A Chromatic Heart 4-Valentine’s Day!

In years past, I have made collages for my Valentine’s cards to friends.  This year I decided to make relief sculptures in clay decorated with silk ribbons!

Mixed media relief sculpture by Jorge Luis Somarriba

Happy Valentine’s Day!

After A Long Break, My Ceramic Muses Are Back!

Traditionally, winter is my most productive season for ceramic arts.  My muses take over my studio invisibly guiding my hands to express multiple decorative and functional forms in clay!  However, this winter in the Washington, DC metro area…with its often sunny, balmy and unseasonably warm weather reminiscing of mid spring in late December or January, it hasn’t been much conducive or inspiring for me to create with clay!

In years past, there has been a symbiotic relationship between winter and the joy I have experienced in the anticipation and comfort of spying  the glowing red heat forging my ceramic artworks while being bisque-fired or glazed inside my kiln.  This winter, I have hardly noticed that we are in winter!

January 31, 2013 Ceramic vase by Jorge Luis Somarriba

In any case, today was an auspicious day for me to model with clay by spontaneously building this vase just when I thought I had exhausted all my ideas to improvise new designs. In spite  of the increasing effects of global warming subconsciously impacting my seasonable creativity…My muses came back to express their support and hope for a new direction in my art.  Cheers!

Ceramic vase by Jorge Luis Somarriba, 01-31-2013

PEACE!

My Yearly Pilgrimage to the AVAM 2013

Yesterday was a historic day in our nation not only because it was Martin Luther King Jr.’s National Holiday, but also because it was the Presidential Inauguration of our 44th president of the United States of America, Mr. Barack Obama!

Entering the city of Baltimore from I 95 North on 01-21-2013

As in the past recent years on Martin Luther King Jr.’s Holidays, I made my yearly pilgrimage from Bethesda to Baltimore, Maryland, to visit…

Mosaic bus at the entrance of the AVAM

The eclectic, highly imaginative and unpredictable exhibits celebrating the skillful creativity of self-taught artists at the American Visionary Art Museum by the Inner Harbor.

View of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor as seen from the AVAM at 4:23 PM

The museum’s galleries were bursting with a crowd and the life of colorful and meaningful multi-media works of art encapsulated in the temporary exhibit “The Art of Story Telling”!

http://www.avam.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions.shtml

Robot family at AVAM

It is always stimulating and enriching for me to view these exhibits for it never ceases to amaze me the infinite and resourceful character of human creativity through artistic expression!  The printed quotes on the walls of the galleries at the museum, such as the one below, are equally thought-provoking, inspiring, and enduring to me.

“We do not create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay.”     —Linda Barry

Peace!

Humble Beginnings for a Mixed Media creation.

When working in art following the lead of intuition as in the case of improvisational and spontaneous creations…

All beginning are humble and they usually start by the artist preparing the surface or substrate on which our creativity will find a medium for visual, literal and/or tactile expression.

Since I am currently following the compass of my intuition, I am sailing on uncharted waters in quest for a destination which I trust I will arrive to but, I don’t know what it will look like.

“Sail boat” – Lino-cut print

It’s been a few years since I haven’t produced prints using linoleum blocks.  Recently I have been using ‘soft-blocks’ which are easier to cut.  Thus, last December I decided to create a small design of a sail boat for monochromatic prints inspired by a model ship in the collection of my friend Pierre who lives in Aix de Provance in France, where I stayed at his apartment for a few days last June.

“Sail boat” by Jorge Luis Somarriba, 2012

The result was “Sail boat”,  printed with oil-based black ink on a limited edition of only four prints identical to the photo above.

Since over in the past few years I have mostly been printing with water-based inks my relief prints, I had practically forgotten how labor intensive and messy is to clean the viscosity of oil-based inks from the inking plate and brayer after one is done printing.  Although I could have printed this “Sail boat” with water-based inks, I opted to print it with oils to later add watercolor paint to three of the four prints one at a time to make them all different and unique.  Enjoy!

“Time” Screen print

“Time” is the last one in a trilogy of screen prints including “Time /2012″ and “2012″ which I have recently posted in this blog.   I created these prints using the same stencils but with variations in color to explore the full potential of the design and its changes in temperature from cool to warm.

“Time” by Jorge Luis Somarriba, 2012

“Time” was hand-printed in a limited edition of only 9 prints at the print shop of the Corcoran School or Art in Washington, DC during the summer of 2012.   Enjoy!

Still-life with fruits -Screen print

Still-life compositions or “Bodegones” as referred to in Spanish, are among my favorite subjects in art!

“Still-life with fruits” by Jorge Luis Somarriba, 2012

This particular screen print produced with 7 colored inks is from a limited edition of only 16 prints created in the summer of 2012 at the Corcoran School of art.  I used the same Rubylith film stencil cut-outs and light-sensitive photo emulsion technique to hand-prints color by color this limited edition on white American Printmaster paper, 100% cotton, acid-free, 265 grms.  Enjoy!