Fresh From the Studio

Fresh From the Studio

Artists’ Show at Fenix Gallery

August 4 – October 1, 2022

‘Fresh From the Studio’, the name of the artists’ show at Fenix Gallery, refers to a long tradition of historical studio practice. The emotive bonds and exuberant creativity from working in the studio has defined artist output since 1563 when in Florence Italy, the first Academy of Art was established by the duke Cosimo I de’ Medici. The studio hence became a place where iterative creativity builds upon itself and Fenix represented artists’ are building upon this tradition of working in the studio today.

Exhibit

Hank Kaminsky

Featured in the small gallery

I have always considered myself as a searcher. These sculptures are for me a return to my earliest searches for a symbology of the spirit. They give me a warm feeling, a feeling  of grounding, the kind of feeling you get from hearing a good story. My jewelry and the abstract sculptures I made in the recent past do capture a mood of spiritual search but limits of space and tools allowed me to go only so far, These sculptures reintroduce the human figure to my work. I feel like I have come home. You will find the figures acting like people do, wrapped in the landscape I build around them. They are clay modelled in the style of a child, which could lead you to feel the work is incomplete. Like life these sculptures are incomplete.

The sculptures talk about the function of Incompletion. They are as complete as they can be and still leave questions that can only come with further engagement. They invite viewers to spend more time. I love that moment when a viewer suddenly exclaims “why, that’s a figure or that’s a walking stick or is it a light sabre” She has seen through the apparent chaos and has seen the figure. Seen herself. It’s a sense of completion after the struggle.  

The basic design forms on which most of these sculptures stand comes from my 2 trips to Europe back in the 50’s and 60’s. a time when a student could afford it. I was amazed at the Italian Renaissance and particularly the work of Donatello in his late pulpits in Florence. I felt that somehow I could tell a story. I learned that there was a story everywhere, I just had to find the right tools and learn how to use them.