http://www.drawger.com/josephdanielfiedler/ Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:28:31 EST FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://drawger.com/_images/drawger_leo_logo.gif http://www.drawger.com/josephdanielfiedler http://www.drawger.com/josephdanielfiedler/index.php?section=articles&article_id=12942

Announcing the first ever FIEDLER&FIEDLER exhibition!  Joseph Daniel and Eryka Fiedler have conjoined to create an exhibition that is part of the WILD & SCENIC FILM FESTIVAL, an annual event sponsored by Nevada County's SYCRL.  SYRCL’s Wild & Scenic Film Festival inspires people and unites communities to heal the earth.  Through these films, Wild & Scenic both informs people about the state of the world and inspires them to take action. The Festival raises resources and awareness for SYRCL’s initiatives to recover California’s wild salmon and to protect and restore the Yuba River. And SYRCL’s Film Festival On Tour serves as a national platform for local environmental advocacy.!

Both Eryka and I deconstruct nature on a path divergent from traditional "nature art": I through quasi-documentary Field Guide parodies and she through a transfiguration that stems from the molecular to the intensely physical and lands squarely in the mythical. This marks the first time that Eryka and I have shown our work together and we are excited for the debut! The exhibition is part of a larger, curated exhibition including over 50 artists in over 30 venues in and around Nevada City for the duration on the Film Festival and is sponsored in part by Nevada County Arts.       FIEDLER & FIEDLER December 18, 2011-January 16, 2012 Miners Foundry Nevada City Box Office 325 Spring Street Nevada City, CA 95959 WED-SAT: Noon-5PM Come Check it out-great sushi [Sapporro on TAP!!] and local wines on the same block too













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]]> Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:12:16 EST http://www.drawger.com/josephdanielfiedler/index.php?section=articles&article_id=12745

…Or another kind of Process.   Ever since Ken Burns got me to read John Muir, I’ve been on a quest for wild.  My wild probably isn’t as wild as yours or Keith’s but it speaks to me.  Last week I drove up to Oregon to see Crater Lake National Park, which closes for the season  today.  It’s the deepest lake on the United States containing the purest water on earth (since the crater is not filled by any stream-only snow and rain).  If emptied, it would provide every person on earth with 700 gallons of the purest water available on our planet. We are very fortunate here in CA as we have so much to see within the state itself.  I think it’s important to see the wildest our world has to offer and the food at the lodge was terrific too!   Since Crater Lake Lodge has no Internet service and cell reception was spotty at best, naturally on return there was a job commission email waiting-past due.  Apparently, crime stats in the now uber famous Treme section of New Orleans led some researchers to investigate the correlation between NFL policies and practices and crime reduction in certain neighborhoods. Could I do it for tomorrow?  Well, ten years ago, I’d probably have to punt that one but I was unflagged, especially since it’s an old client who knows me and it’s exciting to rise to a challenge even so small.   For the first time ever I did a verbal pitch and it worked. I said Badda-Bing! And the AD said Fuckin’A!   Dose of the wild!   All photos © Nancy Jean Nelson except Nutcracker and Lodge/Lake view.

















]]> Mon, 17 Oct 2011 16:13:18 EST http://www.drawger.com/josephdanielfiedler/index.php?section=articles&article_id=12680

Late Summer Jobbies!   I hate to sound so positive but this has been a memorable summer.  The weather was killer perfect [I worked on the deck most days-am now in fact!], the local farm produce, though late due to a WET spring, has been wonderful, made and sold some big paintings and had a semi-plethora of good jobs!  The Pressure Drop has hit though and the rains have begun.   I also have the pleasure of building an on-line class for the Academy of Art Universty, San Francisco.  It's a big challenge and a big deal that, kind of, put's me in the forefront of education's newest phase. Very excilting indeed -this is REAL porchwork! And, it ain't over yet!   Here's a look at the latest!











]]> Fri, 07 Oct 2011 18:25:37 EST http://www.drawger.com/josephdanielfiedler/index.php?section=articles&article_id=12669

