Term Paper on "American Since 1990"

Term Paper 5 pages (1342 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

American Artists 1990

American since 1990

By the early 1990's, John Rozelle had earned critical acclaim in The New York Times and the New Art Examiner for his expertise in combining colorful layers of acrylic paint and collage to create a distinct form of nonrepresentational mixed-media art (Mercer pp). His technique is inspired by his African heritage and says, it "reflects the appropriation of textural surfaces one encounters with sacred objects that have been consecrated with sacrificial offerings" (Mercer pp).

His work is exhibited nationally and can be found in the collections of museums, including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the California Afro-American Museum in Los Angeles, and the African-American History and Cultural Museum in Philadelphia, and corporations including AT&T, Ralston Purina Group and Citibank (Mercer pp). Jan Garden Castro, critic for the Riverfront Times, wrote of a 1995 exhibit, "Rozelle... crafts work with its own integrity, meaning, design and textures. His worldly yet personal drawings have the ease of draftsmanship one find from da Vinci to de Kooning, but resolutely grounded in an Afrocentric social conscience..." (John pp). Jeff Daniel, critic for the St. Louis Post-dispatch, wrote, "His intricate collages, products of a fertile imagination and a skilled hand appeal to us not because they are from the mind of a black artist; they appeal to us solely on the grounds that they come from a gifted artist..." (John pp).

Rozelle's "Arrangements and Compositions," a collection of site-specific installation and objects, is a project that he began in the spring of 2000 in response to Leroi Jones and Amiri Baraka's book, "Blues People" (John pp). His intent was to visually re-present some of the same emotions that are theoretically the 'blues,' such as Love, Joy and Pain, Celebration and Remembrance, and Sex (John pp). He began with small, mixed media collages, then box constructions, drawings, found objects and freestanding assemblages (John pp).

Rozelle's interests include the development of various African-American cultural traditions, some of which can be traced directly back to West African societies, while others are amalgamations of traditions and the conditions of the meeting of Western European cultures and African peoples in the New World (John pp). And many are specific to the United States and the territories in the Caribbean and Central America (John pp). Rozelle says that most of the typical spiritual practices having to do with birth, puberty, death, and other life events are from various ethnic groups in West Africa and represent themselves as symbols in the objects he makes (John pp). The box constructions comprise the majority of these objects, and at first he used found boxes, then he started constructing his own (John pp). To date, there are more than seventy objects in various stages, ranging from sketches with dimensions and materials to pieces near completion, and several have audio components (John pp). Rozelle's work can be seen at johnrozelle.com.

When Marla Baggetta moved to Oregon in 1993, she was so taken by the beauty of Oregon's rural landscapes that she began working in pastel and so joined a long-standing tradition of Northwest painters (Marla pp). Her compositions are unique and overcome the cliches of genre, as color, composition and passages of light are orchestrated to produce a cohesive whole, the results of which are fine jewel-like pieces that allude to her illustrative background (Marla pp). Baggetta says that landscape painting is a playful and active process for her, and that working with shape, form, light, and texture achieves a connection with her subject, and attempts to capture a moment in which all these elements come together to a point of balance and harmony (Marla pp). Each of her original pastels is done on museum grade sanded pastel paper that she tones with acrylic paint, using a variety of brands of soft pastel, each of which has different characteristics, to accomplish a variety of effects within a piece (Marla pp). The final painting is lightly sprayed with a fine fixative before framing (Marla pp). Each of her pieces depicts an image that… READ MORE

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