Back to Basics

• Editor’s Perspective: Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man
• Contemporary Artist: Michael Syphax, Creating Abstract Connections
• Exhibition – Gallery Serengeti, Capitol Heights, MD – Saluting Women in the Fine Arts, featuring Gwen Aqui, Jenne Glover, Viola Leak, Tamara Little, Evelyn Holland-Walker — through May 31, 2009

Editor’s Perspective: Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man

If you haven’t heard about stand-up comedian and talk-radio host, Steve Harvey’s best seller — Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man, then perhaps you’ve been living in a cave.  Released in January, his relationship book is a #1 New York Times bestseller.  Written for women, the book claims to be the ultimate guide for dealing with men.  With chapters on The Mind-Set of a Man; Why Men Do What They Do; and The Playbook: How to Win the Game, ladies of all ages will glean insight on how men operate and navigate their terrain.

This book is funny and informative.  Filled with “down home courting wisdom,” Harvey infuses his comedic sensibilities and timing to cut to the chase on what men think about love, relationships, intimacy, and commitment.  He identifies the problems women have with men and provides solutions.

Harvey credits himself as an expert on manhood and how men think.  So men, since women are from Venus and you are from Mars, this may be a helpful book for you too, because Harvey uses simple, “pull no punches” counsel on how we differ.

And, in light of the degeneration of our society’s social standards and requirements, this is a particularly useful read for young adults.  Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man will definitely generate productive conversations.

To order, click the link below

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Peace!

Contemporary Artist: Michael Syphax, Creating Abstract Connections

Tapping the invisible and internal…
Externalizing the muse!

Michael Syphax                           by Gregory Syphax

Thanks to a phone call from a long-standing friend, I was introduced to colored pencil artist Michael Syphax. When I arrived at his home for the interview, to my surprise, although I did not know his name, he was a familiar face from my days at Roosevelt Senior High School (DC). I hadn’t seen his work and didn’t know what to expect, but what was anticipated was nothing like what was before me. At first glance, the pieces are richly colored organic abstractions, flavored like the southwest. Most are unusually elongated or are super sized. My mind doesn’t register pencil art because it looks like a painting. And frankly, it’s hard for me to fathom that these works are created by colored pencils and colored art sticks. Especially since his largest works are 60″x40″.  That’s a lot of pencil strokes and a lot of worn down pencils.

During the week, Michael is a Development Officer for the Washington Performing Arts Society, but when he gets home in the evenings, he heads to his home studio to purge the stresses of the day and to reenergize. Michael’s discipline of continuously working and working fast was mastered in the mid 90’s when he relinquished his 9 to 5 to focus on his art. Today, although he puts in significant time to his craft, progress is slower, and time is his biggest challenge.

Michael has always had the urge to create art, what he describes as a compelling internal need to produce. Initially, he started out doing images in acrylic paint, and most of these early paintings he gave to his friends. While a student at the University of Mexico, he majored in Archeology of the American Southwest and Central America, and minored in Art. In the early 1990’s he began using felt tip markers and eventually moved on to drawing with colored pencils.

The Sandman Dreams of Water 40″x60″ Michael Syphax

Michael explains that working in pencils is challenging, because unlike a painting or sculpture, there’s little room for error.  When he begins a work, he rarely has a full vision in mind.  Some works evolve from a piece of an idea he wants to explore and will emerge from the free association of color and form.  And sometimes, he doesn’t have a clue of what he’s going to do.  His design concepts are centered on natural elements like microscopic shapes, textures, the southwestern plains desert dunes and distant mountains, the serenity of the tropics, the combinations of colors used by American Indians, or photos of outer space and at high altitudes.  And, he studies the stylized techniques used by abstract expressionist Helen Frankenthaler; Hans Hoffmann, a postwar abstract artist and influential teacher; and surrealism painters Salvador Dali and Yves Tanguy.

Working one piece at a time, he begins a design off-centered, and for a long time he deliberately avoided using straight lines. He develops themes using loops, orbs, curving lines, undulating forms, floating balls, textures, crooked lines, and prehistoric glyph-figures. Michael explains that his goal is to “translate something invisible and internal into something visible and external.” He evokes a range of abstract images and atmospheres by integrating distance, emptiness, space, light, the horizon, and color.

Dreaming of Distance 60″x10″ Michael Syphax

Michael’s “Anasazi” series is inspired by the ancient Pueblo People — ancestors of the Hopi and Zuni; and the Hopi Indian Kachina dolls — stylized religious icons representing spirit figures from Hopi mythology. Each art work in this series is built on using ribbons of color and bears a representational eye of spirit watching over you.

Anasazi I 60″x20″  Michael Syphax

Michael is the first artist to describe to me the conflict that emerges between himself and his muse. This occurs when the imagery flowing from his initial concept suddenly wants to take a new direction. In order to resolve this complication, Michael halts production to analyze what’s going on. His challenge, to make sense of the noise inside his head, to come to terms with his muse, and to determine what colors and shapes will win a place on his paper canvas. Once a piece is completed, he lets it “dry” and then begins buffing the art work with a cloth to take off the wax bloom, a white glaze that appears across heavily worked colored pencil drawings. The last stage in the process is sealing the work with a soft gel medium.

Irian Jaya 20″x60″ Michael Syphax

In the early stage of his art career, Michael just enjoyed the creative process and wasn’t concerned about exhibiting. Then in 1993, following the advice of some friends who are in the art business and liked what he was doing, he exhibited in “Celebration of the Arts,” a popular arts festival in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Although the festival was rained out, he was thrilled to see his work hanging in a public place and it got him thinking more seriously about his art. A few years later, he was juried by his peers to be a member of the Artists’ Gallery, a co-op in Columbia, MD where he still exhibits in the annual gallery show. Since then he’s exhibited in many group and solo shows including the Andrea Smith Gallery in Sedona, Arizona; the Museum of Contemporary Arts (MOCA) in Georgetown (DC); and was featured at the International Monetary Fund Gallery, and most recently at the Slayton House – Bill White Gallery in Columbia, MD.

Michael hopes that in the next five years he will be able to again do his art full-time and evolve faster. He recognizes that “overnight” success comes from due diligence…doing the background work required like building a body of work and exhibiting. He wishes he had taken his art more seriously 20 years earlier, but to me it doesn’t seem like a late start because he has emerged into his space. For it is safe to say that Michael Syphax is transforming colored pencil drawing to another level.

You can contact Michael at MSyphax@aol.com; or he can be reached at 202-882-0846.

Gallery Serengeti: Saluting Women in the Fine Arts

March 14 – May 31, 2009

Featuring:

• Gwen Aqui
• Jenne Glover
• Viola Leak
• Tamara Little
• Evelyn Holland-Walker

7919 Central Avenue
District Heights, MD
301-808-6987