Art Story I recently had the good fortune to have one of those great “art” moments where amazing things happen out of nowhere just like an out-of-body experience or a Hollywood movie.  In the general scheme of things, it’s no big deal but to me it is.    I had created a large-scale series some time ago called SEE GOD’S ARK A MOVIN’.  It was exhibited at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio.  The work consisted of five canvasses five by five feet each framed in heavy, custom-built Dutch frames.  The curator called it "career work". It had been a MAJOR score for me in SO many ways; I had been ASKED, Jessica Stockholder was the Juror, and I beat most of my colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University’s ART department […of course, as the “illustration” guy, this caused quite a stir]. But after a botched attempt to sell the lot to the Butler Institute [they had also been included in their painting annual-which is quite well known and in which I had previously been] the work languished in my own private limbo.  In this case, limbo was one storage facility after another, one girlfriend after another, and one state after another.  It had been a big disappointment to me as had waiting over a year just to hear back from the museum had been and was in itself a bit anxiety provoking… then…nothing.     Not too long ago, without advanced planning or warning, and through the assistance of local artist Gale Hart of Bitchin’ Space Gallery, I sold two of the five paintings to a developer from the area.  Now, after a period of two more years, the developer has purchased the final three paintings, keeping the suite intact and out of my storage for the foreseeable future!  It’s hard to imagine but someone actually hung my paintings of me, dogs killing old ladies and men pulling snakes from their mouths! Ciao Bella Bambinos! At this rate, if I live to be 110, I might sell enough to get by on!    I know there's no beer but is there PayPal in heaven?   Here is the original statement from the curator.   Sea God’s Ark A Movin’ Joseph Daniel Fiedler’s paintings pursue redemption and transcendence from an entirely secular stance.  In this series, See God’s Ark A Movin’, Fiedler continues his cryptic social commentary, but he also turns inward.  These images arose from personal torment, haunting dreams and experience on John’s Island, a sea island near Charleston, South Carolina.  Fiedler’s immersion in the music of John’s Island is understandable as it is a heart-piercing music that blends ferocity with beauty.  Fiedler first heard the song of his series’ title over a decade ago on the recordings Moving Star Hall Singers and Alan Lomax Sea Island Folk Festival, and considers it the most profound music he has ever heard. He found that Moving Star Hall was a “praise house;” its members belong to the Pentecostal movement and attain spiritual transcendence through music, in particular through the “shout” or “ring shout.”  Witnessing convulsions of rapture, Fiedler saw that, for some, God was not an abstraction.   Animals from God’s Ark occupy four of the paintings which flank his central self-portrait.  While they may refer to biblical accounts, Fiedler invents his own mysticism.  The Bishop H. H. Haley Pulling a Live Serpent Out of Thomas A. Dorsey’s Throat alludes to Dorsey’s conversion and birth of modern Gospel music.  Cut He Throat – Suck He Blood responds to Moving Star Hall repertory, a Jack and Mary folktale in which the two are caught by an evil witch and saved from peril by root magic and the three dogs, Barney McCabe, Soo-boy and Doodle-de-doo.  These startling images stand next to images of single animals, Le Tigre and L’Elephant, both endangered species. The tiger represents fierceness while the elephant suggests memory and perception.  The La Salamandre combines Fiedler’s own dream imagery with sentiments from a nineteenth-century tune, The Drunkard’s Dream, which is also based in the Southern Baptist tradition of transcendence.  Both the song and the salamander evoke suffering and evil. The song speaks of pain caused to others by wicked ways, but the salamander speaks of survival.  In legend, it can withstand the heat of fire. Such worldly trials are at the heart of Fiedler’s work. The allure and strange beauty of leaps of faith and spiritual possession counter our baseness; they offer solace and salvation if only vicariously. Without making the leap himself, Fiedler taps the creative impulse in all mystical experience. Murray Horne, Curator, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts   Listen to an MP3 of The Moving Star Hall Singers reciting the Jack and Mary folktale from 1965 illustrated by the painting CUT HE THROAT-SUCK HE BLOOD [a good example of the Gullah dialect]





























]]> Thu, 29 Sep 2011 15:17:13 EST http://www.drawger.com/josephdanielfiedler/index.php?section=articles&article_id=12679

Volume 4 of the Art Tails app digital art books is out.   Art Tails is a group of professional artists and creators related to the Japanese Tohoku area communities affected by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami disaster and they are working hard to produce a charity Art Book app to help and heal them. This is an app for the iPhone and iPad made with contributed works from worldwide professional creators. The sales proceeds of this app will be contributed in full to an NPO currently aiding the affected areas.The Art Tails app is now finally available for download on the iPhone and iPad app stores worldwide. The first version of the app includes the collection of the first 54 works received, under the title "Volume 1 - A Message for Japan". Illustrator, Illoz guy Tatsuro Kiuchi sent this project for the people of Japan.   Some of the artists who are participating in this project [including many Drawgers]: Eric Fischl, Ross Bleckner, Willam Coupon, Frank Horvat, Martin Parr, Eli Reed, Elinor Carucci, R O Blechman, April Gornik, Carl Weins, Katherine Streeter, Arnold Schwartzman, Istvan Orosz, Anita Kunz, Burton Kramer, Cathie Bleck, Woody Pirtle,Anson Liaw, Luba Lukova, Dan Reisinger, Lance Hidy, Fons Hickmann, Isidro Ferrer, Alexander Faldin, Lanny Sommese, Gary Taxali, Anson Liaw, Matt Mahurin, Alain Hirsch, Andrew Lewis, Patrick Thomas, Tim Obrien, Wim Crowel, Andrea Rauch, Yossi Lemel, Burton Kramer, Chris Spollen, Olaf Hajek and many others.  Just about everybody, really.   For my piece, I recycled a drawing that I had made for a friend’s underground restaurant, added Kanji for HEAL [ING] and printed it on vintage tracing paper. It’s my great pleasure to do something that might aid this situation since as an illustrator; my skills aren’t usually required outside the field, as it were.   Yoroshiku!  

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