CONTENTS
Page One:
- Djibril N'Doye: Reflecting on Traditions of Senegal
Page Two:
- Dominic Angarano: Exploring Native American Traditions
Page Three:
- Ilanna Sharon Mandel: A Passion for Art and Peace
- Antique Folk Art of Russia and Austria
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Medicine Crow |
American artist Dominic Angarano from Wood River, Illinois,
has been doing art for over thirty years, since he was a youngster
growing up in the 1960s. As a young teenager, he enrolled in an art
instruction school to take a course through the mail (remember those ads
at the back of magazines?). The course proved worthwhile--a student
could write to artists for advice, and Dominic corresponded with the
late George Schulz of "Peanuts" fame. On his own Dominic took
up leather work as well, and his father showed some of his work to a
coworker who was an expert in leather work. Recognizing the boy's
artistic talent and determination, Dominic's mentor offered him
challenges, advice, and encouragement.
In 1973, Dominic was given a full scholarship to the Silver Mine School
of Art in Norwalk, Connecticut, which he attended for a year. He later
enrolled in the Greenwich School of Art in Greenwich, Connecticut from
which he graduated in 1983. His courses of study included painting,
drawing still lifes, life drawing, and some sculpture.
Dominic was already doing well competing and exhibiting at local fairs
selling drawings, paintings, jewelry, and carvings. He was also selling
his paintings at a furniture store on consignment.
In late 1997 came a turning point when for the first time at an art and
music fair and farmers market, Dominic came upon an artist demonstrating
pyroengraving on gourds.
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Sitting Bull, detail |
Dominic felt an instant connection when he saw the gourds. In the
course of a nice conversation with the artist, his enthusiasm grew. She
was very encouraging and sold Dominic some plain gourds to try for
himself.
Dominic had given his son a simple pyro tool that heated only to a very
low temperature, perhaps 350 degrees. It was similar to one he had had
as a child himself but never really explored. Suddenly the idea was
compelling, but that was not all.
For Dominic, pyroengraving on gourds went hand in hand with Native
American themes, and he developed an intense interest in researching
many Native American peoples and their cultures.
Dominic's interest was in relating directly to these people. He feels
that some of his predecessors of about a hundred years ago, like the
very famous photographer Edward Curtis, believed that the Native
American peoples would soon be extinct, and their goal was to record
these tribes for history. For their purposes, they often had their
subjects pose in staged scenes and elaborate dress. Dominic's goal is
simply to understand, to record accurately, and to capture the spirit of
his individual subjects, their authentic emotions and expressions.
When live models are unavailable, his modus operandi consists in
studying and adapting photographs of his subjects and portraying them in
natural poses and authentic activities. He works lovingly with the
gourds, drawing directly on the gourd surface with his pyro pen, then
finishing and doing ornamentation and special effects as appropriate to
the project at hand.
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Scrimshaw Sailing Ship, detail |
The exotic scrimshaw (above) began as an enormous hippo tooth
Dominic bought to experiment with. The original tooth, he remembers,
was between 12 and 14 inches tall. The scrimshaw shown in a detail
above at about 6 inches tall is just the top part.
When he began this project, Dominic wasn't sure what to expect. He knew
he wanted to improve the finish, which was dark in color, uneven, and
heavily lined, so he started sanding it. When it proved to be
incredibly hard, he used a Dremel tool to sand it. After some time he
realized that what was on top--the outer surface--was actually the
enamel of the tooth, and inside was the layer of ivory that he was
hoping for. Even working with the Dremel tool, it took him three
weeks just to sand off all the enamel and reveal the ivory.
Because he wanted to use the ivory for a scrimshaw motif, Dominic
decided to carve the tooth to resemble the size and shape of a whale's
tooth in keeping with the scrimshaw tradition. For the base, he found
a piece of driftwood, carved it to the desired shape, and finished it
with a shiny polyurethane to resemble a sea rock.
Dominic took great pride in accurately portraying his sailing ship in
detailed pyrography, including the ship's wooden bird masthead. His
painstaking work on this most unusual project made for a striking piece,
which can also be seen in full view in the E-Museum.
