Featured Artist: Eric Sealine

What intrigues me most about artists is not necessarily what they are working on but where they came from and where they have been. Just by learning about someone’s past you gain a greater appreciation for what they create now and who they are. Their background influences every piece of art they make, paint, or build, whether they know it or not.

When I spoke with Eric Sealine, this same fact proved to be true as well. Sealine’s current and future work is based on his past experiences. Sealine has a show scheduled for 2012 at the Boston Sculptors Gallery. The theme for his show, unless things change, will be based on the creek that he played in when he was a kid in Delaware.

Through perspective, Sealine wants to show the natural history of the creek he so often visited as a child. He is very interested in the idea of perception and how it works. People are easily fooled, why is that? People also love to be fooled. However, he does not want the show to be a story of loss but instead that of a gift he experienced as a child. He is also trying to incorporate how our memories get smoothed and changed by taking them out and toying with them as we get older. The concept is one that anyone can relate to.

Sealine’s past has influenced his work in numerous ways. For example, he has built boats by hand and still has the first boat he ever built, which he sails to this day. He was also an architectural model maker. His carpentry skills translate directly to his current works in progress, as well as his studio, which he built.

A lot of Sealine’s work has a three dimensional illusion to it. The picture above is a good example of a three dimensional illusion. It has no official title yet but is just being called, A Work in Progress. Sealine’s work is fun and carefree and when I see this picture, well, I enjoy being fooled. Submitted by Jen Costa, Boston Sculptors Gallery intern.

Featured Artist: Rosalyn Driscoll

Which material should you choose to work with for your next sculpture? Wood, Metal, plaster? How about rawhide? I bet you haven’t worked with this particular material yet! Rawhide is Rosalyn Driscoll’s medium of choice in her most recent show at the Boston Sculptors Gallery, Natural Light.

Driscoll first came across rawhide while she was in New Mexico for an artists’ residency. She was in a drum store and saw a painting on rawhide. After some conversing with people at the store and figuring out that it could be shipped to her, it was an obvious choice for Driscoll that she wanted to work with this material. Driscoll’s father used to own ranch land so her current pieces connect her to her past. Driscoll also is drawn to the rawhides ability to hold form, translucence, and irregularities.

So what draws Driscoll to create art with this material is the fact that the rawhide allows her to make forms that are organic. Driscoll was looking for a way to enliven and mobilize rectilinear forms that she was working with, so what better material to use than a form of skin. Her work is also about containment as well as being rectilinear and how skin is the ultimate container. Driscoll also added some neon lights in her rawhide pieces to amplify the feel of energy in certain pieces. She also used the lights because she was attracted to the transparency of rawhide.

In her piece shown here, Revelation, Driscoll was trying to show that things encounter our quiet, orderly world unexpectedly, for example when someone dies suddenly, or a job changes. The rawhide resembles a hand is passing through this square box that is lined with copper leaf.

As for Driscoll’s future direction, she says she will continue to explore working with rawhide to take it to its next phase. In the spring she will be working in London with some other artists who will be putting together a show on touch and other sensory forms of art. Lastly, she is also collaborating with a neuroscientist. Submitted by Jen Costa, Boston Sculptors Gallery intern