Cassandra Ott Art

Orazio De Gennaro's "Terra Bruciata (Scorched Earth) is a 10 x 10-inch abstract painting on paper mounted on board. The artist works with natural earth,...

This depicts civil rights icon MLK, the Statue of Liberty, Iwo Jima, an assemblage of mixed media photographic images and painted collaged elements. A powerful, moving work, an ode to the black civil rights movement. John M. Mitchell is originally from North Carolina, and as an art student at North Carolina Central University, he was involved with the Civil Rights movement including participating and getting arrested at a sit-in protest in Durham in 1963. After graduating, he was one of the first art teachers to take a position at the newly integrated schools in his home state. Mitchell continued his education in the 1990s and earned an MFA in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1993. He later served as a professor there from 1998-2006. Of his inspiration to create, Mitchell says: "A lot of my work is based on my experiences during the Civil Rights movement," he says. "I see art making as a 'record' of experiences. My bittersweet past, growing up in the segregated South, inspires the content, focus and narrative of my work." Savannah-based artist John Mitchell believes that a home is more than a simple edifice. Rather, he argues that the sociological, psychological, architectural, and historical associations embedded in the structure “tell us about our culture, our lives. It tells us about where we come from.” Mitchell's signature shotgun house constructions, crafted from found materials and scraps of newspaper headlines, reference his childhood in North Carolina, where such modest architectural structures were once commonplace. In "ALA 1963," he uses the shotgun shape to create a heartfelt memorial to a group of African-American girls killed in a racially motivated church bombing in Alabama nearly 50 years ago. He also incorporates the shotgun symbol in "Victims," a powerful reflection upon crime in Savannah in the early 1990s, which reveals how little has changed over the past two decades. Mitchell's mixed media constructions operate, in many ways, like memory itself. Scraps, fragments and pieces loosely cohere around a central idea, making symbolic and metaphorical connections. In these richly narrative and boldly stream-of-conscious assemblages, the whole truly is greater than the sum of its parts. Mitchell's jazz collages - carefully crafted from scraps of newspaper, sheet music, magazines and tissue paper - celebrate key players in Savannah's jazz scene, from sultry female vocalists to wiry male saxophone players. A tribute to the late jazz bassist Ben Tucker, a true Savannah legend, is especially moving, incorporating a pencil sketch of the standing bass player as well as newspaper clippings of other Savannah jazz musicians. Mitchell grew up in a shotgun house in North Carolina, a style of vernacular architecture that is particularly prevalent in the South. Mitchell fills his sculptural homes with objects of metaphorical and symbolic, iconic, importance. In Home Sweet Home he includes the American flag, a photograph of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and a china plate depicting The Last Supper, among other items that convey a personal and historical narrative. He notes that making art acts “as a ‘record’ of experiences. My bittersweet past, growing up in the segregated South, inspires the content, focus, and narrative of my work.” While this contains elements reminiscent of folk art and outsider art this is a quite sophisticated tour de force. He was included in the show Complex Uncertainties, Telfair Museum: Modern and contemporary art comprise painting, prints, drawing, photograph, sculpture, and works in new media, representing American artistic achievement from 1945 to the present day. The exhibition includes works by artists such as Bruce Davidson, Elaine de Kooning, Carrie Mae Weems, Sam Gilliam, Ethel Schwabacher, Radcliffe Bailey...

Orazio De Gennaro's Terra Bruciata (Scorched Earth) is an 11 x 13-inch abstract painting on paper mounted on a board. Unframed. The artist works with n...

Orazio De Gennaro's "Terra Bruciata (Scorched Earth) is a 10 x 10-inch abstract painting on paper mounted on board. Unframed. The artist works with n...

"Sand Castle" is a framed mixed media work on canvas by Maura Segal, with abstract shapes and color blocking. The artist cuts hundreds of paper shapes and adheres them to the canvas ...

"Concrete" is a framed mixed media work on canvas by Maura Segal, with abstract shapes and color blocking. The artist cuts hundreds of paper shapes and adheres them to the canvas und...

"Sweet Licorice I" is a framed mixed media work on canvas by Maura Segal, with abstract shapes in a monochromatic field of black with a continuous line in lavender to draw the eye ar...

Orazio De Gennaro's "Terra Bruciata (Scorched Earth) #4" is a 10 x 10 inch abstract painting on paper mounted on a board. Unframed. The artist works wit...

Orazio De Gennaro's "Terra Bruciata (Scorched Earth) #57" is an 11 x 13 inch abstract painting on paper mounted on a board. The artist works with natural earth, charcoal, straw, pigm...

Orazio De Gennaro's "Terra Bruciata (Scorched Earth) is a 10 x 10-inch abstract painting on paper mounted on a board. Unframed. The artist works with...

In "Window Shopping," the artist, Jennifer Blalack, uses many different mediums to create the significant texture in this work. She uses the visual language of Robert Rauschenberg by combining everyday objects like fabric, house paint, plastic bags, string, and tissue paper to construct a narrative on canvas. In this work she uses bold purples, oranges, yellows, with accents of cream, red, and blue. Dispersed within the painting are cutouts of vibrant native dresses...

CONTEMPORARY ART Expressionist composition Mixed media on paper Signed and dated 2018 D. Silva Measure:70x50 cm /28x20 in Private collection.