Waller-Yoblonsky Fine Art

Watanabe was a statistical outlier of excellence in the world of uniform Japanese art, he created a contemporary version of the illuminated biblical manuscripts.  He devoted his life to biblical imagery in his woodcut/stenciled prints in a country that averages 3% Christianity. When the former big Protestant churches of the United States divided up the world for proselytizing, they didn't understand the challenges of bringing the gospels to Japan. There is a statement in Japan: Japanese are born Shinto and die Buddhist; they have no problem being two different religions at the same time. The Christian concept that “You Shall Not Have Any Other Gods Before Me” straight out of the 10 Commandments from Exodus and Deuteronomy made no sense to the Japanese. The Japanese believe there should be multiple Gods. Watanabe was born on July 7, 1913 in Tokyo, and his father died when he was 10 years old. Fatherless, a neighbor (a Christian Japanese school teacher) invited him to church w...

Most likely it was Ameche’s kitchen that was the inspiration for the still life below. It is a fusion of objects in the kitchen interior; vegetables, vessels and the braided hot pad hanging on the wall. All the objects are interwoven in equal color density, Ameche understands her medium as well as her painting style and works convincingly within their limitations. She creates a very unusual and original painting from very common and ordinary items; the kitchen still life is titled “Kitchen Arrangement”. Each brushstroke has meaning, strength and vitality, yet some are twisted brushstrokes which reverberates oneness with the kitchen counter. "Kitchen Arrangement" Signed Lower Right: Carol Ameche Acrylic on Canvas 32" X 24" As an artist, Ameche demonstrated her artistic influences laying down bright colors with flat plane configurations. The kitchen counter is simple and straightforward, and it is filled with daily activity. It is almost post impressionistic, she ...

Aaron Waller created a curious composition from a box of found antique player piano parts. The found objects were in his father’s garage, not surprising, his father spent part of his career being a piano tuner, including repairing and rebuilding pianos. The leftover pieces were kept as potential replacement parts for a future repair. Now the pieces were being reassigned to an art assemblage. An assemblage is art created and made by assembling elements often of everyday objects that have been scavenged by an artist or especially purchased for an art project. In this case the box of found objects were somewhat curated. All the objects found in the box were old elements from a pneumatic player piano. Beyond the box of piano parts, Waller expanded the composition by adding his grandfather’s signed old sheet music and an old picture frame from his grandmother’s pile. All the found objects were arranged to compose - “ The Eccentric Conductor - Opus One .” The Eccentric Conductor - ...

The Industrial German designer, Carl Pott (1906-1985) was born into a cutlery legacy. His father was Carl Hugo Pott, part of the German town - Solingen, the so-called knife town. Still today many of the great cutlery names use Solingen as their base of operations. Carl joined his father at the family company in 1932, just when there were new ideas about design. The German Bauhaus was inspiring new ideas and establishing a modern style across Germany. These Bauhaus concepts left behind the over decorated, and the Pott's family operation stylistically introduced clean lined, functional and ergonomic flatware. Soon the younger Pott would become known as the international designer and craftsman that brought intensity and technical innovation to flatware.      "Leave out the expendable and create the Useful even more so perfect and beautiful" In 1935, the Pott family laid down the cornerstone of a silverware program with his plain, smooth Model 2716; that no...

18th Century America had established social customs and code of manners about tea and the distinctive furnishings. Tea was expensive and it was delegated to the upper classes, therefore it was a status symbol. A great hostess would make and serve the tea, and guests were supposed to be adept at proper social chitchat. Furniture also played a role in the formation of fashionable tea drinking; a hostess would have to own at least one tea table and several chairs to pull off an adequately formal tea for an intimate group of friends. It was the equivalent of a classy cocktail party today. Pride was taken in a fashionable tea table with all the tea equipage (all the necessary equipment for a particular purpose). The scarcity of tea from the Orient along with the expense, plus the costly paraphernalia to serve the tea, left the American prosperous and governing classes to consume it. These upper class American homes would have owned a silver teapot, a silver creamer (aka cream jug), porc...

Japan is filled with great centers of ceramic production:  Shigarake, Bizen and Tokoname, just to name a few:  for this blog discussion will focus on unglazed or naturally glazed vases, except for one. The flower container/vase (hanaire), were frequently placed in the tokonama, a special alcove in a tea room.  The tea guest would ponder the hanaire in the tokonama, frequently paired with a wall hung hand-scroll that presents the general theme of the tea ceremony; for example autumn foliage in the hanaire and orange pumpkins painted on the scroll would announce cooler, shorter days and the seasonal theme of autumn (aki). The hanaire is one of the prized possessions in a Japanese household; it passes down the generations, hand to hand with its own special storage box (tomoboko) that consists of Japanese calligraphy that reveals the maker and the history of all those who have owned it.  While the pottery maybe signed the box reveals the pottery maker and the provena...

