In the process of earning his BFA in photography and printmaking, David Tonnesen discovered anodizing titanium jewelry as a means to wear his abstract imagery. Over the next 15 years, his jewelry evolved into larger objects: from sculptural lighting to public art. His flowing asymmetrical lines are derived from nature evoking plant and animal form.
Josh Wisdumb Spivack graduated from The School of the Museum of Fine Art where he studied Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. His career in art started with commissions for his hand worked graphics on sneakers, as logos for corporations and on album covers. His “subconscious line-work” process opens his mind from preconceived outcomes as he works. He creates worlds that cannot be built in three dimensions but exist on paper. He experiments with ink and paint mixtures on paper, wood, canvas from small scale to mural size.
Living in the same building Josh and David would casually meet and discuss their prospective projects. With their age and life experience differences and their personal approaches to art, they had been reluctant to work in collaboration until about one year ago when the unlikely pair agreed to experiment and merge Josh’s bold, colorful and intricate pen and ink drawings and highly expressive bright paintings with David’s 3-dimensional works to see where it could lead.
Working with Josh, David has moved from his normally highly planned approach to art making to a more reactive and impulsive “see where this goes” attack. The two discuss what they generally want to do and let the process take over; occasionally Josh starts with a painting and hands it off to David or David folds a sheet of copper for Josh to react to and transform. This back and forth may repeat several times until agreement is reached.
The past year of collaboration has opened Josh’s eyes to the use of light and shadow and 3- dimensional form which he has started to incorporate into his work.
They hope that the pieces they have created are not a Frankenstein patching of parts but an independent offspring of their convergence of thought, materials and process.
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