Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 4

Tony Dagradi
The Ancient One

2023

$5,800
£4,397.86
€5,079.48
CA$8,137.75
A$9,065.28
CHF 4,781.79
MX$109,919.28
NOK 60,831.27
SEK 56,668.18
DKK 37,930.43

About the Item

TONY DAGRADI is an internationally recognized jazz performer, artist, composer, author, and educator. For over three decades he has made his home in New Orleans, performing on tenor and soprano saxophone with many of the Crescent City’s celebrated artists. He is most well-known for his work with Astral Project, an adventurous quartet of top New Orleans players dedicated to playing cutting-edge improvisational music. His performing past also includes five years as a member of the internationally acclaimed Carla Bley and appearances and recordings with Bobby McFerrin, Mose Allison, and Nat Adderley. Since 2015, Tony has been exploring the visual possibilities of altered books. Choosing vintage and antiquarian texts, he carefully cuts through one page at a time utilizing existing images to create a three-dimensional collage or sculpture. The results allow the contents and imagery of long outdated material to be viewed in a manner that is both exciting and thought-provoking. The artist says of his artwork... My decades-long career in contemporary jazz directly informs my work as a visual artist. For me, music has always had a visual component, with the diverse elements of music suggesting colors, shapes and textures. The juxtaposition of abstract shapes, which come together as I work on a book, is very much how I perceive the interplay of melody, harmony, and rhythm. I also feel very strongly that the mathematics and spirituality of music intersect all art forms. My process in creating sculptural effects with books is continually evolving. When I first began, I sealed the edges of each book and cut through one page at a time, making choices on the fly as to what images I chose to keep. As my technical skills progressed and I gained more confidence and experience, I found this to be a somewhat limiting approach. I wanted more flexibility. In my current preferred method, I harvest the images I am most interested in then add them back one at a time as the composition emerges. I still cut away one page at a time, and always work from front to back. In this way, I have greater control over the placement of each object as well as the direction of the entire composition. I enjoy working with many types of books; graphic novels, atlases, scientific texts, technical manuals, etc. Each represents a different and unique challenge. I especially relish working with vintage books and encyclopedias. The eclectic photos and illustrations often represent material that is long out of date yet offer a fascinating window into our past. At the same time, the quality and condition of the paper itself often extend their own unique challenge. Ultimately, I hope to provide a perspective on the transitory nature of what earlier generations understood to be factual and offer insight into the way ever-evolving media has shaped contemporary perspectives.

More From This Seller

View All
Land Of The Giants
By Tony Dagradi
Located in New Orleans, LA
TONY DAGRADI is an internationally recognized jazz performer, artist, composer, author, and educator. For over three decades he has made his home in New Orleans, performing on tenor ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

Materials

Paper, Varnish, Found Objects

Over Land And Sea
By Tony Dagradi
Located in New Orleans, LA
TONY DAGRADI is an internationally recognized jazz performer, artist, composer, author, and educator. For over three decades he has made his home in New Orleans, performing on tenor ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

Materials

Paper, Varnish, Found Objects

Four Score And Seven Years
By Tony Dagradi
Located in New Orleans, LA
Medium: hardcover book, acrylic varnish TONY DAGRADI is an internationally recognized jazz performer, artist, composer, author, and educator. For over three decades he has made his ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

Materials

Paper, Varnish

Manifest Destiny
By Tony Dagradi
Located in New Orleans, LA
TONY DAGRADI is an internationally recognized jazz performer, artist, composer, author, and educator. For over three decades he has made his home in New Orleans, performing on tenor ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

Materials

Paper, Varnish, Found Objects

Bygone Days
By Tony Dagradi
Located in New Orleans, LA
Medium: hardcover book, acrylic varnish TONY DAGRADI is an internationally recognized jazz performer, artist, composer, author, and educator. For over three decades he has made his ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

Materials

Paper, Varnish

Teddy
By Tony Dagradi
Located in New Orleans, LA
TONY DAGRADI is an internationally recognized jazz performer, artist, composer, author, and educator. For over three decades he has made his home in New Orleans, performing on tenor ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

Materials

Wood, Paper, Varnish, Found Objects

You May Also Like

The Ancient One
By Brad Rude
Located in Bozeman, MT
You could make a case that Rude's work is somewhere between western realism, abstract openness, and the notebook of an anthropologist in The Twilight Zone...
Category

2010s Contemporary Abstract Sculptures

Materials

Bronze

American Contemporary Book Sculpture by Alexander Korzer-Robinson - The Quiver
Located in Paris, IDF
Book Sculpture, signed Alexander Korzer-Robinson, The Quiver, 1882 Robert Robinson is an American artist born in 1960 who lives and works in London, UK. He creates 3-D media artwor...
Category

2010s Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

Materials

Paper

Artifact 4
By Jennifer Nehrbass
Located in Bozeman, MT
Jennifer Nehrbass is a painter living and working in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She was born in West Bend, Wisconsin in 1970. She received her B.S. in Art and Textile Design from the U...
Category

2010s Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

Materials

Wood

Untitled
By Tony Berlant
Located in Toronto, Ontario
Tony Berlant (b. 1941) is an American artist renowned for his painterly collages and intricate metal sculptures. His work combines various source materials notably fragments of metal...
Category

1990s Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

Materials

Metal, Steel

Untitled
$8,800 Sale Price
20% Off
French Contemporary Sculpture by Eric Beauplace - Résonances Végétales #4
By Eric Beauplace
Located in Paris, IDF
Mixed media Eric Beauplace is a French contemporary plastic artist born in 1962 who lives & works in Saint Germain-en-Laye, France. The term ‘plastic artist’ is not used here in the...
Category

2010s Contemporary Abstract Sculptures

Materials

Mixed Media

Untitled, 2017
Located in Atlanta, GA
Dario Tironi is the artist that evades the classic canons of Besharat Gallery's sculptures. But we could not remain indifferent to his fantastic, incredi...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Modern Figurative Sculptures

Materials

Found Objects