ink – Cleveland State Art

Dan Miller- Carolyn Trouten- Drawing 1

Dan Miller was born in Castro Valley, California in 1961. He is an American artist. He is currently a resident at Creative Growth Art Center which is a studio space and gallery for artists with disabilities like Miller, who has Autism.

Dan MILLER
untitled (ink w/circle), 2010, ink on paper, 22.01 x 30 inches

As a child Miller attended special education classes and summer camps. It was extremely important to his Mother that he got an education. Miller spent many nights working with is Mother and grandmother, whom are both schoolteachers, on learning to read and write. The time spent teaching Miller has stayed with him threw is life and often shows itself in his paintings. Meticulously writing the same words over and over again until he fills the paper up. The words are layered on so heavily that the often get lost in a mass of letters and thoughts. From a distance you may think it that the paintings are just lines upon lines scribbled on but as you get closer you begin to see the words and the time Miller spent laboring over his work.

Common words that show up in his work include Electrician, Light bulb and socket; Linking his work to his past once again. When he was a young, Miller would take apart Radio Clocks and overhead fans tinkering with tools and how things work. He was obsessed with tools and often looked through and studied is father’s catalogs Grainger’s hardware.

Miller has some lack of traditional communications alongside his Autism. But his art is a way he seems to communicate how he interacts with the world. These pieces of his memories of reading with his mom and taking apart clocks are very prominent in the paintings he creates. It is a window into his past and mind. As in the picture below of Light Bulbs.

Dan Miller
Untitled, 2012 ,Ink and acrylic on paper,42.5 × 53.5 inches

With the help of Creative Growth Art Center Dan has honed his skills and gone from using scrap paper and books to twelve foot talk canvases. Dan has been featured in solo exhibitions in galleries such as Galerie Christian Berst, Ricco Maresca, New York and White Columns, New York. He has also done goup shows at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, Paris, and ABCD. Dan was featured at Frieze New York, The Armory Show, and NADA Miami. Dan has a feature in curator Christine Macel’s exhibition: Viva Arte Viva, in 2017. He’s the first artist with Autism to have his work acquired by the permanent collection of MoMA.

Dan MILLER
untitled, 2010, watercolor, marker, coloured pencil on paper, 11.81 x 17.72 inches

Miller’s art makes me feel like I am seeing into a different universe. One that is similar to ours but chaotic and repeating. Where reality is bent and sense does not make sense. I feel his work truly conveys how he sees the world and what about it stands out to him. In Miller’s work the repetition is soothing and relating to me; it adds a uniformity and stability to life. And sometimes I need that reassurance that life does have a pattern and direction.

The fact the Miller has taken not a single drawing or art course and yet produces such visually stimulating work and having so much of his work featured in museums and exhibitions is truly inspiring and admirable.

Dan Miller
Untitled, 2017, Embroidery and paint on fabric, 49 × 65 inches

Dan Miller
Untitled, 2016, Acrylic and ink on paper, 20.00 x 26.50 in

Joan Jonas – Julie

Joan Jonas (not Joe Jonas, the former member of the Jonas Brother) is an artist, born in 1936, New York. Whom in 1958 received her bachelors degree in Art History from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. She later went on to study the art of sculpture and drawing at the School of Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and worked the a couple of choreographers for 2 years.

Joan is an artist who explores in many different mediums of art including video art, installation art, but is most known for her collaboration with different artists and musicians to create improvisational pieces that are then performed on stage or in museums.

The type of work she produces is not typical, but it seems that she is fascinated how her drawings come out when she draws them as fast as she can. She typically uses different colors of ink to draw her pictures and follows up with blotting them with a normal paper towel to play around with color and different darknesses of the ink. She enjoys drawing pictures of her dogs. She says, “I did, for many years, make drawings of my dog, Zena. I drew her a lot because she interested me, she was very strange looking.”

While this dog looks absolutely horrifying, her dog does not actually look this grotesque.

Joan is also very partial to creating ink drawings of insects, including bees, which specifically drew me to her as an artist.

Joan has also experimented with video art pieces in the past that are very interesting, also confusing to watch. Joan wanted to explore how sound worked in different places using different objects to make the sounds (for example, her video SongDelay), and how she could almost develop a language with dance and movement. she wondered how she could use sound, movement, and three-dimensional space to her artistic advantage.

Joan Jonas is very passionate about her work and is passionate towards others who love art. Her advice to young artists is, quote, “My advice to young artists is always to love what you do, because its not easy. It’s not easy to make art and you never know if you’re going to be recognized or what people will think of your work and the most important thing is to have pleasure with making the work. Although sometimes its very hard, and sometimes you get discouraged. I think that for me, when I go to look at a work of art, I’m interested in the way it affects me and how it changes my way of seeing things. How does it affect me? I could look at a painting or a film, hear a piece of music and how when I leave that space, what do I bring with me? And I hope that my work can somehow perhaps give people a different way of seeing things or experiencing things. I think the most important thing for them is to be with it and experience it, its very important for people to be turning experiences into something else; transforming them, alchemy, making magic that gives them some other meaning to their lives. It’s also important to have a circle of friend you can show your work to. Art is about communication, and also art is about a dialogue with art, a dialogue with other artists, a dialogue with the past, with the future, and its an important dialogue to have.”

Fu Baoshi (Met)

Fu Baoshi was born in 1904 in China. He is known for his ink brush paintings. He was a painter, an art historian, and a seal carver. Fu was mostly self taught. In 1933 he attended Tokyo School of Fine Arts to study the History of Oriental Art. He returned to China in 1935 and taught in the Art Department at Central University, now Nanjing University. Fu masterfully combined foreign styles with strong nationalistic styles. His work was unique and bold. He used traditional brush work and added in strong colors. His landscape paintings show his skills with inking dots. He created several new techniques that melded well into the traditional styles. Fu believed that an artist needed to be emotionally and physically present in their art. To accomplish this Fu would often paint while inebriated. He created a spattered-ink method to create “action art”. This spontaneous style is similar to Abstract Expressionism.

Fu was very proud of his nation. On his travels he would paint landscapes that captured his attention. The MET is currently showing a an extensive display of the artist’s oeuvre. The collection starts with Fu’s earliest works that are modeled after traditional Chinese masters. Then the collection moves to works that interpret the poems of Qu Yuan. The poet became famous for killing himself to prove his loyalty. Another of Fu’s paintings, Drunken Monk, is a portrait of a Buddhist monk that worked while inebriated, like Fu. He uses these works to refect his own thoughts and feelings.

As you move further through the exhibition you come to a room full of landscapes. Fu’s use of color comes to full force in these. Powerfully red suns and soft pink skies showcase his masterful use of color. This exhibition is worth seeing. It holds the largest collection of Fu’s works outside of Asia.