GAS Featured Artist: Jerome Berglund

 

Jerome Berglund graduated from the cinema-television production program at the University of Southern California, and has spent much of his career working in television and photography. His work has been featured prominently in many journals, including as haiga in Abstract magazine, gracing the cover of pacificREVIEW, and appearances in Drunk Monkeys, Evocations, Landing Zone, Oxford Magazine, and Please See Me last year.  His pictures have further been published and awarded in local papers, and in 2019 he staged an exhibition in the Twin Cities area which included a residency of several months at a local community center.  A selection of his black and white fine art photographs was showcased at the Pause Gallery in New York, and his fashion photography is currently on display at the BG Gallery in Santa Monica.

Heart

Long Shadows

On a Cloud

Shimmer

GAS Featured Artist Interview with Michael Jacobson by Sylvia Van Nooten

 Michael Jacobson is a driving force in the Asemic art and writing community. As the founder of Post Asemic Press (https://postasemicpress.wordpress.com), his vision for the future of asemics is as inclusive and inspiring as his art itself.  Each of his works feels like a small universe seeking to expand itself by allowing the viewer to experience rather than analyze.  ~ Sylvia Van Nooten 

Sylvia Van Nooten: What is behind your artistic vision? (Why do you do art?)

Michael Jacobson: As far as my personal vision goes I make art to get to the essence of the soul-seed of raw creation. I do art and writing because it is my reason for existence. I try to learn from the totality of experience and pluck out interesting details to run with, and then make up my own interpretation of the duality of hallucinations and reality. One thing I picked up on from other writers such as James Joyce, Xu Bing, Mirtha Dermisache, Basquiat, and Brion Gysin is to make art that pushes boundaries, but still has an entertaining quality, experimental but in a way that spiritually excites and is more interesting to read than accounting numbers. My long hieroglyphic asemic tale Action Figures tells my story from the pit of my mental collapse, and the Action Figures are what helped me climb out of the abyss of schizoaffective hell. For many years I self-medicated with alcohol, but I’m sober now (since June of 2020) with the exception being my meds, but I started to drink non-alcoholic beer to commune with the spirits on holidays.

SVN: How does being an artist help you communicate with the world?

MJ: Everything seems to communicate something, and nature, art, poetry, and music are the pinnacle as far as communication goes. I use my art to amuse myself and as a therapeutic process for coping with existence on this planet. There is so much pain and death in the world and in my personal history, and art helps me get through difficult times. I don’t know how to pray sincerely so I make art, writing, and music to cope and get through the bad days. So far I have published two books: one of asemic writing and one of senryu poetry: Works & Interviews and Hei Kuu. Two other books I am working on are Somnolent Game (2022) and id est (2023). Somnolent Game is a prose poetry novella written in a stream-of-conscious writing style. It’s about a bot maniac who has achieved sentience due to someone else's memories, and is trying to quit violence and start a new life as a clone in paradise. Id est: neo scribalist asemic expressionism is a book I just started working on; it’s a wordless pan-theistic illuminated manuscript (ok no gold is involved) painted using gouache paint on watercolor paper. I plan on working on it through 2022 and publish it through Post-Asemic Press in 2023. 

SVN: Have you built or joined a community of artists around the world? How did you do this?

MJ: I founded the Asemic Writing: The New Post-Literate Facebook group in 2008 as a FB platform for my blog The New Post-Literate: A Gallery of Asemic Writing. Over the years it has been interesting to watch it grow from a small group of kindred spirits, until now where the scribal tribe of Asemica has expanded to the size of a small city. It is completely out of my control now in a good way, especially since I am not as involved with FB as much as I used to be; so thankfully there are others who help administrate it. The widespread community on the internet for asemic writing was first collected by Tim Gaze and Jim Leftwich. I stumbled into the small and dispersed group of asemic writers back in 2005 when I first gained an Internet connection. But I had been inventing symbols for a long time before I learned the word asemic. When I found the online asemic community I realized that I had located my creative home.

I also hang out and drink tea with my fellow Minneapoets Terrence Folz and Jefferson Hansen. We talk about the writing life in Minneapolis and the vibrant local literary community. I am also involved with many authors through Post-Asemic Press which I founded in 2017. On average, I’m publishing 4 books per year of asemic writing and visual and experimental poetry. I’ve published 15 titles so far with another 10 in the works. I may stop when I get to 30 titles or keep on going if the press eventually takes off. So far it is almost self-sufficient as far as money goes, but it’s asemic art and poetry so I’m not expecting to get rich. Recent titles from PAP are Glyphs of Uncertain Meaning by Tim Gaze, Unwritings by Laura Ortiz, and due out in October 2021 is Intimate h&s by Karl Kempton.

