Robert Roselle ... Ceramics Sculptor

The building that houses the Torpedo Factory Art Center   in Alexandria, VA. was actually a torpedo making factory. After WWII the factory was bought  by the City of Alexandria and converted to a gallery space for local artists.   This three level building has more than 70 studios housing approximately 170 artists.  You are not only able to see their works you can spy them working on others too. The place is full of artists  working on their paintings, sculptures, jewellery making, glasswork .... you name the kind of art you have a penchant for, and you are likely to find at least an artist or two working in  exactly that medium within the walls of the Torpedo Factory.







Kia and myself, although we spent most of our  vacation in Washington D.C. itself, we did find the time to stay a couple of days in Alexandria and other spots in Virginia.  There are lots of interesting places to see in Virginia ... one thing we missed doing was visiting the Luray Caverns in the Shenandoah Valley.  There we would have seen the best artist of them all, Nature.








The Torpedo Factory artists not only display their art and work in the studios right there in front of you, many of them are also open to interviews  and will answer whatever  questions you may have about their art and the pieces they have for sale and display.

Some of the artists here stand out for the uniqueness of their work.  Kia has a keen eye for exceptionalism and by all accords, according to her,  Robert Roselle's technique is unique, outer worldly and beautiful.  She had a conversation with the sculptor himself and got him to pose with some of his works (see pic 1).  She also bought  a small ceramic artwork from the artist, something that didn't punch a hole in  her budget (See pic 2).

Robert Roselle works with coils of stoneware and ceramic clay to create his works of wonder.  At first glance most of  his pieces look like just decorative pottery or free standing vases.  On closer inspection you will see a hole or two to peek through.  And that's when the wonder begins.  Inside the insipid looking vases you will find amazing fantasy worlds.  Some have people standing inside looking into peepholes just like you are doing.  Some have figures looking into a sky full of twinkling stars.  Peeping into each of his pieces was like seeing different worlds.




Roselle told Kia that he is influenced by Greek and African art.  I believe he has never given an exhibition in Washington DC, which is a shame as the artistic world at large  has missed discovering him.  However, he has been invited to impart his  unique technique in China  India, New Zealand and South Korea and has travelled to those places and others teaching this marvellous technique to other artists.

Frederic Edwin Church .... Dreamy Landscapes

The works of one of the very best of American painters, are to be found on the 2nd level of the American Art Museum in Washington, DC.

The generous country of the United States of America has free admission to almost every museum, gallery and monument.  Not like how  France, Italy, Canada and others milk visitors and citizens alike for stepping inside their  museums. Canada's museums are sadly wanting but yet one has to pay hefty sums to walk inside them. What a shame.

Isn't it strange that the governments of  these same countries  who put a toll on their citizens to get a bit of  education in the Arts are at the same time of  the opinion that large amounts of funds should be directed to the supposedly "third world" countries for the education of the masses there while their own citizens can remain blissfully dumb?

Another thing worth noting while I am at it, is this:  I did not see a single piece in any of the museums and galleries that we visited in Washington, DC and the vicinity of it,  that did not have a description of the item and the original owner it was obtained from and whether it was a donation or not.  Not like the museums in the United Kingdom, France and Italy.  All three have robbed blind the countries they used to occupy and the treasures they display in their museums are treasures they have plundered from India, Egypt, Damascus, Greece, Nepal, China, Tibet and several other countries where the invaders and their explorers took advantage of the native population to deprive them of their artwork and thus part of their heritage.

The French have even carted two huge pillars weighing probably several tonnes each  from one of the Middle East countries they were in control of  ... and these two pillars are now standing in their main museum in Paris.  Shame.

Now back to Frederic Church.

Church was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1826 and died in New York in 1900.  His visit to Ecuador gave birth to some of his most amazing paintings of almost outer worldly landscapes with the most meticulous touch to details.

In 1868,  he and his wife travelled to the Middle East and covered the modern day Syria, Israel, Egypt, Lebanon and surrounding areas.  Their travels to the Muslim regions seem to have been for only three months but the Churches were so impressed by what they saw in the Middle East they designed their own home in Hudson, NewYork  based on the architecture of a house they had seen in Damascus. 

You will want to gaze at some of his paintings and wonder how many years and how many millions of times his brush must have touched the canvas until he was fully satisfied that he had not forgotten anything that his eyes had seen.

I kept musing aloud to Kia on how if I was stinking rich I would have loved to have one of Church's painting in my bedroom and would look at it before dozing off to sleep and hope to dream that I was floating aloft in one of his landscapes.

The reproductions of his works are many and are sold from the low 100s to the high 500s.  The posters and prints are sold from anywhere between $5 - 25.

 More here   on the painter and pics of many of his works.

Read more  about the New England Scenery painting.

Lalla Essaydi .... Makes the right statement via her work but gives a false explanation for it

We caught Lalla Essaydi exhibition at the National Museum of African Art  in Washington DC.  Essaydi's  a Moroccan-born photographer living in New York and is making an impact with her amazingly beautiful art  which depicts Muslim women living under Shariah or Islam.

No matter how many different explanations Essaydi gives for  her work which has a patina of Arabic text scrawled all over it, her unique work speaks  for itself and conveys a story  that is  far from what Essaydi the cowardly but talented painter wants us to believe is the inspiration that spawned the works.  The written word from the  false book known as the koran, written by madmen, is the tool for keeping  Muslim women locked up in cages ....  and to anyone with a clear eye, that is what Essaydi has shown by the patina of Arabic calligraphy on each and every painting. It's the written word ...it's the Arabic calligraphy. In some paintings the text look like prison walls with tiny openings just like the tiny openings for the eyes for women wearing burkhas.   Every painting where a woman is portrayed is painted to look like she is  imprisoned behind a wall of Arabic lettering.

