Arn Strasser Studio - About the Art

Arn Strasser: My Carton Services Studio

All visual artists always need studio space and studio space is always hard to find. Artists can be good renters because they'll put up with so much, or so little—sometimes the funkier the better. It's not a cliché about "starving artists". When I began doing art seriously I demanded that the art pay for itself—that what I spent on my art had to be paid for by the studio. Somehow I've always done it, but I never had money for the kind of studio you see in art magazines—and that’s true of all of us, except for a tiny minority of actual recognized artists, some of which produce incredible art, and others who don't and who we won't talk about.

Artists are always looking for the most room for the least money—we like going where no one else would possibly want to go. Maybe we'll find that perfect spot: good light, high ceilings, lots of room and a place that won't mind an unholy mess, even if we do clean it up periodically.

In Portland, I had a studio in the Pearl in a half-destroyed building ,waiting to be gentrified, with gaping holes in the walls. Who else could have used that space, but a crazy artist. Still I was relatively happy. No one bothered me and I got lots of work done. I had a couple of studios in Old Town, one above a Mexican restaurant whose kitchen, it seemed, was vented into my space. Whenever I came home from working (usually at night), I smelled like refried beans.

One studio was an odd space in an office complex—it had a giant window that looked down on the back of a Rock club so I could watch Roadies unloading the black buses while I painted. It actually had a carpet and janitorial service—the janitor kind of vacuumed in-between the drop cloth I had laid on the floor. Again I managed to keep painting.

Carton Services was a great studio because it was right in the midst of a real warehouse with actual workers and trucks and noise and people backing their cars in to buy cardboard boxes. Urban artists love these urban spaces because we like to think we're somehow worker artists and hope we can get a little of that city grit into our work, even if we're painting lovely blue landscapes.

The painting I put in the show was done in my Carton Service studio in 1998. I did a series of large pieces on wood (which were shown at the AIA gallery) all of which (aside from this one) have sold and are with collectors all along the West coast. So here's to Ken and all the folk that made my studio space—and all the other spaces—available. Artists do need these spaces. Lets hope there are more folks like Ken who have a commitment to art and artists—and their never-ending quest for studio space.

I am now located in San Rafael, California. My studio is in a double garage with one window—the light isn't great, but its roomy and it has that nice high ceiling.

Thanks for coming to the show.

June 27, 2004

Announcement
Arn Strasser
PAPER PIECES
Dwelling, Charleston, SC.
May 22-July 1, 2004

San Francisco artist, Arn Strasser, will have a show of recent works on paper at Dwelling, 474 King Street from May 22- July 1, 2004. An opening reception with the artist will be held on Saturday, May 22nd from 5-8pm. Before moving to the west coast last year, Arn Strasser lived in Charleston where he exhibited at Tippy Stern Gallery and Dwelling. His work is in the Gibbs Museum of Art and is held by collectors throughout the country.

Arn Strasser is a contemporary artist whose non-representational work relates strongly to nature, but also has, in recent years, included markings and a kind of mysterious writing that sometimes gives his work an archeological dimension. Strasser's background as an architect also appears as a prominent influence. Overall the work of Arn Strasser is noted for its bold use of color and emphasis on line.

Arn Strasser received a masters degree in architecture from the University of Oregon. He is also a chiropractic doctor who combines an active practice with his career in art.

Announcement
Arn Strasser
NEW WORK
Dwelling, Charleston, SC.
March 20-May 15, 2003

Originally from Portland, Oregon, where he showed his work extensively, Arn Strasser is one of the few established, contemporary artists working in Charleston. In his new paintings, Strasser presents a series that feature bold lines and vivid color infused with shadowy texts, which seem to tell ever-changing stories with each viewing.

Much of the work shows an architectural influence. Strasser was trained as an architect and his work often shows an architectural sense of space and construction. In his new work, Strasser introduces figurative elements, adding a subtle emotional content to the contemporary lines and forms.

Arn Strasser was born in Zurich, Switzerland. He grew up in Great Neck, New York and received a BA and MA from Michigan State University and a Masters of Architecture degree from the University of Oregon. He received a doctorate in chiropractic from Western States College of Chiropractic and practices as a chiropractic physician in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. Strasser has pursued his art career for over twenty years and his work is featured in collections across the country.

Artists Statement: Arn Strasser
NEW WORK
Tippy Stern Gallery, Charleston, SC.
Winter, 2002

It is my hope that the viewer will engage with my paintings. The dynamic of viewer and painting--that's what really makes it come alive. If you stand in front of one of these paintings, or see it from the side, or from really far away and very close, and let your mind go--what happens? That’s what these paintings are about.