Master craftsman, Faggioli has been a fixture of the Lehigh Pennsylvania area since his arrival from Italy. He has instructed ceramics just down the street from the Allentown Art Museum at the Baum School of Art, at the Moravian College as the Ceramist-in Residence in Bethlehem, and served as a guest instructor at the Penn Lehigh Campus.  There is an endless list of students and protégés that sing his praises.  Faggioli started his own higher education at the Scuola State Ceramica della Robbia in Florence, Italy, and he then did his advanced studies at Alfred University and Carnegie-Mellon University. For those of you who know ceramics, there is nothing finer that studying at Alfred. Faggioli’s work has been shown at many major exhibitions throughout the Eastern U.S. and Europe. His work has been featured in solo shows at Allentown Art Museum, Baum School of Art, Holland Art House Gallery in West Chester, and the former Hoopla Gallery in Bethlehem. In April, 2004, he recei...

In the mid-1970s, I took my first college course regarding environmental issues on Grizzly Bears in the Yellowstone Basin. It was based on Frank and John Craighead’s ecological research, now known as the Craighead Institute. Bears are fascinating creatures no matter what your cultural background. Still today there are Asiatic black and Ezo brown bears in the higher elevations of central and northern Japan.  The bear population is estimated to be about 10,000. The brown bears of Hokkaido are related to the Grizzly Bears of North America. The Ainu, an ethnic group that is distinct from the Japanese are now living on the major northern island of Hokkaido. These indigenous people were hunter-gatherers and fishermen. They hunted bears and other wild animals and fished for salmon and other sea-faring creatures. Currently there are several archaeological and anthropological research studies looking at the Ainu people and their culture of bear-worship.   Vintage Humorous Bear C...

When an artist has over six-decades of artwork in the marketplace and is still alive at 95, they get the chance to see a resurgence of their early work. It is commonplace to find vintage works by Mary Helen Wallace from the late 1960s through the 1980s reappearing at estate sales and auctions. With the revival of the “Mid-Century Modern” look, her work matches and is a wonderful complement to this current design era. Mary Helen goes by several titles that she has used to define herself: Self-Employed, Artist, Teacher, and a strong Cincinnatian. Over the years she has identified with and has been an active member of the Cincinnati Art Club, the Greater Cincinnati Watercolor Society, and the Women’s Art Club of Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Art Club is a city institution that was formed in 1890, and Mary Helen was still exhibiting in their juried exhibits as of 2017, submitting a work in pastel. An earlier work exhibited in 2011, received a special award from the club. When announce...

The early original tea jars were precisely straightforward, unelaborate, an aspect of the pottery that appealed to tea masters, who adopted tea jars as storage vessels for tea leaves. The tea jars preserved the fragrance and the freshness of the tea, and were finally accorded with the aesthetic idea of wabi tea. The wabi aesthetic was developed by the fifteenth-century tea master Juko, who praised jars that had a withered well-used appearance. The concept of wabi has roots in Zen spiritual austerity. The Zen awakening produced interest in native wares from the local kilns and merchant ships that carried practical simple wares. This unpretentious merchant ware jar was most likely from southern China, and was exported to Japan where the tea ceremony was a simple procedure, yet an elaborate ritual of hospitality, and still remains an integral part of Japanese culture. This jar was constructed from iron rich coarse-textured stoneware clay, containing abundant sand and small stones. ...

On the top floor of the Matsuya Department Store in the Ginza shopping district of Tokyo, was a large exhibit space that rotated shows about every two weeks. It was one of my favorite places to visit, as there were fine artists and craftsmen showing their creations with the assistance of the most attentive staff and sales associates. They always exemplified elegance and class. During a drop-by-visit, there was a Ichimatsu doll exhibit. Dolls are dolls, a play thing, until they become an artform. The exhibit was part educational seminar and part wonderment. These Japanese dolls were not produced on a factory floor with production quotas. Each doll was handmade with painstaking details by an artisan that rendered a doll with personality, charm and beauty. The keeper of all knowledge, Wikipedia, describes Ichimatsu dolls this way: the doll represents little girls or boys, correctly proportioned and usually with flesh-colored skin and glass eyes. The original Ichimatsu were named a...