Phauxshow

We are proud to announce the new featured artist at Phauxshow: Chester Elmore.

Elmore describes his work as “inclusive, catalytic, thought-provoking, universal, humanistic, and revealing”. We agree. Elmore pulls his viewers into the powerful human images that he creates. The faces that he depicts in his work capture a range of feelings that we all experience as human beings. Elmore’s work is both wise and intensely emotional. In one image, two large tears flow from the face of a sad and abandoned child. In a way, the child in Elmore’s image represents all children: the children we see, and the children we don’t see. Elmore’s striking images remind us that we all live, love, and die in the same world. Although we are individuals with our own stories, we share the same human condition—the same fate.

Elmore’s work deals with a range of issues that most (if not all) of us confront during our lives. In Cusp of Enlightenment, Elmore portrays the face as a mask that we wear for each other. In commenting on this piece, Elmore discusses the way that we try on different masks in dealing with each other in social situations. Can we remain ourselves while playing these various social roles? Do we risk losing ourselves or deceiving ourselves in the process?

Elmore brings both social commentary and technical ability to his work. Please spend some time viewing his images in the featured artist gallery. If you would like to learn more about Chester Elmore and his work, please read his replies to our interview questions.

In his own words: 3/23/08

I am a San Francisco Bay area native that currently lives in Castro Valley. As a child, I was exposed to a cornucopia of artistic concepts and cultural crossroads through many mentors that had gathered in the area to create a new language of African American artistic expression. As such, my artwork reflects my own development of a minimalist style that is paired down to the bare essential information necessary to invite viewer participation.

The adjectives that best describe my artwork are inclusive, catalytic, thought-provoking, universal, humanistic, and revealing. My inspiration comes from the images and visions of my life. As a child, I was steeped in the vibrant art scene of 196O’s counter culture San Francisco where I could walk a few blocks and experience countless ethnic traditions melted together in a free exchange borrowing and adapting of each other’s beliefs and customs. The cosmopolitan nature of the area played a great role in my artistic and philosophical development.

I enjoyed several successes and won many local competitions as a child. Then, as an adult, I took a hiatus from fine art and took a position as a technical artist. After a successful career and subsequent retirement, I have returned to pursue a career in the fine arts. I have chosen the medium of scratchboard because it requires skills that reflect the dawning of man’s development of art. It requires etching, the oldest form of artistic expression as displayed in the cave-drawings and carvings from ancient time. Starting with the all black board I must discover and uncover the images within.

I feel that my piece Cusp of Enlightenment is my strongest and most successful piece of art. This is because Cusp of Enlightenment combines a composite of knowledge, artistic insight, and technical skill, with that which has been drawn from my life experience. Technically, I have attempted to remain true to the intended use of the media. The feature composition is made up of stripes and lines. I have made use of the background by allowing it to float the highlights applied to it in order to form the overall figure. This is to force the participation of the viewers by allowing them to integrate the shapes for themselves. They can see with their own mind’s eye.

In this piece, I have also tried to capture a common and universal moment in individual development. The experience of the perception and realization by those who understand that how they are perceived by others affects their navigation of their lives. This is a profound event and the true “cusp of enlightenment”. Realizing for the first time that you can no longer rely solely on your own definition of yourself to communicate effectively with the receiver of your message. Instead, in an instant, you have to integrate your perception of the receiver into your message. This is vital to the development of one’s public persona. It’s not just who you are but who you are perceived to be that has to work to frame your message effectively.

The marks on the face represent the masks we all create in order to offer our best chance to communicate our ideas and pass our messages. These masks take time and effort to develop and may not be intended to reflect a true opinion or feeling. They are effective in masking the “real” to make the communication proceed. They may also reflect only what is perceived to be the most tolerant to the receiver and the best tool at the time to achieve the goal at hand. Gathering the knowledge requires the ability to be enlightened enough to wear many masks, without truly losing oneself. The piece exemplifies all that resonates within me in its very essence.

My greatest creative goal is to meet the great need I see to expand access to art for all people. I feel it is imperative that all people, especially our youth, connect with the aesthetic and social commentary that connects works of art with the time and space in which they were created. I believe that art is essential in the development of group identity as well as acting as a bridge to a greater society. Through scratchboard I have attempted to add another facet to that bridge. This is my goal and my greatest challenge: how to get my medium to provoke and challenge others to see the world of faces, people, and images that are reflected in life everyday. I constantly strive to get better.

Finally, it is my hope that my reentry into the art community will allow me to continue the tradition of sharing art with individuals in the greater community that would otherwise suffer a lack of exposure to fine art. I desire them to see images too often unseen or unimagined that exist everyday.

– Chester Elmore