Denise and Mark's Art Incidentals

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

The Holocaust Portfolio

In 1942, my mother, Lavern Dubois--against better advice--went on to perform the Mendelssohn E minor violin concerto in occupied Paris.

She fled to Switzerland that night, just minutes before the Gestapo arrived pounding on her door. The stories that she would tell my brothers and me about the Nazi occupation were very chilling. Even though I was not witness to this horror, the stories my mom would tell me left me with some secondary wounds. This portfolio is dedicated to the memory of those musicians and artists who disappeared during this horrific period.

It is a very personal body of work that I have worked on for 30+ years, on and off; because of the heart-wrenching subject matter, I would take frequent and sometimes long-term sabbaticals from the work. Spending hours in the dark room for this project made me focus on this very painful and tragic period. I think of all the musical treasures, works of art and literature that were lost or destroyed, of the lives disrupted or worse--it is beyond my comprehension. I think of the Mozarts, Picassos and Mendelssohns lost from civilization, of the possible cures for heart disease and cancer.

This is my way of keeping the remembrance of that tragic era with us, praying that it will never be repeated.

This body of work to me is somewhat like a series of Bach variations on a central theme, where I explore the subject matter through a series of variations.

If my art has in any way the effect on the viewer that it has had on me, then I think it has some worth.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Reinterpreting the Crucifixation

In The "Chapel of the Cross" on the campus of Luther Seminary is my latest body of work.

I invite you to come, view and if you chose leave me your thoughts.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Visit "Losing Our Heads" at the Minnesota State Fair

If you happen to visit the Minnesota State Fair Fine Arts Building, you may notice a Third Place Ribbon dangling from Denise's sculptural piece "Losing our Heads". It is comprised of many little skulls sculpted in clay which appear to be floating in animated in conversation (Is anything really being said and is anyone listening? ) The title of the piece is inspired by the irrationality and extreme polarization that we are experiencing during these challenging times. Location #302 (near Mark's piece)

Mark's Minnesota State Fair Photograph

If you plan on visiting the Minnesota State Fair, stop by the Fine Arts Building to view Mark’s Kirilian photograph: Botanical II (location #294 –right by Denise’s piece!)

Click here to view more Kirlian images

...and read on if you want to learn more about this cool photographic process:

Botanical II (or Parsley) is from the series “Exploring the Inner Lives of Plants”. It is an example of an electro-photographic process called “Kirlian Photography.” To simply explain the Kirlian process: I place an inanimate or living subject, such a leaf, directly on a sheet of film that rests on a copper plate. The plate is then charged with high voltage electricity, creating a corona discharge, or spark, which exposes the film. The result is an ethereal imprint of the infrastructure of the plant. Through working with Kirlian photography I have discovered, (even when using two leaves picked from the same branch) that I cannot foresee what a subject will share or hide on film, as each living subject has a unique essence. I have also seen how the life of each plant unpredictably deteriorates through time by how its identity is recorded with each progressive exposure. In addition to photography, Kirlian cameras have been utilized in Eastern Europe as a medical diagnostic device. In the seventies they were embraced by new age groups in the U.S. as a way to read people’s auras. As a photographer, I am less interested in validating any of the controversial claims of interpreting energy fields or auras through Kirlian Photography. To me, it’s simply an elegant way of recording what you cannot easily see with the naked eye.