The Art of Kate Cicalese

Kitties Galore

2012-02-09T05:45:00.001-08:00

If you happen to be in Washington DC and need some pet food, check out my friend Anna's awesome pet shop, Metro Mutts (www.metromuttsdc.com). My drawing of Romeo, their resident cat, is now hanging in the front window. If you are interested in commissioning me to draw your furry baby, all you need is a good photo. You can email me your photo. I will make a 8 x 10 inch pencil drawing, frame it, and ship it to you. Turnover time is about a month and the cost is $300, which includes shipping. Send me an email if you have any questions: katecicalese@comcast.net. Metro Mutts is located at 508 H St NE, Washington, DC 20002.


My kitten Miso poses with Romeo's portrait.

Beach House (2011)

2012-01-31T13:36:00.000-08:00

Beach House (2011) oil on canvas, 18 x 14 inches

Vienna (2011)

2012-01-31T13:35:00.000-08:00

Vienna (2011) oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches

Syracuse (2011)

2012-01-31T13:33:00.000-08:00

Syracuse (2011) oil on canvas, 18 x 14 inches

Ab-Ex with Clyfford Still

2012-01-31T12:26:00.001-08:00

The Abstract Expressionists were never a unified voice, and characterizations are invariably fluid, as each artist developed one or more signature styles. Painters sought to avoid predefined limits and to express the greatest possible range of meaning through their own visual language ... by the mid-1940s Clyfford Still was developing his signature style of colour fields that join in jagged interfaces.

- Image and text from The Art Museum (2011) Phaidon Press, p. 381

Clyfford Still "1957-D No.1" (1957) oil on canvas, 9 ft 5 in x 13 ft 3 in

Ab-Ex with Lee Krasner

2012-01-13T11:21:00.001-08:00

This canvas presents a series of tightly packed forms and enclosed shapes, characteristic of the work of Krasner (1908-84). An invigorating tension exists between the looseness of her expressive brushwork and rhythm, and the underlying sense of order and direction.

- Image and text from The Art Museum (2011) Phaidon Press, p. 381


Lee Krasner -Another Storm (1963) oil on canvas, 7 ft 10 in x 14 ft 8 in

Ab-Ex with Joan Mitchell

2012-01-13T07:22:00.001-08:00

The mural-sized paintings of Joan Mitchell (1926-92) echo the scale of other Abstract Expressionists. Their most distinctive quality is their relationship to landscape, an amalgam [or blend] of Abstract Expressionist concepts and Impressionist and Post-Impressionist ones. Here, four panels combine to create a flat image that oscillates between four separate views of one large panorama, the effect of which compels us ultimately to dismiss coherent landscape and immerse ourselves in the reality of color. - Image and text from The Art Museum (2011) Phaidon Press, p. 381
Joan Mitchell - Salut Tom (1979), oil on canvas, about 9 ft by 6 ft 6 in

New Body of Work (2011-present)

2012-01-11T11:39:00.001-08:00

Since grad school, I have watched my work veer towards the non-objective. I can't explain it in words just yet, but Georges Braque (1882-1963) can. In 1955, he said:

"I have made a very great discovery - I no longer believe in anything. Objects do not exist for me except if there is a harmonious relationship between them, and also between them and myself. When one arrives at this harmony, one arrives at a space of intellectual nothingness. In this way, everything becomes possible, everything becomes right, and life is an eternal revelation. That is true poetry."

- quote from The Art Museum (2011) Phaidon Press, p. 372

Photo taken inside studio on 1-11-2011

Romeo (2011)

2011-10-26T13:51:00.000-07:00

Romeo (2011) pencil on paper, 8 x 10 inches

Four new paintings (2011)

2011-10-20T09:35:00.000-07:00

Cold Fire (2011) oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches

Light House (2011) oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches

Eiffel Tower (2011) oil on canvas, 15 x 30 inches

Circus Head (2011) oil on canvas, 30 x 20 inches

Reading with Joan Mitchell

2011-09-17T07:44:00.000-07:00

There is no quiet in this town. No quiet in this house. No quiet in my head. There must be a solution, a way to silence this noise. I would move to the county if I could. Almost daily I daydream about waking up to the sound of nothing. No trucks. No cars. No crowds of humans walking by. No cell phones. The only sound I want to hear is an unplugged one.

