Art on Fire

The Trenton Artists’ Workshop Association Ignites the Trenton City Museum with provocative new work.

By: Megan Sullivan
   During a training class at work, Robert Girandola and his colleagues discussed different generations and how families have transformed through television over the years. A zealot artist by night, the color scientist had an idea spark in his head for a new painting series.
   The first work in the series hangs during the Trenton Artists’ Workshop Association’s second summer exhibition, Ignite, at the Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie. Running through Sept. 9, the show features works by other regional artists: Jon Allen, Joy Barth, Brian Casally, Joanna Firman, Matt Lucash, Rocco Nicolino and Richard Zimmerman. The Aug. 11 opening reception will feature Go-Go Boot Surf Jazz performed by Wing Dam, with John Sheridan on guitar, Wilbo Wright on bass and Cedric Jensen in his final Trenton appearance before re-locating to San Francisco.
   Mr. Girandola’s piece, "Family Unit, circa 1960," is immediately recognized as an interpretation of the famous Brady Bunch grid that opened each episode. The oil painting is still a work in progress — Greg, Marcia and the rest of the clan are currently in black and white. The piece will eventually be completely done in color, including the trademark radiant blue background.
   The next painting in his grid series will address contemporary "family" units as played out through the media. It might be Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie with their children, or Anna Nicole Smith, her various love interests and children. "It’s to sort of make a stark comparison of how television was so scripted and about morality and today, the more shocking and the less scripted the better," says Mr. Girandola, TAWA president since March. "It’s really food for thought."
   The idea for the artist’s painting "Slaughter Run," also on view during the show, came about while creating a memorial to four firefighters who died in the North Tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. He spoke with one of his firefighter friends who had seen the horrors of the terrorist attacks firsthand while trying to rescue lives from underneath the rubble. "He told me how the scene was so overwhelming that people had transformed in his mind into cows," Mr. Girandola says. In his oil work the cows to the slaughter flow across the canvas and off into the unseen.
   The Yardley, Pa., resident is planning a larger work, 12-by-24 feet, as part of a series inspired by the firefighter’s experience. The current design has a single cow in a field staring back at the viewer. "It’s almost like that firefighter looking back at us, left alone," he says. Mr. Girandola hopes to have all the names of the people that died in the towers spanning the piece in newsprint to carry the image.
   While Mr. Girandola’s "Black Gold, Texas Tea" also has a literal reference, it departs into abstract expressionism and plays with the spirit of Barnett Newman. "I was outside Home Depot getting ready to buy art supplies and I was listening to the story on the war in Iraq and some of the terrible stuff going on there, but particularly with terrorists," he recalls. "I thought, not to be too much of a cliché, but it’s about power, and control of that power. Then, this image just flashed into my mind."
   He bought a can of high gloss, black oil paint and poured the whole quart onto a canvas. The surface is smooth, save a small pool of paint that rippled down at the bottom. "This is exactly what it is, black oil, crude oil, a portrait of oil," he says. Although it looks simple, Mr. Girandola saw a world, with himself in it, reflected back when he stared deep into the painting’s surface. He pulled the title from a line in the Beverly Hillbillies theme song.
   Mr. Girandola has had an interest in art since childhood, but opted to study molecular biology at Fairfield University. He worked as a research scientist after graduating, but dropped everything and applied to Columbia University, where he earned a master’s of fine arts degree.[idu: So did he earn the MFA? And was that before the degree in imaging science, or after?: ] While he would love to become a full-time artist in the future, Mr. Girandola currently works as a color scientist for Estée Lauder. He often thinks about his heroes from the Renaissance who grew up grinding their own pigments. In this sense, his profession has served him artistically as well, helping him to understand the characteristics of colors and their use in different mediums. His interest quickly blossomed and he went on to get his master’s degree in imaging science with a color science concentration from Rochester Institute of Technology.
   Matt Lucash, curator of Ignite, says that this year’s show focuses more on works by regional artists and highlights new ideas and artistic approaches. (In the past, the show has featured contemporary works from international artists.) Among the Hamilton resident’s works on view is a grouping of three concrete pigs, displayed on pedestals ("Pig Answer A," "Pig Answer B" and "Pig Answer C"). He wanted to take an idea artistically and run with it, so Mr. Lucash created dozens of these pigs to play with and have fun. One is a city pig, its head covered in stickers of railroad and pedestrian crossing signs and stoplights. The back half of the animal is separated from the head, with foam tubes protruding from its body. The second is a country pig with plastic trees sprouting on and around it. The third, a slaughtered pig.
   Also on view is his mixed media piece titled "Made in The USA, Parts Sold Separately, Some Assembly Required," which features six different works that offer observations on America and its history.
   One is a cotton American flag, overlapped by the X-shaped design found on the Confederate flag during the Civil War period, to show the separation of our nation. Another is a stack of aluminum cans, wrapped with postcards from destinations like Bermuda and Hawaii, to comment on consumerism and packaging the impossible — places and memories. A third has two framed pen-and-ink drawings of Elvis Presley and Hank Williams, who Mr. Lucash considers two of the most American music figures. Written next to the drawings is the year they died and where. Elvis died in a bathroom and Williams in the back of his Cadillac.
   "It’s thinking about death and the fact that everyone says to themselves, ‘I wonder how I’m gonna die’… but then you never think of where you’re gonna die. You might die of a heart attack peacefully, but in a bathroom at Penn Station or in the waiting line of the subway. It might be peaceful, but completely degrading."
   Mr. Lucash, who holds a painting degree from Mercer County Community College, a bachelor’s degree from Pratt Institute and a master’s of fine arts from Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, aims to have each viewer interpret his works differently. "An artist’s job is to comment on what’s going on around him and make observations, not to put forth opinions or ideas necessarily," he says. "Just a different way of looking at things or taking a different perspective."
Ignite is on view at the Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie, Cadwalader Park, Trenton, through Sept. 9. Gala Opening Aug. 11, 6-9 p.m., with Go-Go Boot Surf Jazz performed by Wing Dam, featuring Cedric Jensen, John Sheridan and Wilbo Wright. Gallery Talk Sept. 9, 1:30-3:30 p.m. Hours: Tues.-Sat. 11 a.m.-3 p.m., Sun. 1-4 p.m.; (609) 989-3632; www.ellarslie.org. TAWA on the Web: www.tawa-nj.org