Leonard Ragouzeos

Big Drawings-
Leonard Ragouzeos: http://www.leonardragouzeos.com/
Hammond Gallery: Fitchburg State College

Angie @87
india ink on paper
108x60

41 years of teaching!
This man knows how to handle a shy crowd of students.

The talk was held in the gallery proper. He started with a brief history of his education and teaching history then started right in on talking about the current work in the gallery.

Introduction finished, he turned to the crowd (mostly undergrad students) and said with a smile: "Ok, I've been teaching for 41 years so, first I'm going to give you the answers to all the questions I know you are going to ask me and then I'll open it up to whatever I may have missed."
I couldn't help but chuckle as he asked himself questions: "what kind of paper are you using? . . .Yudo", "what kind of ink? . . .india ink","why work so big?" . . .to be immersed in the work visiually,"why not color?" . . . .color carries extra meaning","do you use photographs for reference?" etc . . . .
Once he opened the floor to further questions everyone was smiling and the students felt perfectly comfortable asking further questions.

His answers were longer than I recorded here but it's the visual of the artist wandering the gallery holding this pleasant question and answer session with himself that I remember most about the show:)

The work itself is amazing! The image at the top of this page was just slightly too tall to fit in the gallery but if you check out his site, the majority of his other "Big Drawings" were on display.

The paper is thick and glossy, not absorbent in the slightest. He works with a brush in one hand and a hair-dryer in the other to dry the ink before it travels too far down the wall. Thousands of strokes are built up and overlapped to create each image. Up close the drawings look completely hap-hazard and chaotic.
As you pull away from the image every random gesture and chance act of gravity on ink coalesces into an image with the vaguely translucent glow of pale skin at dusk when the daylight has faded just far enough for the color to drain yet the form remains.

Visit to the 2007 Decordova Annual Exhibition

Anne Lilly

I could play with these for hours!

It's like watching a table-top version of the delicate balance of nature, put into motion by a small push or twist from the viewer.

The pieces are made from steel but the movements are gentle and smooth, each segment, just brushing by the others, separate and yet, a necessary part of the whole. Each sculpture is a beautifully intricate dance of mathematics.

I want one!

Visit to the 2007 Decordova Annual Exhibition

Ria Brodell

Wormbunnies and Birdmen?

Twisted children's narrative gone wild in illustration and sculpture!

Her work was fun to explore and imagine along with but I'm still working on the deeper meaning part.

She seems to be using her creatures to safely approach the complexities of human interaction but, the story is so otherworldly that I get wrapped up in the oddness of her illustrations and sculptures without identifying with the characters enough to effectively empathize with them. I would love to hear her artist talk. I wonder which world is more real for her.

Visit to the 2007 Decordova Annual Exhibition

Sandra Allen

40 feet tall!
All pencil!

This is not a photo!

Amazing!


What makes a person do this?

Joyce Tennyson at the Griffin Museum

I have always enjoyed looking at Joyce Tennyson's images. Her lighting is graceful, subtle and ethereal. She seems to capture a woman's inner beauty and strength regardless of age. Her book "Wise Women" is full of some very heartwarming and surprising stories shared by women over 65 . The images are honest and powerful. It made me actually look forward to growing old.

The first time I heard Joyce speak was a couple of years ago at the Griffin Museum in Winchester, MA. She was showing, images from her most recent book entitled: "Intimacy- The sensual Essence of Flowers" published by Barnes and Noble in 2004. The flowers in the book are all set against a flat black background and are accompanied by selected bits of poetry from Rilke, Aniis Nin, Emily Dickinson and others. Joyce used a macro lens on a high resolution digital camera and natural lighting to capture images so full of texture and color, they seem to have an inner life. Through creative cropping and layout design, the flowers seem to interact and converse with each other across the pages as if the poems are their own.

All that being said, I was I bit disappointed with seeing Joyce Tennyson this second time around. She seems to have gone through some sort of personal awakening that must be working well for her personal strength but came across to me as outright arrogance.
I entered the talk a bit late and had to sneak to the back the darkened gallery while the history of Joyce Tennyson's work slowly came to life in a lovely display of Joyce's PowerPoint skills. Each section of work was accompanied by its own theme song. I found it distracting and contrived. I personally think that she should let the images stand on their own. Music used to illustrate photographs just becomes a gimmick to force feed emotion and meaning into the images i.e. (Enya= ethereal) or (Bjørk w/drum=powerful.)
Once the snazzy slide show was finished she gave a teary eyed statement about how powerful her images were with the music added to them. She went on to explain how much she learned about the beauty of growing old from these amazing women, giving her the strength to photograph herself nude at the age of 62. (Insert polite applause here.) She was too choked up to continue so she launched the PowerPoint of her flowers and grandchildren pictures form Maine. After the PowerPoint, Joyce opened the floor to questions. I was expecting to hear a bit more about her life and works but, it seemed that she was going under the assumption that we already knew everything and were just there to meet her in person. Each question asked launched a new colorful story about how "grace descended" and the work was made.

What I learned this time:

• Joyce "cannot bear small talk."
• Joyce is the only female artist sponsored by Epson.
  
• Joyce is "very smart about getting what [she] wants."
• Anyone can make a photo book.
• Joyce has NEVER had someone criticize her for shooting or printing digitally. (I think I offended her with the question.)
  
• Joyce is a perfectionist.
• A $700.00 Plexiglas covering for a print is "not very expensive."
• Joyce Tennyson does not change her shots or ideas for any client. And they all know it.
  
• Plexiglas is pretty, shiny, very reflective and incredibly distracting in a gallery setting.
• Stubbornness is really the key to success.

In conclusion: I still love her images, I am just a little less inclined to hear her talk about them.