Joan Mitchell (1925 - 1992) UNTITLED 1957, Oil on canvas, 80 x 57 inches

Fall is here and for the first time in four years, I am not taking a class at Temple University. Simply put, I finally graduated. However, I still have library privileges, something I plan to abuse as long as I stay in Philly. Campus was mad today. Had to pay $14 for parking. Was pissed about that, but then I quickly celebrated the fact that I am no longer committed to commuting to campus. I traded in thirty pounds of books and left with forty. I rid myself of the books with words that I used to write my master’s paper. I wanted large picture books. I am teaching a small class of adults to paint in acrylics so I grabbed books on Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, and Hans Hofmann. Then another tome caught my eye, Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter. The book was brand new, 2011, wrapped in a calm ultramarine blue cover. I would be the first reader. I got goosebumps.


Lee Bontecou (b. 1931) UNTITLED 1962, Welded steel, epoxy, canvas, fabric, saw blade, and wire, 68 x 72 x 30 inches

The day I truly discovered Joan Mitchell was September 21^st, 2008. I say truly, because I am sure I knew her name from passing but I had never seen her work in person. Although I see many paintings in books, the experience of seeing a painting in person is a decisive moment. Cezanne and Matisse amaze me in books, but in person, I feel less. Van Gogh is okay in books but in person, he rocks. Painting is textural. It is not illustration. It is not print. It is not meant to be experienced on a computer screen. Painting is visceral. Painting is blood and guts. I was in New York City at the Jewish Museum wandering the exhibit, Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976 (NYTimes Photos). Joan Mitchell is no exception when it comes to mansize paintings. I stood immobilized between her aggressive brushstrokes from 1957 and Lee Bontecou’s 1962 sewn metal sculpture. They faced each other and I stood between them, feeling, "This is it. These are my ladies."

A few pages into my new book, I felt assured of my selection:

Having come of age as an artist on New York’s Tenth Street in the 1950s and reveled in its marvelous “community of feeling,” Joan Mitchell has been written into the mythology of Abstract Expressionism. She knocked back beers with the boys at the Cedar Tavern, caroused in the Hamptons, hung out with hip cats at the Five Spot, and felt the pain and thrill of belonging, or nearly, to the little band of rebels operating below Fourteenth Street … Yet, despite her personal and artistic self-identification with Abstract Expressionism, Joan’s art confounds textbook classification. It has to do, she said, with memories of her feelings – feelings about “love and death and all that crap” – ensnared in lakes, trees, rivers, clouds, sunflowers, bridges and so on.

I was like, “Oh crap, that is what I do,” and then I laughed because Joan said crap.

Reading with Patti Smith

2011-07-11T08:43:00.000-07:00

Robert and Patti

One of the joys of finishing school has been that I can read books for fun again. No more articles or research. No taking notes, just time to get lost in another’s story.

A few weeks ago, I read Patti Smith’s autobiography, Just Kids, a tale about her early days hanging out with Robert Mapplethorpe in 1970s New York City. I loved Patti Smith’s book. Used to listen to her tons in my early twenties, which is why I picked it up at the Barnes and Noble. It was a story about making art, how Patti and Robert inspired each other as complementary muses, how she started as a poet but over time, her art turned into music, how Robert found photography after years of making collages … just read it. It is inspiring if you have ever fancied yourself as a young struggling artist.

Phillyscape (2011)

2011-04-25T13:31:00.000-07:00

Phillyscape (2011) oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches

Sparkles (2010)

2011-04-01T07:32:00.000-07:00

Sparkles (2010) pencil on paper, 16 x 20 inches

Children (2009)

2011-04-01T07:21:00.000-07:00

Aedan shoveling snow, 2009, pencil on paper, 8 x 10 inches

Janae, Jha Jha and Tina dancing, 2009, pencil and acrylic on paper, 12 x 15 inches

Girlfriends (2009)