I put my perception of her paintings to my travelling companion Kia for her reaction and she agreed with me that  Essaydi is the kind of  person who ddn't want to create any waves by speaking out against the Muslim mentality that imprisons women from birth to death and maybe even beyond.  That's two against your false explanation, Ms Essaydi.  Grow a straighter spine, girl... keeping your feet in two boats will tear you apart sooner than you think.



The supposedly "feminist" artist says this about her work:  "In my art, I wish to present myself through multiple lenses -- as artist, as Moroccan, as Saudi, as traditionalist, as Liberal, as Muslim. In short, I invite the viewer to resist stereotypes.”

And, this;

The traditions of Islam exist within spatial boundaries. The presence of men defines public space, the streets, the meeting places. Women are confined to private spaces, the architecture of the homes. In these photographs, I am constraining women within space, confining them to their "proper" place, a place bounded by walls and controlled by men. Their confinement is a decorative one. The women, then, become literal with this visual confinement, I recall literal confinements. The house in the photographs is a large, unoccupied house belonging to my extended family. When a young woman disobeyed, stepped outside the permissible space, she was sent to this house. Accompanied by servants, but spoken to by no one, she would spend a month alone. In this silence, women can only be confined visions of femininity. In photographing women inscribed with henna, I emphasize their decorative role, but subvert the silence of confinement. These women "speak" visually to the house and to each other, creating a space that is both hierarchical and fluid. Furthermore, the calligraphic writing, a sacred Islamic art form, inaccessible to women, constitutes an act of rebellion.

Applying such writing in henna, a form of adornment considered "women’s work," further underscores the subversiveness of the act. In this way, the calligraphy in the images is one of a number of visual signs that carry a double meaning. As an artist now living in the West, I have become aware of another space, besides the house of my girlhood, an interior space, one of "converging territories." I will always carry that house within me, but my current life has added other dimensions. There is the very different space I inhabit in the West, a space of independence and mobility. It is from there that I can return to the landscape of my childhood in Morocco, and consider these spaces with detachment and new understanding. When I look at these spaces now, I see two cultures that have shaped me and that are distorted when looked at through the "Orientalist" lens of the West. Thus the text in these images is partly autobiographical. In it, I speak of my thoughts and experiences directly, both as a woman caught somewhere between past and present, as well as between "East" and "West," and also as an artist, exploring the language in which to "speak" from this uncertain space.

And, then comes this:

“My message would be: Arab women  are not so much oppressed as the Western World thinks. We are women incredibly engaged in our lives, to have a better life,”

Talk about a split personality !!!   Let's hope her work is bought by many more of those Arab millionaires who are presumably her biggest clients.  She knows how to sell her artwork by not displeasing anyone.  Money, money, money .... makes the world go round.

Ousmane Sow ... From malleable stuff to works of greatness

Back from a  trip to galleries, museums, monuments and whatnot littering the landscape of  Washington DC and vicinity.  Didn't concern myself with politics at all and surprisingly didn't miss the internet nor the news....not even by one teeny-weeny bit.     I made myself think and behave like the 75% of the world's population who does not give a damn about the antics of the politicians or the trickery of the political parties or listen, read or know anything about the ongoing state of  the world.  It was so liberating.

My companion was a Know-It-All from my family, whom I will name Kia for the purposes of this post and others to follow.

We were lucky to catch the exhibition of Ousmane Sow's  sculptures at one of the Smithsonian houses of  treasures.  The Smithsonian has organized an "African Mosaic"  which is a  crowd puller ... amazing and  truly wonderful works from  Sow and countless  other African artists.  We also got to watch a short documentary on Ousmane Sow.  The  Senegalese sculptor  divides his time between Paris and Senegal and most of his works are created in Senegal.   He has truly  taken the contemporary art scene by the throat and is making  people sit  up and take notice.

His 7-foot sculpture of Toussaint Louverture  (didn't know who he was until I saw the sculpture)  who was born into bondage in Haiti but rose to become the leader of the revolution that freed the slaves and made them into self-governing citizens of Haiti ... is something really awesome.  More awesome than all the works is how the sculptor sculpts and the materials he uses.  Ousmane Sow uses any kind of  material he can find ... straw, jute, fibre, etc.  and mixes it with rebar metals to a malleable gooey paste and uses his fingers to sculpt and mold figures of man and animal with this never before applied  medium.



I have to  go through the notes I made to help me recall most of what we saw, touched and read about.  I have to also check our cameras to see if  we captured any pics of Sow's work.  Maybe, I will update this post at a later date with more.

Right now, just wanted to let my usual visitors know that I am alive and well.  Thanks for the concern, it's appreciated

Leo Mol - Sculptor extraordinaire - dies at 94

Leo Mol was an internationally reknowned sculptor and artist from Winnipeg. Born in the Ukraine, Mol and his wife migrated to Canada in 1948. The Leo Mol sculpture garden in Winnipeg is a huge tourist draw and has been made possible because of the sculptures gifted by Mol. Leo Mol was not only a sculptor, he was also a landscape artist and an accomplished stain glass artist. How I wish I had in my possession one of his works.