Our forty-eighth post of the series, Artists in the Time of Coronavirus includes Hollyžana, Josias Figueirido, Greg Burns, Emilio Jose Maldonado, Linda Stein, and Annabel Perrigueur. Thank you for sharing with us and the Philadelphia artist community!
We have gotten over 300 submissions, and we are so grateful to all participants. The time has come to close our inbox to submissions. So if you want to participate, send your statement (250 words max) and 2 photos to support@theartblog.org before July 29, 2020, at 11:59 PM. More details here. Stay safe and stay positive, and come back in the days to come for more “Artists in the Time of Coronavirus.” We have a wonderful community and are so proud of being able to share everyone’s art.
Hollyžana
COVID radiates the world
– my Philly divergence —
time to dream
time to develop
time to create
Yet the loathed COVID sun must setHollyžana
Josias Figueirido
The confinement of the last few months has led me to focus on intense periods of drawing and to mature the imagery of the studio space as a theater stage for the performance of my narratives. In my most recent drawings and prints, among the studio props and paintings, naked, semi-naked, and dressed-up figures re-enact stories and situations of conflict, war, desire, love, and hope.
Greg Burns
Greg Mason Burns is a conceptual painter who highlights emotional unknowns, with particular attention to societal pressure, adventure, fear, frustration, stress, and chaos. In particular, Burns uses Reception Theory as a basis of his visual work by finding ways to contrast the media’s message against the audience’s understanding of reality. He uses the understanding gap between the two to create an emotional space for viewers to enter. One method he uses is to take newspaper headlines and re-purposes them to garner new reactions and emotions. Images are added to the works to generate deeper emotional twists. His works are meant to evoke sharp emotions regardless of contemporary issues, with the understanding that headlines will always be relevant and audiences will always interpret based on their own positions.
Emilio Jose Maldonado
I make art from a marginalized point of view, not of economic class, but from the systematic disenfranchisement of the values of the economically disadvantaged.
I just create art that NEEDS to exist, because of external causes, places, materials, the piece speaks what it needs and I do my best to act accordingly. Because of it, concepts mold themselves at the same time as the piece, in a similar way that we discover a flower’s true colors and form just as it blooms.
In this dynamic it is difficult to describe what is my place, am I the artist? or the act of the piece being created makes me the author “a posteriori”? I am a herald, but never feel like the true creator, sometimes even crying while working, not because of sadness, but because a “lump” of feelings swell in me and I feel overcome… taken.
It tells me things, some about myself, some about the world, its ironies and conflicts, always poignant, relevant; this is the way that the divine manifests in my life.
Linda Stein
This architecture, my architecture,
jutting high in the sky,
wrangles with my forlornness,
insisting that I focus, not on the heart-rending,
but on the handsomeness of the
edifices before me,
extraordinary in their extreme
verticality, volume and variety.
It is as if I were tracing and stroking
each building with my fingertips,
now low with flat roof,
now bursting into the sky,
impossibly slender,
impossibly high.
Annabel Perrigueur
Creating for me, it is like living twice and is the best therapy to face stress at uncertain times !
The arrival of Covid 19 plunged the world into an unprecedented crisis time ! Nobody expected such situation : isolated from the others and losing our bearings, we had to reinvent our lives facing the virulence of the virus and his numerous unknown consequences !
At the beginning of the pandemic when the virus was spreading rapidly across the different continents from Asia to Europe, I remember public attention was riveted on USA ! How will the most’s world powerful economy react to the upcoming scourge ?
This was the best way to undertake an artistic project I had in mind for a while ! It will match perfectly what we gonna live for a while : turning into ourselves !
I achieved my “lovely states”, an Usa map using my favorite media support : recycled coffee capsules. I spent a lot of time around this project, using more 300 aluminum capsules including numerous hand-cuttings assemblies. I took me a lot of patience and resilience to get over it but those qualities have never made so much sense at the current time !!
French Artist based in Philadelphia, self-made woman, Annabel shapes volumes and colors to create avant-garde 3D artworks converging sculpture and painting.
Annabel’s attention to details, craftmanship coupled with upcycling technics has led to iconoclast creations inspired by modernity and Feminism. Longtime Parisian, she finds her inspiration through pop art, fashion and travels always seeking for surprising and unexpected materials such as feathers, nail varnish, Swarovski crystals or Nespresso coffee capsules to name a few.
Accomplishing a modern and electric artwork, Annabel is collaborating with multiple institutions (Schools, Museums, Corporations and Non-Profit Organizations). In addition to envisioning her personal pieces, she customizes creations.
www.atelier-annabel.com
Follow me on Instagram : annabelperri_studio
