Painting with Dust and Smog
Florentine Artist Fights Pollution by Painting with Smog
By Spooky on January 30th, 2012 Category: Art, News
If you’re ever in Florence, Italy, and see a grown man on a ladder wiping the dust off statues and building, don’t worry, it’s just Alessandro Ricci gathering material for his famous smog paintings.
40-year-old Ricci is not your average artist, and I don’t say that just because he used smog as the main medium of his artworks. Unlike other painters seeking fast recognition of their talent, he doesn’t really care about “being this big artist”. Instead he is more concerned about bringing attention to how much smog there really is in his home town and how it’s destroying both its monuments and people. Although he did take a couple of art classes a few years back, he is mainly self-taught, doesn’t work in a studio, donates most of his work, and refuses to play by the rules of the Florentine Art Gallery, which he considers corrupt. Alessandro Ricci believes selling his smog paintings would not only compromise his principles, but also contradict the very thing he’s trying to do – raise awareness about smog pollution in this great Italian city.
Photo by Michelle Tarnopolsky
Alessandro lives with his parents, on the outskirts of Florence, but almost everyday he visits the most circulated streets of the city, and collects smog for his paintings. The natural-sciences graduate first made artistic contact with smog in the early 1990s, when he used it to write words on graffiti-covered walls painted by his friends. Later, while gathering pollution samples for the environmental chemistry department at the University of Florence, he got the idea of using it as a painting medium. He retrieves it from several meters above ground, from clean surfaces like marble, plastic and stone, using damp pieces of cotton. Then he applies the smog directly onto a canvas and creates street scenes and reproductions of the very buildings from which he got the dangerous material. Finally, he seals his paintings with a natural resin.
Photo © Alessandro Ricci
‘The streets of this city are so small; they were never meant to host all these cars and buses, ‘ Ricci says about Florence, adding that of all the European cities he’s been to, this one had the most smog. His actions helped win a small victory for the people of Florence, as in October 25, 2009 the Duomo area of the city was made pedestrian-only. But there is still a long way to go, the artist believes, and only cleaning the thick layer of grime that has accumulated throughout Florence would take several years. Still, he continues to paint his unique smog artworks and let the people know how polluted the environment they live in really is.
http://www.odditycentral.com/news/florentine-artist-fights-pollution-by-painting-with-smog.html
Innovative Artist Creates Beautiful Dust Paintings
By Spooky on March 9th, 2012 Category: Art, Pics
Los Angeles-based artist Allison Cortson collects dust from her art-subjects’s homes and uses it to paint the background of their portraits. She started her series of “dusty” artworks, called Dust Paintings, several years ago, but she’s only just now getting the online exposure she so rightfully deserves.
Dust paintings…Now here’s something you don’t see every day, right? Well, actually, just a month ago we posted a story about Alessandro Ricci, an Italian artist who paints with dust collected from historical buildings in Florence. But while his dust creations are more like environmental statements against the pollution in his home city, Allison Cortson’s paintings are much more elaborate, and have a completely different purpose. Through her dust paintings, the artist tries to emphasize the fact that “matter is mostly empty space” and it’s only through interactivity with living beings that they provide any value. That’s why, in all of her Dust Paintings artworks the human subjects are painted in color, while the background is recreated with dust.
What’s even more amazing is that Allison actually collects dust from each of her subject’s living space. Because some of her paintings are around 70-inches in size, the dust collecting process usually takes her a few months. As you can expect, she goes through people’s vacuums a lot… Once she has gathered enough dust, she renders the human subject in oil paint, and moves on to the bland background. ”I sprinkle the dust on the canvas and manipulate with a brush. When finished the dust is coated with an acrylic sealer”, Allison explains.
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http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/creative-artist-creates-beautiful-dust-paintings.html