Dina Torrans explores the senses that nature can meet us with and create a place of wonder and reflection. Her sculptural details make you want to take a deeper look and still get lost in the simplicity of ideas. Dina works with nature’s found footage and draws inspiration from her environment. Her sculptures grab the audience’s attention and make us aware of the various relations we can have to our surroundings.

Dina Torrans is the Silver Artist of the ArtAscent Winter call for artists. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Winter issue.

Artist Statement

I have found that in exploring the creative process, my artwork reflects various ideas and developments in my personal mythology. This process continues to inspire me to action and to dialoguing about our evolving world and times. It is one of my most valuable teachers.

I have had the pleasure of working with nature, bronze, clay, gypsum, cement, metal, marble, minerals, wood, found objects, colour and sound. I enjoy employing a variety of media in my works which often include combining two- and three-dimensional materials. My themes tend to be inspired by ideas about nature, our human belief systems, personal and planetary evolution, and our ultimate interconnectedness.

About My Work

A selection of writing by Dr. Mark Lipton, Professor in the College of Arts, University of Guelph:

“Dina’s works evoke a dream-like playfulness as they explore what it means to be alive. One gets a sense of being centered in the here and now with evocative hints of where we’ve been and where we’re going. Always thoughtful and full of play.

Dina delicately engages in acts of bricolage, playing with the meaning of found objects. Torn maps and sheet music, raw elements like bronze, copper, and stone, and an assortment of other mixed media such as feathers and children’s toys are transported to her world in ways that sculpt strong narratives. Each work is like looking into a microscope focused on an imaginary natural world. The strength of this mythology is enhanced by Dina’s ability to frame three dimensions on a two-dimensional plane. This sculpture, collage, chine-collé ruptures the viewer’s sense of perception by inviting an attention to detail to a creative process and a world of wonder.

For Dina, each work is a poem open to the viewer’s perspective. Yet acts of interpolation, where Dina’s focus attunes the viewer to her understanding of nature – real and imagined – are made brilliant by her delicate use of colour and shape. A variety of materials frame and create a backdrop either of loud, soft, or dynamic feelings, providing a glimpse into her kaleidoscopic world.

www.dinatorrans.art

Distinguished Artist of the ArtAscent Winter call for entry. To see the full body of work, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Winter issue.

Artist Statement

Scratchboard is a delicate process; you create by scratching away the ink. The more you scratch and the more repetitive you are, the less the surface remains the same. Humans create their societies in a similar way, they create by taking away the resources. Stripping the surface to create something new. This is often a destructive process that results in animals disappearing along with their habitats. I want to creatively re-engineer this process, to give these animals a new life, a new future out of the darkness.

About My Work

Scratchboard, by its very construction and purpose, is a very fragile medium – you create by taking away and any missed stroke could ruin what you have created so far. Humanity and its relation to nature is quite similar. Humans create their society by taking away, cutting down and stripping the resources to create their cities and culture. Their impact on the wildlife and habitats around them is deeply affected by this process, but also in how they build their culture, the stories told, and myths created. The perception of particular animals by humans due to their place in history can very well determine their livelihood. Are the animals viewed as a threat to humans, are they treasured for their fur or meat, do they have mythic properties on the black market, or are they perceived as a pest to be rid of? Does your pet have more inherent value than a wild creature? Creating expressive animal portraits with scratchboard creates a tenuous relationship between viewer and creature, where historical and cultural perceptions can deeply affect how they see the animal in front of them. The painstaking and slow process of creating the art is echoed by the careful approach that must be taken in examining some of the myths and perceptions humans have of these animals, and how that may affect conservation efforts. In this way I hope that by creating art I can improve the relationships of humans and the cities they live in with the wildlife surrounding them.

https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/nathan-cole

Triptych: Dispatches from Florida’s Winter

Close Encounter
A marvel in the planetary world
of owls who weep
is your nervous laughter…

Distinguished Writer of the ArtAscent Winter call for entry. To see the full body of work, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Winter issue.

http://karlalinn.blogspot.com

Looking North

Near at hand, the mud
is black and oozy. The waters
do not disdain to silver it as
they return to the shore, angling
to enter the branches…

Distinguished Writer of the ArtAscent Winter call for entry. To see the full body of work, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Winter issue.

Artist Statement

The truth is that I never know whether another poem will come to me. I have to wait, and also to be willing to engage with it immediately and intensely when it does arrive, then over a period of a week or two, reread the draft(s) and refine and improve it as much as possible. Valery said that a poem is never finished, only abandoned in despair, which suggests that the poet’s ambition exceeds their achievement to date.

About My Work

What I have to say about the work is rather dull stuff compared with the poems themselves. What some of the editors who have accepted my work for publication in the last year or two (which is extremely gratifying) have said is “we absolutely love” and then give the name of the piece they want to publish. These are people who read dozens, even hundreds of poems for every one they take, so this phrase is enormously encouraging. And each publication is gratifying in itself, especially when other work in the issue is well worth reading. More time and energy go into getting published as compared to the burst of composition, but it’s worth it so these literary offspring can be animated by the minds and sensibilities of readers.

www.paulabonnell.net

Distinguished Artist of the ArtAscent Winter call for entry. To see the full body of work, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Winter issue.

