Chelsea Rowe Artist Presentation

Fred Tomaselli

Fred Tomaselli was born in Santa Monica, California in 1956 and grew up surrounded by the drug and surf culture of his hometown. He was very involved in all kinds of drugs, and also worked in local surf shops building surf boards. His work later in life reflected the way he was raised; Tomaselli is most well known for his large wooden boards on which he creates incredibly detailed and intricate collages. In these collages, Tomaselli incorporates many different kinds of real drugs in beautiful patterns mixed in with small detailed pictures of natural elements, like parts of the body or different plants. He finishes his pieces by coating them in a thick layer of resin (the same material that coats surf boards). On top of the resin, Tomaselli paints even more intricate detail to create very large pieces that seem, when you look at them, to completely be a window to a new world that you could fall into.

Antonio Frasconi

Antonio Frasconi was born in 1919 in Buenos Aires to Italian parents and grew up in Montevideo, Uruguay. After studying in New York, Frasconi became a widely recognized graphic artist focusing on woodblock printing. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century he illustrated and designed over one-hundred books. His work, Los Desaparecidos (The Disappeared), “push[es] the viewers into knowing, into recognizing their own collective culpability, and into remembering.” This work deals a lot with the horrors of war and torture, and these pieces were compiled into a book with a companion text written by Mario Benedetti.