Waller-Yoblonsky Fine Art

Much can be said about Rosenblum's painting style, however his own words say it best when he wrote: The vertical forms in my work serve as a vehicle for color and also become a dramatic means of achieving movement and deep space. This becomes possible through great variation in the stripe thickness, and the sudden emergence or disappearance of a particular band of color when it overlaps another. Rosenblum used color to be bold and startling, and juxtapositioned some colors next to each other to create vibration. These diagonal and triangle wedges causes the eye to wonder why; are they based on a system or happen-chance. His work must be compared to Gene Davis from the Washington Color School and Bridget Riley, an English artist that moves the line around and around. Davis almost always stuck to vertical straight stripes with varying widths of color. Likewise, Rosenblum does a variation of Davis creating tilted lines, that sometime become long narrow triangles. They both use ...

Clement Greenberg, the art critic at the New York Times, introduced the world to the “Washington Color School”. The Washington Color School was a combination of color field abstraction, and hard-line abstraction painters. A couple of these artists started a new tradition of putting paint directly on unprimed canvases, that created stained looking canvases. Alice Mostoff lived most of her life within minutes of Washington, DC, and was not listed as part of the Color School, however numerous artists were influenced by the emerging styles that came from the School. She was not included in the school partly because Mostoff arrived to late to be part of that art movement. A retrospective review of Mostoff’s work has similarities to noted Washington artists such as Willem de Looper, American University instructor Robert Franklin Gates, and National Gallery print expert Jacob Kainen. These three men were also outliers of the Washington Color School, but they sat on the edge of this com...

No doubt, the gift of a handmade quilt is the gift of love. The first time I saw quilts that were not just standard log cabin patterns or square blocks was when I was in high school. I went to high school on the Sioux and Assiniboine, the home of these Indigenous Tribes where a Native women would create items to morn the death of a loved one. Approximately a year after the death of the loved one the woman would give away handmade objects to people that helped during the time of insurmountable grief. Frequently you would see beautiful star quilts given away reflecting their thanks for kindness and friendship. My mother received such a quilt that is somewhere tucked away in a closet. Many indigenous women are known for their craft skills, and for their knowledge and knowhow in making star quilts. Unlike these Native women from my childhood, my sister-in-law, Barbara Wotherspoon is making quilts and fabric art-craft projects out of relentless joy and perhaps a little self-torture. ...

The terms: “Concentric Kinetic Velocities” are more than a mouthful when combined together, it adjoins a mathematical equation with the power of physics. Yet creating a sculpture that obeys the natural movement and direction of the wind produces art that understands kinetic motion and the power of velocity. This sculpture works somewhat as a weathervane, or perhaps a better term is a wind vane. The lead artist on the project, Aaron Waller mounted two concentric circles in a 3D sphere at 90 degrees and added interior and exterior fins to the circles. The two concentric circles are repurposed pieces of chrome covered garment racks from a department store and the fins are cut from flat-steel. The slim-lined fins work like rudder blades and catch the direction of the wind ever so subtly. With the fins the outer chrome rings rotate back and forth giving the viewer an understanding of the direction of the wind. In the center of the two concentric circles he added a cold-rolled...

Dean Adams works with visual satire, people who view his work are not quite sure what to do with political or sexual related art. For years Adams has created ceramic sculptures that consist of the male anatomy sculpted and conjoined to a bird’s body. Far from lurid, they take on a sense of humor with titles that entertain. The Montana ceramic artist seems to operate on a sliding scale between kitsch/whimsy, cultural attitudes on sexuality, and highbrow Dada/Surrealism. On the far end of the scale, his works look straight out of a dime store, figurines that are colorful, look inexpensive as if they were produced right after World War II. In the center there is a salute to Freud’s complex understanding of sexual expression. Then on the other far end, the works take on Dada/Surrealist origins, when he combines figures with penises and penis heads. Another element happens within the range of Adams' works, shock artistry. For those who know his work can just imagine a naïve grandmot...

Attending design school in the mid-1970s, most professors were apostles of the late Le Corbusier. We studied his extensive list of buildings, yet most professors were fixated on the small French Roman Catholic Chapel called Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp. On the other hand I loved his contemporary straight-lined Villa Savoye - “House as Machine”. At that time I did not understand he was so accomplished, as Ernesto N. Rogers wrote in an 1963 opinion piece, he was a “painter, sculptor, architect, and poet - like Michelangelo, who styled himself this peerless poet of our age has contrived to express contemporary life.” All these various listed activities required a pencil or charcoal. He was known for drawing all the time and was attributed the comment “why talk when you can draw”. Which would make sense, the communication tool of an artist, designer, architect and poet is the pencil. You can erase, modify, change your thoughts and clarify, likewise with charcoal, you can smudge or...

History is full of women artists overlooked, difficult, unloved, forgotten, unrealized and overshadowed.  Cusick was her professional name, and what a career. She was known in multiple genres: foreign diplomacy and international relations, college instructor, art historian and an artist. She combined all of these elements into an international art career where she coordinated women's conferences and worked on feminist ideals around the world. These venues allowed her to exhibit widely and to share her story. Cusick had an undergraduate degree from the Ivy League Georgetown University and a masters degree from American University in Art History. Living in the Washington, DC area, her home and education became a platform for her international conferences on women's issues. At Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service she would have been introduced to the multiple languages and cultures around the world.  Likewise with an art history degree, she would further expand her horizon...

Tagami Isamu (四代目　田上勇 Isamu Tagami) was born in 1947 in Mooka, a village neighboring to Mashiko. He married into the Sudo family and apprenticed under Sudo Takeo. He was originally trained as a Japanese chef and had his own restaurant before embarking on a career in pottery, giving him a unique perspective on functional wares. He is currently the 4th-generation head of Hinatagama, founded in Mashiko by Sudo Yujiro in the Meiji Period (1868-1912.) His work has won awards in Prefecture and National ceramic exhibitions as he continues his work in the use of traditional and local Mashiko clay and glazes, much in the same way that his father’s teacher, Hamada Shoji, did. Hinatagama (Hinata Kiln) was established in Mashiko by Sudo Yujiro during the Meiji Period (1868-1912.) Sudo Yujiro was a potter at the Jishoji-yaki kilns in Gumma Prefecture. Production at the Jishoji-yaki kilns had declined at the turn of the century and many potters relocated to Mashiko around 1905. In the kiln’s 2nd g...

If there was a movie made about any of the famous people that were part of Charles Boggs’ life during his years in Paris, Boggs would be cast as the best-supporting actor. For years he provided help and companionship to the now famous African American artist Beauford Delaney, corresponded with writer James Baldwin, toured around with noted artists Stephan Pace and Lawrence Calcagno, guiding them through the sites of Europe. Boggs held court on the Paris Left Bank at the Cafe’ Du Dome, where he provided guidance to American visitors and newcomers. Boggs in his Studio Boggs intermingled with numerous noted writers and artists that found refuge or spent time in Paris. One of the most noted was the famed writer and watercolorist Henry Miller (1891-1980). Miller’s numerous books included a small paperback: The Amazing and Invariable Beauford Delaney which was part of his outcast series published in 1945. Miller at one point described a painting that Delaney had done of him during the New Y...