About My Work

Miguel Barros’ art sways between harmony and conflict. He avoids the easy mirroring of the reality, but his modern spirit makes an “interior world” come to surface, showing its true colours and an insightful look upon life and the surrounding entities.

Each year, Miguel profits from his full dedication to art, refining his technique as well bringing more of himself as each new work is presented. His work has grown through the years in artistic sensibility and has become a reference in several places around the World.

Miguel’s paintings clearly reflect a fundamental connection with art. His work seems to be his soul handwriting a letter to the observer of his art, in a message full of emotions and intention that materialize into colours and apparently shapeless forms. If each one of us keeps an open spirit to Miguel’s work, it’s almost impossible to avoid a wave of warmth and pleasure coming from his paintings.

His work confirms Miguel’s talented skills, especially the way he uses old techniques in an original way to convey his vision of the world. Miguel’s thoughts, ideas, and concepts are full of passion and energy and are presented in a refreshing and clear way, though there is also a clear invitation to meditate on the mysteries of art and philosophy.

Miguel Barros’ works are in several public and private collections in several countries around the world, including Portugal, Angola, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Norway, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Brazil, Canada, United States, India, Lebanon and Mozambique, Australia, Sweden, and South Africa.

https://miguelmoraisbarros.wixsite.com/miguel-barros

Distinguished Artist of the ArtAscent Winter call for entry. To see the full body of work, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Winter issue.

Distinguished Artist of the ArtAscent Winter call for entry. To see the full body of work, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Winter issue.

www.theodoreheubleinart.com

Distinguished Artist of the ArtAscent Winter call for entry. To see this in print, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Winter issue.

Artist Statement

My purpose in art is not to produce a product but rather to generate thinking and emotions through the process of resistance, introspection, and contemplation. Batik is created with wax and interfering shapes that prevent dyes from penetrating the medium of choice. In photography, I am drawn to images which reflect lines, motion, and light. Art is organic and dynamic — it is always shifting, active, incomplete, and always becoming. It continuously invites me out to a much larger home than I can imagine belonging to in the first place.

About My Work

The process of batik involves hot wax applied to fabric, paper, or wood by various means. The wax seals the medium it encounters, so when dyes are introduced, they will only permeate those areas that contain no wax. The new dried, dyed areas are then also waxed to seal the new colour, more dye is added, and the process is repeated. The wax is then removed by ironing through newsprint and if necessary, by dry-cleaning. I use Procion MX dyes, well known for their depth and longevity of colour. Commissions welcome!

www.jan.creelman

Distinguished Artist of the ArtAscent Winter call for entry. To see the full body of work, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Winter issue.

Artist Statement

My approach to painting relies on a kind of radical presence where I open myself to the joys and pains of the world. There I trust again and again my intuitive sense to attend to the competing calls of what matters most in the moment. After years of ritually working with a limited palette and its limitless possibilities, colour opens onto generous skies or branches bent in prayer. In the swish of windy transparent washes or squeezed into layered shadows that create depth and mystery, in every brushstroke there is the possibility of multiple meanings that summon body, mind, and spirit.

About My Work

Conceived as bridges between human nature and all other natures, my paintings are pathways to connection and reconciliation. My beloved Keswick Ridge is where I paint to explore personal myths and histories, to heal the psychic havoc wrought by childhood loss, and to celebrate the life I now have. They demonstrate my faith in the healing power of landscape imagery. Poetic and political, I paint to subvert the unhealthy effects that a diminished regard for beauty and landscape have had upon individuals, society, and the environment.

In contrast to an ever-increasing technological blooming and the buzzing confusion that is a hallmark of contemporary life, I maintain an old-fashioned love affair with paint. Oil paint. As a student of the ephemeral, of truth and beauty, of light and space and home, my paintings animate the physical landscape in which I stand, and the interior landscapes of my life. Painting in my Keswick Ridge studio is significantly shaped by the tall windows that frame vast views of the Saint John River valley, and the wild worlds just on the other side of the glass. My practice of looking through the windows twig memories of distant landscapes that bubble up as I paint, and only come to see in quiet reflection.

For as long as I can remember, the stuff of the natural world has been my go-to place for refuge and renewal. Mine is a landscape way of seeing, the seeds of which grew against the urban surroundings of my formative years. Grounded in the present moment, the intimate landscape paintings I make in my studio are wholly informed by my sacramental regard for the imaginative power of poetic spaces that have their roots in the past; in my girlhood New Jersey home, in the shelter of a sun porch with its French pane windows looking out onto the magic of a lone Maple tree growing from a circle of earth in an otherwise cement sidewalk. The fragrant safety and freedom that was my Sicilian American mother’s backyard garden canopied by an enormous peach tree and crammed with flowers, herbs and vegetables, grape vines, and rose-arbours, remains with me today. Bookends to our house, both enclosures invited daydreaming and art making, and were the only spaces untouched by domestic violence.

On the spectrum between representation and abstraction, the actual and symbolic, or wherever the viewer takes their visual rest, in my paintings landscape becomes metaphor. Love, longing, and the fluidity of time activate and shape the poetic paintings I make, safe sites, hospitable, embracing and transformative.

https://www.jenniferpazienza.com/