 

I am taking a semester off from college to get caught up with my writing and publishing, and to take a Finnish language class (my mother has Finnish Ancestry). I plan on returning to college in January of 2022 to continue studying creative writing and painting. In the future I would like to travel more and see the world like Anthony Bourdain was able to do. 

Michael Jacobson is a writer, artist, publisher, and independent curator from Minneapolis, Minnesota USA. His books include The Giant’s Fence (Ubu Editions), Action Figures (Avance Publishing), Mynd Eraser, The Paranoia Machine,  his collected writings Works & Interviews (Post-Asemic Press), and his autobiographical collection of senryu poems Hei Kuu (Post-Asemic Press); he is also co-editor of An Anthology Of Asemic Handwriting (Punctum Books). Besides writing books, he curates a gallery for asemic writing called The New Post-Literate, and sits on the editorial board of SCRIPTjr.nl. Recently, he was published in The Last Vispo Anthology (Fantagraphics), and curated the Minnesota Center for Book Arts exhibit: Asemic Writing: Offline & In The Gallery. His online interviews are at Full of Crow,  SampleKanon, Asymptote Journal, Twenty Four Hours, David Alan Binder, and at Medium. In the past he created the cover art for Rain Taxi’s 2014 winter issue, and as of 2017 he has become a book publisher at Post-Asemic Press. In 2019 he was written up in the book Asemic: The Art of Writing (University of Minnesota Press) by Peter Schwenger; it has an entire chapter dedicated to Jacobson’s calligraphic work. He also founded and administers the asemic writing Facebook group. In his spare time, he is working on designing a cyberspace planet dubbed THAT. His Ello studio can be found here: @asemicwriter. 

GAS Featured Artist: Ho Baron, by Sylvia Van Nooten

Ho Baron’s work and life are a testimony to the importance of travelling, both in the mental and physical sense.  His adventures and explorations--pushing him far from the boundaries of other’s expectations-- are reflected in his art.  The sculptures featured in this written interview are marvelous ventures into an unknown future.  Will we need new religions and new gods?  I suspect that yes, we will and Baron’s work shows us one vision of how this might look. (If you want to explore further but can’t visit his sculpture garden, I suggest buying his book, Gods for Future Religions.)

~Sylvia Van Nooten 

Ho in his own words:

I was born in Chicago, El Paso bred, and was raised in the desert on the Mexican border. After studying English in graduate school in Tucson, I taught in the Peace Corps in Nigeria and Ethiopia. It followed years of moving around. From Africa, I lived in New York, Philadelphia, Austin, the Virgin Islands, Belgium and elsewhere, then I returned to El Paso in 1980 to work for ten years in the family pawn shop. I earned a second master's degree in library science along the way, and after a stint in retail, I worked part time several years as an El Paso’s community college librarian.

 I traveled most continents, taught, did public relations, social work, construction, restaurants and labor. I grew in my personal expression from writing into the visual arts including photography, pen and ink drawing, painting to eventually create about 200 narrative bronze and cast stone figures. In addition, I published a satirical newspaper, "The El Paso Lampoon," had photo exhibits, and I produced a weekly "new music" radio program on the local NPR station.

My life-long art endeavors mostly fall in five areas: writings, the drawings, photography, the years of modeling and casting sculptures, then in creating doll assemblages in my ‘old years.’ Interestingly, the message in my artistic imagery translated similarly in my works and style, from my drawings to my super imposed photography, the sculpture and the assemblages.

I found fulfillment in the visual arts, and sculpture was particularly gratifying. I took a few art courses, but I’m self-taught, my expression is primarily intuitive and my modeling technique is rough. Sculpture has been my greatest passion, abstracting the human form with my motifs of surreal imagery and faces within faces.

With little formal training in the visual arts, my expression is free from rules and expectations. I label my imagery as surreal, because my figures are unreal and fantasy like. Maybe influenced by my travels, some say they are Asian in appearance, some say perhaps Mayan. My sculptures are water-like creatures, perhaps deities of an ancient culture pulled from a remote lagoon. Perhaps they’re ‘gods for future religions.’

