Artist Statement:
Play - Photographs, drawings and notations - references and thoughts, cast into a frame and forming relationships. Tools, apparatus and concepts constructed or arranged in a desire to encourage meaning. I teach and create forms and the population or enrichment of those forms.
• Technological developments in media must be accounted for and understood.
• Historical and theoretical interplay is vital.
• Sustained production contributes to maturation of the work and the artist.
• Ideas exploit but also shape the forms of media – all media.
The specificity that photography elicits through time, place, point of view, can draw meaningful references into a work, and make for a rich and complex network of relationships.
Conceptual and aesthetic meaning is built on this network of relationships. I am not solely concerned with the photographic image but with combining art-making forms such as drawing (illustration), language (performance), text (written word), moving image (video), or sound (audio).
Working with these diverse media, I experience a sense of cohesion, as well as a freedom to experiment. I find a greater similarity between these diverse forms than difference, and in this consistency find a sense of freedom to experiment.
Portfolio / Selected Works:
Book Works 2020-21
MakikiDiamond Head
Diamond Head Community Garden - PDF
Mo' ili ili
Mo' ili ili Community Garden - PDF
Chinatown Mid-Week Market - Book Cover
Old Pali Highway - Book CoveraNOthEr Hi Sequence - Book Cover
Hauma Bay Trail - Book Cover
Book Works 2017-19
Drawings from the AnthropoceneEuropean Panoramic
Pano All Types
Road : 2011-Present
Grasses Collected(grasses collected while running), Series : Spring, Organics 2010-14
Forestville, Utensils 2009-10
ARTIST TALK : SRJC ART COLLECTION
John Sappington Forestville, Utensils
http://basearts.com/work/2013/SRJCCollection/index.htm
"Labor", 2005-2006
LABOR_SF, 2005-06, 98X20, DIGITAL INK JET
LABOR_NY, 2005-06, 82X20, DIGITAL INK JET"Commuter", 2005-07
on center, 2005-07, 24X78.5, DIGITAL INK JET
on angle 2005-07, 72X24, DIGITAL INK JET,
dandelion, 2006, 24X64, DIGITAL INK JET
holly, 2006, 24X50, DIGITAL INK JET"NOIR", 2007-09
NIGHT_RAIN, 2007-9, 57X20, DIGITAL INK JET
NIGHT_COVER, 2007-9, 49.5X20, DIGITAL INK JET
Utensils, 2008-10, VARIOUS, Digital Ink Jet
Organics, Fall / Spring , 2008-10, 13x19, Digital Ink Jet
blades of grass, 2010, VARIOUS, Digital Ink Jet---
“MEMO:” , 2004-7
- http://www.basearts.com/work/memo/memo.htmlThrough these series, memo: and architectural elements I am interchanging the notion of a language of signs, symbolism in the arts and religion and the corporate memo – all of which presume an understanding within a closed system of meaning.
Symbols drawn in illustration of the impact of time, travel and diverse experiences on memory and my own sense of identity. There are implied references to place, art history, spirituality and culture. Making a poetic form of a memorandum - abbreviated and or understood within a shared context.The meaning between image, drawing and text as elements of linguistic theory.
Language as a shared secret or an internal MEMO.
Reference to art making and the act of framing events and experiences.Digital Inkjet
Proof Dimensions: 8.5x11
Final Print Dimensions: 24x56“Architectural Elements”, 2004-6
- http://www.basearts.com/work/elements/elements.htmlExposure to natural forces, primary forces. Making sense of making meaningful relationships of art making with natural forces at work and play in nature. Theoretically, there is an engagement with elemental principles of architecture and installation.
Digital Inkjet
Proof Dimensions: 8.5x11
Final Print Dimensions: 24x56
“Perceptual Apparatus” , 1992-96
- http://www.basearts.com/work/percept/index.htmAltering physiologically processes toward the potential exchange of /or communication of an experience through vision versus the presentation of or representational image.
Relationship established between my own experience and the visual experience.
Encouraged viewer to actually see things differently.
Eyeglasses as metaphor for an altered or shared point of view.Silver Prints/Sculptural Elements
Proof Dimensions: 8.5x11
Final Print Dimensions: 8.5x11 +installed elements
"Beach" , 1988 –
http://www.basearts.com/work/beachweb/index.htmAn image/text puzzle/poem made of cross references between my relationship at the time and our experience living and working on the beach, characters acting out a relationship and staged on the beach and the notion that there is a universal language of signs that could represent the experience of being a man and a woman in a relationship. The beach as a metaphor for life or a shared experience.
Relationships between images.
Relationships between methods of communication - image - text - diagrams.
Encouraged play by the participants or the viewers in the sand boxes or small beaches provided
© basearts & john sappington