April 9: SWOON & DIRK HAGNER

SWOON (Caledonia Dance Curry) is known for her life-sized, wheat-pasted prints and paper cutouts on the streets of New York. She was born in Connecticut, raised in Florida, and moved to NYC to study painting at Pratt Institute. Her subject matter is people, and many of the times these people are her friends and family. Her work is inspired by art history, folk stories, and emphasizes participation (people relating to the life-sized figures on street walls, but she also initiates collaboration projects within communities). To make her images, she makes prints of her detailed, gestural images onto sheets of newsprint, which she displays on walls using wheat paste.

Dirk Hagner was born, raised, and educated in Germany where he studied drawing and painting at Folkwang School of Arts. He moved to the United States and has lived here since the early 1980s. Both his artistic methods and his themes include a merging of old and new... he makes use of letterpress and etching with photo intaglio and fax machines. He employs old historical references to make commentary on modern politics, for example.

Lynd Ward and Luis V. Rey

Lynd Ward, born in June of 1905, is best known for his wood block engravings, but he worked in a wide range of mediums, including watercolor, and oil and ink.

When he was a child, Ward noticed that the spelling of his last name, when written backwards, spelled "draw", and from then on out decided he wanted to be an artist.

At 21, Ward studied printmaking in Germany, and discovered his fascination for stories told in woodcut engravings. At 24, he published the first ever novel-length graphic story in America, entitled Gods' Man, and would go on to publish five in addition to this.

Over the span of his life, Ward illustrated over 200 books, including Frankenstein and The Silver Pony, as well as art featured in a 1953 edition of The Children's Hour.

Luis V. Rey
Born in 1955, Luis V. Rey is most well-known for his paleoart and digital dinosaur illustrations. He works in a vast range of mediums, including oils and 3-Dimensional modeling.

Rey is most commonly recognized by his pieces' vibrant palettes and movement, which he picked up from his own Mexican culture. He's an active member in both the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology and the United Kingdom's Dinosaur Society, as well as working through his own artwork to promote the feathered dinosaur theory.

To date, Rey's illustrations can be found in about 40 dinosaur books, as well on the covers of about 60 science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels.

Luis V. Rey is a great inspiration to me because I am an avid fan of dinosaurs and science, and I am aspiring to be an illustrator someday, so his work has had a great impact on me. I hope someday that his use of vivid colors will rub off on me so I may too color my own artwork beautifully and realistically.

Victor Portugal

Victor Portugal was born in Uraguay. He then moved/grew up in Spain. Upon moving to Poland, Victor began tattooing in 1998.  His style is very dark, mainly biomechanical.  However, he is skilled in many different styles. He currently works at tattoo conventions around the world. Also, he has won many awards for his art. This man is my inspiration...

Kiki Smith

Kiki Smith was born in 1954 in Nuremberg, Germany.  She spent much of her childhood growing up in New Jersey amongst a very religious household.  With the influence of her up bringing, she has been come to known as a storyteller.  Much of her pieces are about life, death, and resurrection.  In the 1980's, she created sculptures and prints based on organs, cells, and the human nervous system. Later, her worked evolved into illustrating/portraying mythology and folk lore. She has won several awards such as the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture in 2000, the Athena Award for Excellence in Printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design in 2005, and also the 50th Edward Macdowell Medal in 2009. Today, her work is found in many museums.

Anselm Kiefer

Born in 1945, at the close of World War II, and one of the younger German painters to emerge in the recent decades and become internationally known and liked, Anselm Kiefer's work deals mostly with "the ambivalence of his generation toward the grandiose impulse of German nationalism and its impact on history."

In 1966 he dropped out of Law and Romance language studies to study art. In typical Neo-expressionist style, Kiefer used familiar materials to express ideas. For instance, he used glass, straw and plant parts, fragile materials which contrasted with the subject matter of his artwork. Besides paintings, Kiefer made sculptures, watercolors, woodcuts, books and photographs.

Salvador Dalí

Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí (born in 1904) was best known for his striking and bizarr images. He liked to make his artwork as far from logical as possible, always working close to the subconscious and not what the conscious mind tells us is true. He was well-versed in a wide range of media, which included painting, film, photography and sculpture.

He also practiced different printmaking techniques, which he mainly used in his illustrations of his favorite books and poems. He used etchings and lithographs depicting scenes from a wide range of literature from different cultures, from Spanish writer Quevedo to Japanese fairytales. What these stories (and his illustrations) had in common was the abundance of fantasy, satire and eroticism; which were subjects that he apparently found appealing.

The Field- Presentation