2011-04-01T07:11:00.000-07:00

Anna on the stoop in Philly, 2009, pencil on paper, 8 x 10 inches

Jackie, my long lost ex-pat, 2009, pencil on paper, 8 x 10 inches

Sedimentary Layers (2009)

2011-04-01T06:50:00.000-07:00

Sedimentary Layers, 2009, fused glass, 15 x 10 inches

Cave Woman and Modesty (2011)

2011-03-29T13:11:00.000-07:00

Cave Woman, March 2011, pencil and charcoal on paper, 15 x 10 inches

Modesty, January 2011, pencil and on paper, 15 x 10 inches

Self Portrait (2010)

2010-07-12T14:31:00.000-07:00

Self Portrait, 2010, Acrylic, charcoal, and pencil on masonite and wood, 12 by 24 inches each

Sanderling by the City (2010)

2010-07-08T09:17:00.000-07:00

Sanderling by the City, 2010, pencil and acrylic on paper, 6 by 18 inches

Vietnam and Femme Fatale (2009)

2010-02-15T09:08:00.000-08:00

Vietnam, 2009, oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches

Femme Fatale, 2009, spraypaint and acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 inches

Life with Norman Rockwell

2010-02-15T09:01:00.000-08:00

How Normal Rockwell Dealt with a Studio Fire in 1943: Drawing a Funny Cartoon

Poetry with Longfellow

2010-01-25T09:11:00.000-08:00

There was a little girl
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There was a little girl,
            Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
            When she was good,
            She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.

Longfellow's second son Ernest says of this poem,

It was while walking up and down with his second daughter, then a baby in his arms, that my father composed and sang to her the well-known lines .... Many people think this a Mother-Goose rhyme, but this is the true version and history

I love this poem...it was one of the first I ever learned. I always imagined myself as the girl with the curl.

Exhibit: Artists as Educators (2009)

2009-09-17T08:28:00.000-07:00

The Art Education grads have installed a beautiful group show in the Stella Elkins Tyler Gallery, located on the ground floor. I was impressed, so I think you will be too!

ARTISTS AS EDUCATORS
ANNUAL ART EXHIBITION

OPENING RECEPTION
September 17th, 7 p.m. 2009
Stella Elkins Tyler Galleries
September 17th to September 27th
Tyler School of Art
2001 N. 13th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19122

I am showing Gaza, a large oil on canvas completed in February 2009. I used a palette knife for this one, something new for me. I recommend seeing it live to get the full, vigorous, impasto effect.

Mother and Child (2009)

2009-05-23T06:28:00.000-07:00

Mother and Child (2009) charcoal on panel, 12 x 9 in

Hope with Cornel West and Wynton Marsalis

2009-04-19T04:54:00.000-07:00

CW: ... are there any conditions under which you think your hope could be snuffed out?
WM: None!
CW: None whatsoever?
WM: As long as I'm alive. That's just in me as a person.
CW: Is it because of the freedom that you know as a human being and as an artist that reveals that no matter what the situation is, there's always some possibility it could be better?
WM: Yes. Plus I believe in God.
CW: But what does God mean to you, though, Brother?
WM: It's just ascendent consciousness ...

Work Cited:
West, Cornell (1997). Restoring Hope: Conversations on the Future of Black America. Boston: Beacon Press. p. 131.

My Podcast Story

2009-03-15T08:10:00.000-07:00

Instead of the usual old artist statement, why not listen to a personal story about my art?

C lic k here to enjoy the podcast...

photo of Blanche Rose Naclerio, my grandmother, with her sculpture

Color: Manila Sun

2009-02-15T14:38:00.000-08:00

Manila is the capital of the Philippines.

It also refers to a certain yellowish folder called a manila folder.“The manila component of the name comes from manila hemp or abaca, from which manila folders were originally made. Manila hemp is native to the Philippines and is named after its capital city”.

Seeing as I’ve never been to Manila, I visualized an island paradise based on the feeling of the words, Manila Sun. It sounds beautiful. I imagine haze, heat, and a foggy warm orange color. I imagine something like this photograph, which accompanied an article for tourism in Manila.
The caption beside the photo encourages vacationers to enjoy the sunset over Manila Bay poolside, with a “mango smoothie in hand.”