My unrefined modeling style might pair me with outsider or folk artists. Casting in bronze, however, is not an outsider’s medium. ‘Original’ might be a better label, but that’s not academic sounding. Call me ‘visionary.’ The American Visionary Art Museum, where I have two works, makes a distinction between folk and visionary art. Visionary art, the museum wrote, is created by self-taught artists whose work is personal rather than folk art, which is developed from an existing cultural tradition.

As for art as a communication tool, different medium relates to different people differently or maybe not at all … lots of variables. I’ve made art mostly for myself, art for art’s sake, so my audience must inevitably be select, mostly other artists, a few fans and tourists looking for entertainment in El Paso. I’ve always known my unusual works would draw a limited audience.

It’s tough reaching an audience as an artist. My creative writings died in my files although I’ve found the visual arts easier to show. I’m old with massive work I’ve created. The future of my work is uncertain but so is the future with all. 

In terms of the artist community, many artists by their very nature are kindred spirits. Even though they can be critical of each other, we share a similar passion. I’ve met hundreds of other artists in weekend art fairs and at gallery openings and of course FB has assisted in drawing together those with similar interests. 

My gallery in my basement is closed, the Covid, but I welcome people to my garden. When asked why I make art, I say it’s my motto: “Make art.” Making art is fun, always gratifying and it’s my religion. Making a living in art is tough, however, but it’s worth pursuing a lifetime, I say to visitors. Art can be in many forms: the visual arts, the performing, graphic, decorative, cooking, gardening and so on. 

“First Person” 1980 is on the book cover of my “Gods for Future Religions.” This was my first sculpture modeled for a night course at the Philadelphia College of Art, my only work modeled from a drawing of mine. All following modeled works were improvised.

Surreal Sculpture Garden is my ‘open to the public’ garden behind my home. Read some commentary from visitors. 

 “Dysfunctional Family Tree” 2012 is a giant assemblage completed after the book was published. Visible as in the sculpture garden image, the tree was a beloved, a live nonbearing mulberry tree, wherein I added features when it died. The hands are plaster, the faces cast stone while the legs are actual mannequin legs.

 “The Water God” The date made was not documented, and the vines and decoration on the work is ever changing. There’s a video on it on You Tube and a further explanation of the work in my “Gods…,” monograph pp. 4-5.

“A Novel Romance” 2005 pp 38-41 Notes are on pp.40-41 and a photo on back cover. The sculpture is installed in public in front of the El Paso Public Library.

“One” 1994 Female on one side and male on the reverse side. On is p.12 there is related commentary. on the page.

“Horses and Riders” 1994 is on p. 29, probably the most outrageous depiction of the subject anywhere, both image and explanation.

“Post Nuclear Dog” 2007 pp. 50-51. The work is among my most popular and a copy is in the American Visionary Art Museum collection.  

http://www.hobaron.com/

https://www.facebook.com/HoBaronSculpture/
https://www.instagram.com/hobarone/ 

GAS Featured Artist: Hananya Goodman, presented by Sylvia Van Nooten

Hananya Goodman’s work explodes off the page. His brush strokes create a complex vision of depth and color.  Each painting is like a poetic insight into the artist, the asemic letters creating emotion in the viewer.  He is a prolific artist, his almost daily sessions produce many pieces, each a standalone representation of the interpretation of beauty. ~ Sylvia Van Nooten  

 Hananya Goodman in his own words:

Most of my life I have been immersed in the world of books. My upbringing, education, career and passion have been driven and tied up with reading and writing. A few years ago the writing suddenly turned to scribbling with fingers dancing across the page with strokes, scripts, marks and drawings. At that time, I was trying to find some connection between textile and text. In contrast with the language in books, these asemic marks had minimal to zero cognitive intent or meaning.  Aesthetically though I recognized emergent novel values and pleasures.  When I started seriously doing this art for the first time a few years ago, I saw this as an integral continuation or elaboration of a larger project called Talmud Hananya. Talmud in Hebrew means "learning." Talmud Hananya is my personal life-long project to learn about life and the world.  It is a massive collection of handwritten scribbles, jottings, notes, words, phrases, and paragraphs from which emerges gestures and drawings of organic feeling and sensing.

The images created have now taken on a life of their own. Today doing art gives me a sense of control or creative accomplishment in my life, it adds meaning and value to my life, and it gives pleasure to me and others through play and display.

I hope to pursue in the future explorations of the relationships between asemic and semic, a character set based on asemic images, and something Talmudic or kabbalistic.

