Harold Hollingsworth – Visual Artist

January 1 , , ,

The paintings of Harold Hollingsworth are characterized by colorful graphics, rich surfaces and rhythmic playfulness. He credits popular culture as the strongest influence on his work – music, media, art and architecture. In the past, he has used familiar images such as classic croquet balls, vintage modern fonts and numbers, crossed with natural forms found in nature. Recent works are more subtle translations of pop culture, although Harold maintains that art is his way of responding and contributing to the culture of today. Presently hungry for this visual feast; flyers, old weathered ads, walls, buildings with fading paint, and remnants of art movements past are all treats up for grabs.

Harold Hollingsworth’s work is a reflection of the shapes, colors and textures that he sees in both his imagination and the material to which he is drawn aesthetically. Often is the case that he paints out of his curiosity to see what something will look like when translated from mind to the canvas.

My process and my finished works are much more dynamic than literally painting the vision I initially had in mind. I start a piece with a vision in mind, but the painting always takes on its own form and may move me in a direction I hadn’t foreseen, which is the driving force really, in the production of the work. I refer to my process as “call-and-response” … I make a move on the painting and then wait to see how it responds, as I can’t always anticipate the way that it will play on the canvas. My subsequent move is then a response to how I perceive the painting reacted. It’s like a chess game between me and the painting.

As an artist, painting is my way of affirming my participation in the culture. Other persuasions to my work come from artists such as Joan Miro, Jackson Pollock, Joseph Beuys, and local greats, Ken Kelly, Alfred Harris, Rachel Maxi, and Kimberly Trowbridge.

On a simple level, Harold Hollingsworth’s work can be described as playful, colorful abstraction – as simple and complex as that can sometimes be. Along with color, common characteristics are rich, paint-layered surfaces and graphics that have a rhythm to the patterns that get placed. This recent body of work has an element of simplicity; he does want it to be easy to enjoy. Yet, for viewers who look beyond the basic elements of pattern and color, it stands obvious that he also wants it to connect on an intellectual level. One gets the sense that Hollingsworth desires the work to stir a sense of curiosity for others, a take off point – leaving the viewer to make their own connection from elements past and present.

The strongest influence is both a mixture of popular culture – sliced with natural objects that appear in nature. The sights and sound that fill our lives – music, media, art, nature, and architecture – providing the inspiration.

– A native of Seattle, Harold has presented 17 solo shows and participated in 38 group shows. His work resonates not only with individual collectors, but corporate investors as well. Approximately 16 Nordstrom stores around the country display Harold’s work. The Target Corporation, being a logical fan of paintings of target patterns, owns a number of his pieces. Harold is a recent transplant from the United States to Berlin where he is in the process of setting up his new studio. His work and blog can be seen here.

Matthew Cummings – Contemporary Glass Artist

January 1 , , , , ,

Matthew Cummings is an artist producing contemporary artwork about the way we see the world around us and more specifically, how we fabricate systems to understand this world. The systems that Matthew chooses to deal with range from topographical maps that visually represent a change in elevation to the abstractions produced by electron microscopes of the infinitesimally small. Since 2003, Matthew has been exhibiting his glass sculptures throughout the United States and featured in several magazines including the international publication, Glass Quarterly. He graduated from Centre College in 2005 with a Bachelor of Arts in Glass and Painting, under the tutelage of Stephen Rolfe Powell. After college, Matthew traveled throughout the country to study firsthand with expert glassblowers in order to master his craft. In 2009 he embarked upon a new aesthetic journey spurred by the On Perception Series. This recent work is realized through glass sculptures, video and glass installations, paintings, and drawings. Matthew earned the degree of Master of Fine Arts at Illinois State University in 2011. Currently, he maintains a sculpture studio in Louisville, KY where he produces sculpture and painting about the fragility of perception.

View Matthew’s art on his website!

The On Perception series are novellas for how we see and what a line or lines moving through space can mean. Since the beginning of philosophy, we have always used visual analogies to describe concepts and theories of knowledge…think Plato’s Cave and the Cartesian Theater. Since we can never actually see these things, I look to fields of study that visualize the unseen and push the boundaries of our concept of the world, such as Particle Physics, Quantum Physics, Astronomy, and Microscopy. The aesthetics of each field of study influences the visuals of my abstractions and allow the work to become metaphors for how we ‘see’ the unobservable.

-Matthew Cummings

Transistor: Contemporary audiophile – Music

December 12 , , ,

By Erica Codey-Rucker

Without thinking, I said, “I want to write about modern music.”   Anymore, what defines modernity?   Some would argue that it is now. Others, that it was the world as it moved into a capitalist free market and still others would be very specific in limiting the idea of modernity to something that we are now moving past with the Late Modernity period ending in 1989. This means that we are somewhere, twenty-three years past what was “modern”. In fact, this puts us a generation into the “Post-Modern”. How then do we define modern music for an audience obsessed with its past, disappointed with the present and longing for an improved future?

What do we even call this listener?   Transmodern perhaps.    More and more the contemporary listener is by nature listening with an ear in the past, in the present and seeking actively sounds of the undiscovered. In fact, in many social circles the music has become a race to preserve the tribal identity. The Transmodern listener challenges this by not limiting himself to the tribe or genre in which some past generations felt most comforting. For instance, “metal” fans of the 1980s differed greatly with the “metal” fans of 1970s.  The 70s “metal-head” was interested in either Doom with its focus on the broken promises of Modern life or Glam with its focus on fun and gender play.   The 1980s “metal-head” was sold by lipstick, Aquanet, squealing singers, and formulaic guitar solos.   A Transmodern listener would be able to transverse both decades of metal and look at a newer band like Boris as a present example of the Transmodern aesthetic in that they blend the ideas of guitar rock into a contemporary pop/noise/scree blend.