But this is not the color on my paint chip. There is no perfect orange sunset in this Manila Sun.

If we were to mix Manila Sun on the palette, the base or key color would be a yellow-orange. We would then add gray to decrease the intensity of the yellow-orange, thus creating a tone of the original color. The level of white versus black in the gray component determines how the tone measures on the value scale, meaning how light or dark it is. Manila Sun appears relatively light, registering at a value of 8, where value 10 is 100% white and value 1 is 100% black.

I have just described Manila Sun scientifically, using the color wheel. However, this wordy description would never work for the common shopper. Instead, house paint manufacturers appeal to our emotional sensibilities when they name colors, using the most poetic phrases they can conjure. These idyllic descriptive names are meant to prompt alluring visuals in our heads. Never is there a hint of negativity or normality. Red is no longer red. It is Pomegranate. Black is no longer black. Ace of Spades is the new black.

Which brings us back to Manila Sun. What exactly does this phrase mean to connote, in terms of color? Why did Ace Paint refer to a city in the Philippines? Did they think it would sound romantic to us Westerners? I admit, as an American, a Westerner, that a place like Manila is a mystery to me. I quickly destroy this mystery however by doing a Google image search. I find the orange sunset picture above and then these two of what the downtown area looks like. The city images show the poor side of Manila, which is quite the opposite of the sunset scene put forth by the vacation industry. Hmmm, how come these pictures are not in the travel brochures? Where do I go for my mango smoothie?

However, the colors in these impoverished neighborhoods are ironically, much closer in emotional tone to the paint color, Manila Sun, than Ace Paint would care to admit, and I will explain why.

When I look at the city scenes, I know the air is not clean. Nothing looks clean. Everything, from the surfaces of the boarded houses, to the laundry hanging to dry, appears as if a layer of dust has settled upon it. If this is Manila, what do you suppose a Manila sunset would look like? The air would be musky and humid. The dirt and sweat from overheated people would mingle with the already hot air, creating a kind of smog, a polluted haze. The color of this haze would deepen in evening, as the sun would set. A dusty tropical color would coat the town rooftops and littered grounds below. This is the color Manila Sun. It is a mixture of yellow-orange light from the setting sun, filtering through the grayness of the urban air.

Color: Definition

2009-02-08T11:13:00.000-08:00

Often, when asked to name a color, our descriptions are subjective and almost lyrical. For example, we will say, “sky blue” or “forest green".

But color is much more complex than that … for a more accurate description, we need to understand the three principle characteristics of color:

• hue – The quality that distinguishes one color family from another, as red from yellow or green from blue. Hue has only one dimension, color has three: hue, value and chroma.
• value – The lightness or darkness of the color. Lightness of a color depends on the percentage of light reflected from the colored surface (lightest is white- most light is reflected, darkest is pitch black- no light is reflected. Gray- some light is partially absorbed, and partly reflected). Often referred to as Tints (light colors, mixed with white), Shades (dark colors, mixed with black) and Tones (mixed with gray).
• chroma – The brightness or dullness of the hue. Chroma involves the intensity and purity level in a hue that can range from fully saturated to infinite levels of neutrality. Neutralized or grayish colors show weak (LOW) chroma. Intense colors show strong (HIGH) chroma.

For example, although the side of the paint container might say “Bar Harbor,” it would be better to say the paint is blue-green (hue), darkish (value), and moderately intense.

There are two common types of color: additive color and subtractive color.

Additive color refers to the mixing of colors of light. The three primaries in light are red, blue, and green. When all of the colors of the spectrum are combined, they add up to white light.

Subtractive color refers to the mixing of colors of pigment, such as paint or the ink in your computer's printer. This type of color is what is used in the art and design world. The three primaries commonly used by art students are red, yellow, and blue. The three primaries in your printer are magenta, yellow, and cyan.