Each of my images is created in the moment, without any initial image, language or intent.  They are very visceral process oriented executions in the sense of automaticity and situational immediacy rather than imagined, constrained and verified in order to conform with some preconceived plan. The work arises from a continuous engagement with the medium, until some significant quality appears to assert itself and emerges from the paper. The very moment of recognition of a quality or character is the point I stop and complete a piece. I have a voice inside telling me: "stop this piece" and "stop this session."

I consider each image as a character, both in a personal identity sense, and in an ideographic/logography sense. As these characters are born and fill my studio and begin to interact in meaningful new ways, I hope one day to join them into a cohesive language family. They live with me and one another in a sense, so I have trouble parting with the originals.

Showing art has connected me with a community of like-hearted and like-minded artists and followers around the world. I am grateful for their friendship, and my images are glad to participate in this larger world.

My only real self-defined community are those doing asemic art and abstract art. There are many wonderful artist friends I would love to tell you about but I will only mention Floriana Rigo as the most important influence on me as an artist. I continue to find asemic art, and groups devoted to asemic art, to be a nourishing source of ideas, inspiration and receptive audience. I am most active there and have benefited enormously and significantly from its members who are loosely bound by the ever adaptive  definition of asemic writing and abstract art.

Most of my public works can be viewed on Facebook. 

I also have a nascent website with higher quality images. 

I have exhibited at BROLO Centro d’Arte e Cultura, Mogliano, Veneto, Italy and at the MAINSITE Contemporary Art gallery, Norman, Oklahoma.

Typical artistic materials are 50 x 70 cm, 250 gram paper, gouache, India ink and soft chalk. Tools: lulav (middle shaft of the palm tree), cleaning brushes, scrapers, tubes, rolling pins, pens/pencils, bamboo spoons, and other odd objects. I have over 8,000 pieces and do an average of 20 pieces at a time. Each piece is created during a daily session lasting about two hours. I have a particular atmosphere or ritual I create during a session which  is very important to me. All pieces are done in a fugue-like state where I interact with the media and tools. Once completed in the session, the pieces do not receive any further additions. I usually show all my work on Facebook the day after the session.

I am the Director of Libraries for an engineering college. I have been an academic librarian for over 20 years but before that I worked in education for 20 years. Originally from Racine, Wisconsin, I graduated from the University of Wisconsin where I studied biology. I did graduate studies at Brandeis and Simmons. I currently live near the Sea in Ashdod, Israel. 

Publications I am most proud of include a book,  Between Jerusalem and Benares: Studies in Comparative Judaism and Hinduism,

 Kabbalah: A Newsletter of Current Research in Jewish Mysticism, 

 "Geomancy Texts of Rabbi Shalom Shabbazi." 

 "The Legend of the Dull-Witted Child Who Grew Up to Be a Genius" (on Einstein) with Barbara Wolff 

GAS Featured Composer/Producer and Visual Artist: Frédéric Iriarte, presented by Matthew Bowers

Trying to catch Frédéric Iriarte  between sessions is a full time job. Working with four bands and countless projects, I wonder when he finds time to sleep. He is as real, and genuine, as he is gifted.

     He has been working on Igor Goldkind's latest project - Take A Deep Breath.

It's an amazing collaboration of music and spoken word that is just brilliant! The collaboration of Igor and Frédéric  is as powerful as it is timely. 

    

His very recent recordings, that I have been privy to hear include Beat Poet Laureate, Carlo Parcelli  and his upcoming album on UNIC6's project Eurylochus (a fragment).

Here is an amazing adventure, where he has created the jazz inspired controlled chaos that enhances the poems and stories of Carlo as he recites in a heavy Cockney beautifully rich voice. Not just a musician, artist, but a brilliant producer with vision as well. 

     Frédéric is indeed an amazing composer. He has a unique, distinctive sound unto his own. He is able to record in his beautiful Home studio (his instruments are a collector's dream!) He's worked with a veritable who's who in the Modern Poetry Beat Scene.

Experimental Funky-

     Frédéric  has over 31 albums that he's produced under his belt, countless art projects, and several murals. Frédéric  is a very talented man, and has given much to the art community at large. As talented as he is, he's a humble, modest man. He does not see himself as a poet or feel that he has a story to tell. On the contrary, what he does with musical creation, electronic and organic, is indeed pure poetry in itself. Each song or musical poetry piece that he works on has its own story to tell. 

Amplified Heart of the Beat-

     I understand what he means by "I" don't have a story to tell though. Somehow not being able to take credit for messages, music, poems that come to us from the universe and the Muse itself. It feels like promptings leading us, and we feel like we're just following the direction of what a greater source has led us to. It is in some ways disrespectful, cheating in a way, to take such credit from inspiration.   

