Lisa Bulawsky, Nick Bubash, Bill Fick and Tom Huck
On View: April 5, 2002 – May 10, 2002
Friday, April 5, 2002 from 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm
“New Pulls” a collaboration between Highpoint and Kevin Quandt Fine Art, presents four printmakers whose work offers unique visions of the human condition. These artists’ images encompass dark humor and psychology, the rural south, the seven deadly sins, and mask-like portraits of unknown peoples. Join us at Highpoint for an Opening reception, including food and drink, on friday April 5, 6:30 – 9:00 PM. Highpoint’s Artistic Director Cole Rogers, and Kevin Quandt of Quandt Fine Art, will be on hand to discuss the work with guests. For an indepth look at each artist’s work visit www.kqfineart.com.
Nick Bubash
artist statement: My father is Croatian probably Turkish, my mother is Sicilian a descendent of Sephardics, my wife and my children and family are Irish, my brother is Italian and Spanish and my sister married a pole, a German, and a Hungarian one each, my neighbors are African and Icelandic, my dog is Maltese, my cats are from Siam and I am reincarnated from India, my food is Algerian with bread from France, nuts from Brazil tea from China and coffee from Hawaii and Columbia, my watch and cheese are Swiss and my caviar is Russian, my car is Japanese, my shoes Bolivian, my shirt Pakistan, my carpets are Persian, my dishes and my radio are from Mexico, my silverware and language are English, the children’s toys from Taiwan my dijerdoo is Aboriginal I am an extremist by nature, my religion is fundamentalist by choice but my rabbi is Baptist, I wear the skin of a Maori and my art is at least in part if not completely a result of the criss/cross of the above.
Lisa Bulawsky
artist statement: My vision, gesture, and ideas filter through my knowledge and experience as a printmaker. As a printmaker, I am a generalist and a blasphemist. While I am interested in the populist tradition in printmaking, in reproducibility and its democratic potentiality, I am equally interested in the uniqueness of the printed mark, its beauty, depth, and security in contrast with other marks and materials. In all of my work, there is a strong metaphorical quality to the combination of materials, images, and formal presentations in which elements blend, then threaten to contradict each other, setting up a paradigm that is rich, human, tense, restricting, and liberating all at once.
The subject of my work could fit under some droll and inclusive title in the humanities like The Psychology of Culture or Psycho-American Studies. I do consider my work to be reflective, if not diagnostic, of the human condition. I like to think that it functions as a kind of contemporary diagnosis of timeless social phenomenon. In particular, I have been investigating gender, stereotype, power, and limitation through a social and psychological lens, and with a sardonic edge. I like to play the straight man off the comic, the statement of fact next to the irony. The expression of these concerns takes different forms and launches from different platforms, as discreet works on paper, as installation, as temporary public project.
Bill Fick
artist statement: Printmaking has a long tradition of narrative satire. My work follows this tradition while also drawing upon elements of comics, cartoons and popular culture. Linocut is the perfect medium for making super graphic images.
Tom Huck
artist statement: My work deals with personal observations about the experiences of living in a small town in southeast Missouri. The often Strange and Humorous occurrences, places, and people in these towns offer a never-ending source of inspiration for my prints. I call this work “rural satire”. My work has been influenced by an array of artists, among then the woodcuts of Albrecht Durer, the etchings of Warrington Colescott, nearly all of the German Expressionists, and the late great Frank Zappa. My Chosen media is printmaking, specifically the woodcut. The combination of dark humor with the inherently expressive medium of the woodcut heightens the complexity of my images. For the past 2 years I have been engaged in the creation of a folio of prints entitled “2 Weeks in August: 14 Rural Absurdities”. Each image depicts a single day's occurrence, while all the images together describe a period of two weeks. The images come from either personal accounts or local folklore from my hometown of Potosi, Missouri.