Work Cited: Color Basics by Stephen Pentak and Richard Roth

Art with Liza Lou

2009-02-06T12:09:00.000-08:00

Liza Lou is one of my favorite artists. She was born in 1969 in NYC, but currently works in Durban, South Africa, overseeing a group of local beaders in the creation of largescale beaded works. When asked if art is a kind of comfort blanket, Liza Lou responded,

Yes, definitely. I think it gives a tremendous sense of purpose. It’s a way of seeing the world; it’s a way of reinventing the world. It gives a sense of power over matter, over what it is, over what it is you’re looking at. It’s really exciting to be able to decide you want to see things in a certain way and so you go ahead and do that. And it really doesn’t require any money, just time and a lot of effort. That was something I latched onto early on. Even as a kid, being able to tap into the control that you have that no matter what’s going on around you, you can go into your room and make, or draw what you want to see even when, in the world around you, there’s nothing that you want to see. Even when everything’s so dark and so ugly, you can go into your room and make something. And on that page you have total control.

When Liza Lou was an art student at the San Francisco Art Institute, one professor whom she would later nickname ‘The Frogman’ chastised her for attaching glass beads to her abstract paintings. Liza recalls, “I was really, really hated for what I was doing…People would actually say, ‘I’m sorry, but that is not allowed’.” Instead of conforming, Liza dropped out and got a studio in Los Angeles. She worked as a waitress and began work on her first major artwork, Kitchen (1991-95). The piece is a life-size replica of a suburban kitchen, but it sparkles, because every surface has been covered with millions of hand-glued glass beads. Liza said she wanted to transform an ordinary kitchen, a place typically associated with domestic toil, “into something as dazzling as Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice.”

Art with Jeanette Winterson

2009-02-06T11:58:00.000-08:00

What art does is coax us away from the mechanical and towards the miraculous. The so-called uselessness of art is a clue to its transforming power. Art is not part of the machine. Art asks us to think differently, see differently, hear differently, and ultimately to act differently, which is why art has moral force. Ruskin was right, though for the wrong reasons, when he talked about art as a moral force. Art is not about good behavior, when did you last see a miracle behave well? Art makes us better people because it asks for our full humanity, and humanity is, or should be, the polar opposite of the merely mechanical. We are not a part of the machine either, but we have forgotten that.

Sailing the Acheron (2008)

2009-02-01T10:51:00.000-08:00

Sailing the Acheron (2008) oil, spraypaint, and rope on canvas. 36 x 27 in

Roped (1999), oil and rope on canvas. 36 x 27 in

Last year, before full time grad school started, I found one week to paint. The prior year had been a busy one, forcing me to neglect the art studio. I needed a canvas, so I scoured the basement. I uncovered a bunch of older work, covered in plaster, dust, and dirt. They didn’t look too good. I thought of resurrecting them, giving them makeovers, injecting life into their yellow and crusty corners. I do not throw art away. I will carelessly destroy it by having too much of it and relegating it to a damp unsavory home, but I would never throw it away. I found Roped (1999).

When I originally made the stretcher, I pulled the canvas too tight. After applying gesso, the frame warped. Instead of fighting it, I decided to accentuate the unnatural bend in the frame. I ripped holes in the canvas and weaved rope thru the holes, wrapping it around the injured wood, binding it up. Now it looked as if I meant to warp the wood. The painting is now entitled Sailing the Acheron (August 2008). While the original is an atmospheric, minimalist use of spray paint and oil stains, the recent incarnation is quite the opposite. It is a celebration of color and texture.

Italian (1994)

2009-01-24T04:29:00.000-08:00

Italian (1994) oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches

This painting, Italian, is one of my first serious attempts in oil.
Now I will tell its story.
I entered Syracuse University as an undeclared major, under the auspice that I would study Biology. After one year, I transferred into the art school. There were a few girls in my wing at Shaw Hall that were making excellent art (thanks Jen Briggs and Ann!) and I burned with the desire to do the same. I began as an Illustration major. I considered Graphic Design. However, after a class with Jerome Witkin, I saw somewhere I wanted to be, the 4th floor painting studios in the Shaffer Art Building.
I was 20 years old and foolishly decided I wanted to be a painter.
The summer before my junior year, the year that I declared painting as my major, I sat in my grandparents' attic, determined to make a really good painting. In it, I exaggerated the veins in my neck, making myself appear much older. I used to joke, "That is what I will look like when I am 40." Now, almost 40, and still painting, it is nice to look at this work and contemplate how it all began.