      Frédéric  has been doing art and music for forty years. He is a visual artist, designer, and composer. He lives in Stockholm Sweden and was part of the National and International Beat Poetry Foundation Festival, 2020 where this video was presented.

     Among the Great poets that Frédéric has worked with are:

Chris Vannoy

Paul Richmond

Bengt O Björklund

Ian Gibbins

Igor Goldkind

Dennis Renfors

Lefifi Tladi 

Rich Ferguson

Carlo Parcelli

People Dying in the Street

In Summary, I feel that it is best summed up in Chris Vannoy 's collaboration with Frédéric

In  "What is Beat."

Frédéric  Iriarte's You Tube Channel

and Band Camp site.

Frédéric  Iriarte's Art Page

Learn more about  Frédéric Iriarte on his Wikipedia page.

GAS Featured Artist: Dixie Denman Junius, by Sylvia Van Nooten

Dixie's career took her from Boston to Southern California, where in the early 90’s, she left her consulting practice to become a full-time artist. She studied paper-making at UCLA under Harriet Germain, who became a dear friend and mentor. She took further private instruction in Japanese paper-making with Yoshio Ikezaki.

Tight studio space has brought opportunities to explore working small, extending her art in new and exciting directions and employing an array of materials, tools and techniques: watercolors, inks, pastels, brushes and pens, bits and bobs, things and stuff. These days, her eclectic work spans asemic writing/art, painting, drawing, paper-making  mono printing, mixed media, paper cutting, and photo- glitching.

Dixie Denman Junius’ work caught my attention immediately as I was scrolling through a Facebook art page.  The delicacy of her lines and color, the perfect layering of dark and light tones—I stopped and studied her paintings.  Each work evokes a poem, asemic writing as a ‘wordless’ expression of her thoughts and ideas.  When seen together there is a profundity in the form and great self expression.  

~Sylvia Van Nooten 

The artist in her own words:

Though I still travel along many eccentric, eclectic, convoluted creative directions, these days my artmaking is increasingly influenced by and happily entwined with asemic writing. Last year was when I discovered that there was a name for the form I had been doing all along: Asemic writing and asemic art resonated so strongly, reinvigorating my art making completely. The light went on, bells ringing! Yes to all of this! 

As I am less enthralled and less apt with words, asemics has opened up new ways of expression. A path I was already on seemed to grow ever wider. I am now obsessed and addicted, and keep coming back to this form throughout my work. Asemic work can look like writing but it's not. Detached from language, the characters and patterns express ideas in ways that written words cannot. Intuitive, free; there is meaning and there are ideas but one must find them. 

Asemic Ryhthm

Asemic journaling is a routine for me, and often leads to a new direction in my work. Sometimes a journal page is just strong enough to stand on its own and be seen." Asemic Rhythm" came from a journal page I was writing and is rendered in brush and ink. "Sound and Rain" happened in the same fashion but was a less literal translation. I employed brush and ink for the first layers and then added writing in gold using a dip pen. 

Sound of Rain

Dream Upon Awakening

“Dream upon Waking" and "Note to Self" are asemic circles. I have created over 100 pieces in this form in the past year or so. And I shall keep going I think. The circle is perhaps my favorite shape and appears in much of what I make, including some Enso-inspired pieces. 

The asemic circles are meditations for me that allow me to indulge my fascination with revealing and concealing or obscuring and transforming an image. They often start as experiments with using certain colors together to see how they dance and what they have to say. The media and instruments vary; often brush and ink or watercolor to lay down a first layer and second or third. Sometimes oil pastels mixed with water media. The final meditative layer: usually pen and ink, perhaps metallic ink. The repetition is both soothing and hypnotic. The final piece is always surprising, as the layers underneath are changed, often amplified in contrast or color. 

Note to Self

Pillars and portals represent another meditative path in my art. I love the rectangle almost as much as the circle; rectangles give a certain structure that seems strong and contains the meditative ink or paint lines perfectly. This process of partially masking the original image transforms it. There is much wonder and delight when the piece works. When it doesn't, I've had a nice meditation. 

"Meditation: Dream Artifacts" is a gel plate monoprint with metallic gold 

and dark red ink layered on. 

Meditation:  Dream Artifacts

With "Portals: Past" I used a masking agent to define white spaces with inks creating the base for the metallic gold ink lines.

Portals:  Past