What I am striving for is a relationship between a viewer and the work; a dynamic relationship that changes with time, light and circumstance. When such a relationship occurs, when the viewer engages in some kind of visual dialogue with the painting, especially over time, seeing the work on a number of occasions, then the work is successful. The goal of creating an object has to some extent been fulfilled and each work becomes not a work about something, but something unto itself.

For the Drawings:
These paintings on paper a response to the landscape of the South Carolina coast. They are not representational and can seem like different images at different viewings: sometimes a far-off landscape and sometimes a distinct object, or a less definite image, something of nature as seen through the imagination.

Artists Statement: Arn Strasser
NEW WORK
Tippy Stern Gallery, Charleston, SC.
December-February 2001

These paintings are about boundaries and borders, intersections and confluences. It is interesting to see some of this work as if you were looking at it from above, as landforms, paths and bodies of water. The work can also be seen less literally as communication, interaction, and intersections of energy. Whatever else, these paintings are not expected to be static. They will change and look different depending on the viewer's mood, the time of day, the quality of light. One day you may see and feel something in the painting, and the next day something very different.

These paintings are about line, form, color and markings. The quality of the line is something I'm very interested in as an artist. In this series, I am using bright and optimistic colors--colors that evoke the sun and landscape of the southern coast. Markings are used as a language, not literally words but allusions to words as well as markings indicating settlements or human figures. As contrasted with formula art and art that is technologically produced or enhanced, this work is about the artistic imagination, the making of a unique work of art and the initiation of a continuing dialogue between work and viewer.

Announcement
Arn Strasser
BEING HERE: New Work
Arn Strasser Studio, Charleston, SC.
Nov. 2- Dec. 7, 2003

Arn Strasser brings to his painting the influence of his training as an architect and a lifelong interest in the visual arts. Strasser has maintained an active studio for over twenty years and has moved through a number of different series from early representational painting to expressionistic abstraction and, more recently, work that emphasizes line and gesture to create forms and imaginary landscapes.

This later work began with "Spatial Gestures (1998), a series of ten large paintings on wood. D.K. Row, art critic for the Oregonian, wrote that Strasser "moves the waters of the art world in a most welcome way". Spatial Gestures, said Row, represents "a training steeped high in architecture and coupled with a natural feel for gestural generosity". By working directly on wood and leaving parts of the wood exposed in this series, Strasser presents in this series works that move away from representing a picture of something and instead emphasizes the painting as an object itself.

The Spatial Gestures are evocative of gestures in the landscape with a sensuous palate of colors, but they are also constructional and leave no doubt that the painting is also a piece of fine birch plywood.

Strasser's next series, "Crossings", shown at the AIA gallery in Portland, Oregon, in 1999 continued the same theme with gestural paintings on wood and a series of paintings on paper which were colorful, abstract pieces emphasizing line. Included in this series, was a set of four drawings on paper, the blue drawings, which represented sculptural shapes related to buildings and natural forms.

In 2000, Arn Strasser completed a series of work, "Being Here: New Work". Influenced by the landscape and environment of the low country, and painting out of his urban studio in downtown Charleston, Strasser presents a somewhat eclectic body of work representing his interaction with a new environment far different from the one he left in Portland, Oregon.

"Arrival", A large painting on wood, is an abstract expressionistic piece that can be said to portray the jumbled experience of living in a new city and the colorful, tropical landscape of the coastal South Carolina. The painting is alive with unfolding shapes and mysterious doors and entrances; the overall impression is joyful and uplifting. "Flouting Red" is another piece in the series that is more contemplative of the landscape. Also painted on wood with the grain of the wood showing behind the wash of color, Flouting Red is at once a landscape painting, but also has an element of some tension with a swirl of black gesture seeming to want to spoil the scene from being too pretty. Also in this series: "Pink Cloud", " Red Flowers", "Torso", and "Contemplation", all works on wood.

November 1, 2000
Artists Statement: Arn Strasser
SPATIAL GESTURES
AIA Gallery, Portland, Oregon
September 3-30, 1998

For the past two years I have been working on a series of paintings that use line and color to create forms that invoke relationships between nature and the man-made. I wanted the use of wood and the wood framing to make each painting an object unto itself. They are no so much paintings of something as they are discrete objects with their own identity, even as they try to be evocative as paintings.

In this series of work I am especially influenced by my training as an architect, but also by twenty years of working with different mediums to find what my be unique in my art—a continuing process.

I like viewers of my paintings to make a connection with my art in ways that make sense to them. I enjoy listening to children talk about my paintings because of their direct experience of the work, whether positive or negative.
I hope my work evokes reactions and provokes new thoughts.