dArt International Magazine – Page 34 – Fall 2024 edition of the making of art, its exhibition, and what we say about it

October 15, 2018February 24, 2020

Three New Exhibitions at the Hammond Museum & Japanese Stroll Garden

by D. Dominick Lombardi

Sam Bartman, Majestic Waters (2001), mixed media on reflective plastic sheet, 17 x 17 inches

With three exhibitions opening at the Hammond Museum, the big surprise is the work of Sam Bartman. Born in Brooklyn, NY in 1922, Bartman has spent the last 60 years of his life creating stirring paintings that combine some of the most the incompatible materials. In experimenting with what he calls his “special sauce”, Bartman has somehow tamed a mix of resins, varnishes, motor oil, glitter and automotive paints with oils and acrylics that results in everything from endlessly crackling surfaces and minute swirling storms of color. There are even the occasional brushstrokes that push the variously drying materials around leaving fossil like impressions of battered brush hairs sorrowfully spent in a furious wake of swished paint. Continue reading “Three New Exhibitions at the Hammond Museum & Japanese Stroll Garden”

October 5, 2018February 24, 2020

Photo-A-GoGo

Don Doe, Fille Sans Dot, Fille Avec Dot (2017), giclee, 22 x 15 inches

by Dominick Lombardi

Photo-A-GoGo presents art that has photography as an element, whether it is predominant or used as a minor accent, to show how the creative process now parallels or responds to the ubiquitous social digital/exchange mentality. We have the MIME, Instagram, Snapchat, all the ways we express or project our ideas or self-image – so the photograph, instead of being “worth a thousand words” is now as common as a mosquito in July. However, that does not mean that art or the intention behind it or the imagery utilized is, in the end, benign. Continue reading “Photo-A-GoGo”

September 6, 2018February 24, 2020

Where to Draw the Line at OneWay Gallery

by D. Dominick Lombardi

Stephen Cook, My Disease My Infection (2017), charcoal, oil stick and aluminum paint on paper, 77 ¾ x 61 ½ inches

It was one year ago that I first became acquainted with the work of Stephen Cook and OneWay Gallery. Being in Narragansett, I was not expecting to see much beyond the stereotypical sails and sunsets in any ‘art gallery’, so I was completely taken aback by Cook’s versatility and vigor as a contemporary painter.
Continue reading “Where to Draw the Line at OneWay Gallery”

August 27, 2018January 13, 2021

The Tale of Auguste’s Brain

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, After the Bath (1888), oil on canvas, 25 ½ x 21 ¼ inches, Wikipedia images

by D. Dominick Lombardi

It was probably somewhere around 1987 when I read a quote attributed to Auguste Renoir in an art magazine. I don’t recall the exact passage, but he likened his paintbrush to his penis when discussing why he so obsessed over capturing the erotic aspects of a woman’s flesh. A month or so later I made a drawing, I was in my pseudo Post Modern stage making sculptures that looked like they could have been executed in the nineteen teens, twenties or thirties, and the subject was my interpretation of Renoir’s sensual sentiment about his female nudes. Continue reading “The Tale of Auguste’s Brain”

July 25, 2018February 24, 2020

Magnetic Field @ MFA (Museum of Fine Arts)

Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today: Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida

by D. Dominick Lombardi

Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today, which celebrates “the contributions of black women in the field of abstract art”, is a wonderful and stunning exhibition that features many powerful examples of Abstract Art. Walking through the exhibition, I am immediately struck by both the diversity and depth of the selections and the overall scale of the exhibition. Continue reading “Magnetic Field @ MFA (Museum of Fine Arts)”