Back to the Artist Page
Woodrow Blagg Biography |
|
Woodrow Blagg
Dates: 1946-2023 Education: 1972 -1976 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Philadelphia, PA Exhibition History: 2005 to Present: Valley Fine Art 2005 -2008 United States State Department, U.S. Embassy Spain 2005 Waco Art Center, Waco, TX 2004 Old Jail House Museum, Albany, TX 2005 American Embassy in Madrid, Spain 1999 - 2001 Outward Bound: American Art at the Brink of the Twenty- First Century, Meridian International Center Washington, D.C. and Southeast Asia 1998 ACA Gallery, New York, NY 1992 Hickory Street Annex, Dallas, TX 1988 ACA Gallery, New York, NY 1987 - 88 Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler TX 1987 Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX 1986 Lincoln Center, Dallas, TX 1984 Exposure, Dallas, TX 1981 Ralph Carr Gallery, Fort Worth, TX 1978 Winfield-Scott, Fort Worth, TX 1972 - 76 George B. Scarlett Gallery, Kennett Square, PA Selected Collections: JC Penny Corporate Headquarters, Dallas, TX Bank of Commerce, Fort Worth, TX Texas Commerce Bank, Fort Worth, TX Howell Instruments, Fort Worth, TX BMW Auto Works, Germany Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Reagan, Santa Barbara, CA Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Lauren, New York, NY Ms. Nancy Dutton, Washington, DC Many additional public and private collections nationally. About the Artist: In certain moment of mental plentitude, I forget myself, my body, my ties, my memories, the past, all the acts and impressions which determined my sense of remoteness and the whole long trajectory of evasion and separation -Macedonio Fernandez The works of Woodrow Blagg are representative of an expression that began to emerge in the 1980’s which is counter trend, seeking to turn the contemporary scene on track by calling for a further acknowledgment of the complexities within art and life. Educated at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Blagg has pursued unique channels leading to a means that he felt is important to his art. Interests in photography, literature, mathematics and philosophy have remained significant toward his understanding, as he says, of what it is to create things. Furthermore, the Argentineans, essayist and poet Macedonia Fernandez and writer Jorge Luis Borges; the Americans, photographer Walker Evans, novelists Paul Bowles and Henry Miller among others, have influenced his oeuvre. Blagg is also very aware of being involved with life’s experiences. His travels since 1975 have included extended residencies in Eskimo villages in Quebec, Ontario and Hudson Bay in Canada to ranches in West Texas from 1979 to the present. These explorations help pronounce the divergent realms of rituals in a culture and define the symbolisms that bond and identify people’s associations with themselves. The differing tracts of a terrain of culture, the similarity of forms of the bonding relate intuitively through ritual and are closely tied together. These physics of our being continue to engage Blagg in his life and in his art. Artist Statement: The work in my portfolio in great measure reflects the spirit of the following artists: photographer Walker Evens, sculptor Gordon Matta-Clark and poet Macedonio Fernandez. Walker Evens, while still awaiting a full and definitive appreciation, is gratefully acknowledged here. As an artist and individualist, Gordon Matta-Clark was a force of nature in the cultural wars of the Sixties and Seventies, and his presence must also be mentioned. Macedonio Fernandez is virtually unknown in this country and a brief introduction is a welcomed necessity. In describing Macedonio Fernandez, the renowned surrealist writer Jorge Luis Borges recalls: I talked a couple of times with Macedonio and I understood that this gray man, who in a mediocre boarding house near Tribunales was discovering the eternal problems as if he were Thales of Maletus of Parmenides, would infinitely replace the centuries and kingdoms of Europe. He lived, (more than any other person I have known), to think. Every day he abandoned himself to the vicissitudes and surprises of thoughts as a swimmer is borne along by the currents of a great river. Fernandez’s unorthodox prose, filled with haunting resolves and humorous dilemmas, poignantly express man’s absurd separation from nature. This benevolent anarchist broke ranks with formalism while discovering his lyrical manifestations. Embracing literary metaphysics, and similar to the Dadaists’ Marcel Duchamp’s reformation in Europe and America, Macedonio’s influence on Latin American literature was revolutionary. To describe Walker Evans’ dry and subtle aesthetic somewhat belies his significance in American art. However, his presence remains incalculable. Evans’ photography reveals society as a form subservient to government and commerce, exposing the inevitable declination within the culture through industry, product, and object. Through his photographs, these secular tenets are represented as society’s calligraphy toward a symbolic, iconic altar. Evans’ images are filled with innumerable affirmations and contradictions that parallel his contemporaries. Gordon Matta-Clark died in 1978 at the age of 33. He studied architecture at Cornell University from 1963 -1968. Disenchanted with formal locations he embarked upon a unique and unclassifiable body of artwork. He began to treat abandoned houses and buildings as sculpture. Slicing through walls and floors with conical cutouts, Matta-Clark creatively deconstructed and redefined an entire cultural process within architecture and art. Within this lineage, my paintings and sculptures reflect man’s dissonant relationship with nature. Moreover, the drawings suggest dreams of time and travel; a veiled projection of lingering memories and paradigms upon the land and within our psyches. Through installation exhibitions these varying themes become unified and connect as a single form of expression. |
