Dialogues in Diversity:

Art From Marginal to Mainstream by John K. Grande

Overview:

Dialogues in Diversity brings together the views, ideas and vision of artists from a variety of countries around the world. As is evidenced from the many different approaches to visual arts practice, and understandings of cultural and natural diversity. This book will evidence that regional diversity In artistic practice is flourishing and has many very different facets and approaches to what art is, can be, and potentially involves in the social and public sphere. And this despite the lack of extensive media reportage on this.

The author John K. Grande,whose earlier books included Balance: Art & Nature (Black Rose Books) and Art Nature Dialogues (SUNY Press) intends to simply enable artists from so-called mainstream cultures to realize there is a whole world out there, largely unexplored, and less well represented in the mainstream, arts and journalist media that while not being represented is actually very much a vital and engaging cultural practice and milieu.

The media and approach of these artists vary from photography, to sculpture, to mixed media, to video and film, and yet one cannot escape the realization that these expressions are understandable by a public in whatever culture they may reside.

Included in this book are:

Norwegian Patrick Huse who travels the far north, exhibiting the results of artistic exchanges with the Innu and Sami peoples.

Francisco Gazitua from Chile who has created stone and metal sculptures for the Andes mountains, for public parks and throughout the world.

Ed Burtynsky has explored the new China through his photography, uncovering a culture he describes as 'Capitalism on steroids'.

British sculptor Antony Gormley discusses some of his recent sculpture projects in the deserts of Australia and in northern England.

Anna Torma discusses her experience moving from old world Hungary to Canada, and engaging in old fashioned sewing and embroidering but in the vernacular of contemporary art.

New York-based

Brandon Ballengée is a bio-artist whose projects involve exploring endangered species in urban, rural, and natural sites worldwide. He even locates fish in markets that are endangered and brings them to the natural history museum where he lives for their collections. His exhibitions are part-science, and part-curiosity extravaganzas.

Iranian sculptor Nadalian has established his own sculpture park, and seeks to develop a natural sequence of sculptures, often with symbolic portent, but equally nature-based, that expressed some links between the natural and human world. Another New York collaboration involves Christo and Jeane-Claude, whose latest project The Gates opened eyes worldwide in Central Park, New York.

Ousmane Sow is an African born artist who began his career as a doctor, gradually moving beyond his field while investigating historic, and social themes using basic materials. His Custer`s Last Stand explored an American tragedy, but from an African perspective and was exhibited at the Whitney Museum in New York.

New Zealand artist Chris Booth has produced a remarkable integration of natural, native and his own influences to produce large scale outdoor installations. The same can be said for Peter Randall-Page whose granite sculptures explore nature`s incredible patterns and propagation.
More significantly, Randall-Page`s Eden Project sculpture scheduled for completion in 2007 is an incredible undertaking, a 60 foot high Cornish granite sculpture that uses the Fibonacci series system of mathematical ratio, for the exterior surface patterning of his giant egg.
Bill Woodrow is a sculptor par excellence whose works explore the interesting relation between image, symbol, and product with an ever challenging eye for the vernacular character of Pop culture.

Interview with a solitary Guerilla Girl is a tip of the proverbial pen to the much neglected place women have held within the pantheon of art history, despite their enormous and ongoing contribution not to be taken too seriously

Dialogues in Diversity will provide readers, whether university students and teachers, artists or the general public, with a broad range of source material to extend their understanding as well as raise questions regarding the direction of contemporary art. The diversity evidenced by this book suggests there is an alternative in artmaking practice that is healthy and whose focus is less on the art product and more on the process whereby art provides a mirror to understanding our own identity, our place in today`s world and bio-regional differences.

Contents:

Preface

David Peat

Introduction

Edward Lucie-Smith

Author Introduction

1-Patrick Huse: The Uncultivated Landscape
2-Anna Torma: Stitching Time
3-Nadalian: River Art
4-Francisco Gazitua: From Chile with Love

5-Brandon Ballengee: BioArt

6-Roy Staab: In Tune with Nature
7-Ed Burtynsky: Manufactured Landscapes

8-Christo Jeanne-Claude: World Wrap

9-Yolanda Gutiérrez: Suspended in Time

10-Antony Gormley: Land Body Memory
11-Ousmane Sow: Larger than Life
12-Chris Booth: intra-culture sculpture
13-Bill Woodrow: A Breath of Fresh Air
14-Peter Randall-Page: The Mind in Matter
16-Interview with a Guerilla Girl
17-Cai Guo-Qiang: Shock & Awe

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