The same happens throughout the Jazz community with artists like Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk revered as prophets of a genre that has produced such banal label denizens as Kenny G.   The new Jazz listener can easily go from those Jazz greats to the Brand New Heavies of the 90s and to newer sounds like witch house which is already an aging genre.    The fact is that nearly all music listeners can be lumped into the Transmodern because most styles of music have bled into other genres and the influence of social relationships has changed the way we are all exposed to music.  We almost can’t help our exposure.

Because this is a blog/magazine, I have the liberty of opening a continuing discussion of modern music and the privilege to share music that I love and that all Transmodernists can appreciate.   This is just an appetizer for a much meatier and in-depth discussion.

Transmodern ears ready.   Old & New

Jazz: Nat King Cole
 Witch House: Salem
Electro House: Emika
 Hip Hop: Kreayshawn
Russel Wright - American Modern

Modern American Ceramics

December 12 , , , ,

Editor’s Note: Modern American Ceramics and modernism are two of our favorite subjects. Here are a few of our choice lines from the mid 20th century. We will revisit this subject often.

The term American Modern is a distinct American design aesthetic formed in the period between 1925 and World War II. American Modern was created by a pioneering group of designers, architects and artists, among them were Norman Bel Geddes, Donald Deskey, Henry Dreyfuss, Paul Frankl, William Lescaze, Raymond Loewy, Gilbert Rohde, Eliel Saarinen, Walter Dorwin Teague, Kem Weber and Russel. Their impact on the daily lives of ordinary Americans is exemplified through a wide array of objects including furniture, glassware, ceramics, textiles, metalwork, household appliances, automobiles, airplanes and graphic arts. American Modern is distinguished by the absence of traditional ornament, the use of new technologies and materials, and the adoption of mass-production techniques to create affordable objects for the expanding population.

American Modern dinnerware by Russel Wright 1939 – 1959

American Modern Dinnerware. Colorful and curvaceous dinnerware designed by Russel Wright originally manufactured by Steubenville Pottery in Steubenville, Ohio and currently manufactured by Bauer Pottery Company of Los Angeles. Its unique and immediately recognizable colors of coral, chartreuse, granite grey and seafoam, as well as its distinctive curvilinear decorative shapes, went on to make American Modern dinnerware the most popular and identifiable china pattern/china colors ever sold, with over 250 million pieces sold between 1939 – 1959 alone.

Russel Wright also produced several other lines of pottery for the growing needs of the American middle-class including Iroquois Casual (1946), and Residential Melamine (1953). For all of these series and sets one can easily grasp the idealistic notions Wright was separating himself from and at the same time gain an understanding for those notions of Modernism he was moving towards.

Hall Pottery for Westinghouse and Hotpoint – Universal and Oxfordware Pottery

Hall, Universal and Oxfordware Pottery refridgerator dishes

Hall, Universal and Oxfordware Pottery

Around the same time frame one of the nation’s largest ceramics manufacturers expanded its reach by giving away its wares. Refrigerators — must-haves for homes in the modern age — were being sold almost faster than they could be produced. Companies like General Electric, Hotpoint and Westinghouse kept up with America’s demand while retail outlets made deals with companies like Pyrex, Universal, Hall Pottery and others to make their sales more enticing to consumers.

Hall for Westinghouse Label

Hall for Westinghouse Label

Enter the mass produced refrigerator dishes. With the convenience of preserved food and beverages in the home came the need to stylishly store them. Hall Pottery went one step further by making different lines and sets of refrigerator dishware for different retailers. The more curvaceous and slightly more stately designs were fit for customers buying their appliances at Montgomery Ward & Co. The more utilitarian and boxier of the designs were for those buying their iceboxes through Hotpoint and Westinghouse. Of course, one could purchase pieces separately but the larger retailers would give make deals with ceramics manufacturers to offer them free with their products.

Gonked Glooked Slurped – Two Mega-Collectors

December 12 , , , , ,

Valery and Tony: Two young creatives  presently residing  in Georgia, USA – invite the world along as they collect, curate and explore the many items in which they choose to surround their lives. The newlywed duo continues to build their collections at their mid-century ranch simultaneously tackling the chore of renovation. Together they operate the blog Gonked Glooked Slurped where they share their passions with a wider audience.

Clearly a design conscious couple, there is no element of snobbery and certainly no reductionist  sensibility impeding the never ending assortment. Furniture, records, electronics, ephemera, visual art in all forms and formats  live here. A body of objects seemingly recognizable from our past – yet probably most of us neglected to hold onto – live, play, perhaps go to war when no one is watching (there is a Viking army after all).

Little Miss No Name belongs here (a very sad looking doll with a big plastic tear permanently about to fall from her right eye) as do several high end original furniture pieces. Taking just a glimpse of the couple’s collection one could feel overwhelmed and misunderstand the intimacy going on in just about every square foot of every room. A play of color, light, form,  personality and frivolity culminate into a storyline here. It’s anyone’s guess as to that story’s plot – obviously an intense journey through Indie and Pop culture continues to be written – the sentence about form following function was completely erased and continues down its path of redefinition.