing his work in person, his work is the epitome of modern art as it incorporates very modern materials with basic shapes.

D!

If you enjoy Larry Bell make sure to check out the art of Karl Benjamin. Benjamin was a world renown hard edged abstract painter born 1925 and he passed away last year. An example of a cube by Benjamin is below. 31837_68520_26_1