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Pullman Conductor, detail |
Since his discovery of gourds as a surface material and pyrography as a
technique, Dominic admits that his artistic endeavors sometimes border
on the obssessive. As you can see in these images (and additional
examples in the E-Museum),
Dominic was not satisfied only with gourds, which are considered exotic
by many. Even when working with gourds, he would often add an extra
dimension of challenge to his projects by adding not only details like
the beeswax lining of the gourd itself or the rawhide and feather
ornaments shown on the Sitting Bull example earlier, but also lighting
effects from inside. On one, he actually opened a very small hole
through which he worked to produce a painted pyro image on the interior
wall, and then, using the same small hole, later added a tiny light
inside to illuminate it; afterwards he provided a tiny viewing hole as
an element of the exterior design.
Through a dealer on the west coast of the United States who imports
exotic things from South Africa, Dominic obtained among other things the
hippo tooth shown earlier. He also has used elephant ivory (see the
knife with the pullman conductor pyroengraving above) that is 60 to 75
years old (predating the ban on that material). Through a dealer in
Alaska, who consults the University of Alaska to date his exotic
materials, Dominic has obtained walrus ivory and bone (oosik) that he
has used for other projects, such as the knife handle below and another
in the E-Museum (and also in a small image at the bottom of this page),
which is a knife with a pyroengraved handle of walrus bone depicting a
killer whale; it comes with its leather sheath, which he stitched and
then adorned with colorful beads. He once tried pryoengraving the face
of Jesus on an ostrich egg, which with some effort was successful.
However, he notes that the eggshell draws the heat out of the pen,
making this work unsatisfactory as a technique. Other challenging
materials he has worked on include moose antlers and the fossilized jaw
bone of a buffalo estimated to be 40,000 years old.
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Crazy Horse Drum |
About the gourd drum and mallet and his depiction of Crazy Horse, Dominic says that his is a portrait of invention. There is only one known photograph said to be of Crazy Horse, he explained, but its authenticity has been questioned. Dominic's portrait is his own idea, based on his research, of what Crazy Horse may have looked like. The other images on the gourd--an American Bald Eagle, lightning, a horse, and a snake (not all are visible in the picture)--were added not only for artistic reasons but for historic ones. It is said, Dominic recounts, that Crazy Horse, before his encounter with General Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn, drew these four images and pronounced the words, "Today is a good day to die."
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Tiger Knife, detail |
Tools and supplies. Dominic Angarano works primarily with a
simple soldering iron tool for his pyroengraving. However, to
accommodate the many other effects and techniques required for his
challenging and often multi-faceted projects, he employs whatever tool
or tools do the job at hand at any given time, such as carving tools and
a Dremel for sanding. Dominic employs a lot of carved details in his
pyrographic work, especially on gourds because incised lines on a gourd
surface create highlights when the light inner layer of the gourd is
exposed to contrast with the darker outer layer.
Coloring and finishing. He will often use swatches of a color
wash, especially white, for certain effects. Where a natural sealer or
finish is called for, he uses beeswax. For his shiny finishes, he uses
multiple coats of water-based polyurethane with UV protection to prevent
fading. For a final polishing using natural wax, he uses a potter's
technique of rubbing the gourd surface with a shell to produce a shine,
which is then buffed with leather.
Safety and health considerations. Dominic notes that many of his
projects require good ventilation, protective eyeglasses, and a face
mask. His studio is an airy sunroom at the back of his house where he
can isolate from the rest of the house any unpleasant odors emanating
from certain materials as they are burned. A good dust collection
system is also important for this type of work.
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There Is No One Home |
Dominic thinks of his canteen gourd above entitled There Is No One Home, as a "tobacco box." To his pyroengraving of a Native American, he painted a white wash in the background to create the illusion of a fog. The story he portrays is that of a man being forced to leave his land. Eyes all around belong to ancestral chiefs who can no longer help.
Dominic discovered pyroengraving on gourds in late 1997 and went to work
with wild enthusiasm. By March 1998, when he exhibited at a fair in
Indiana, his gourds took one second place ribbon, two first place
ribbons, and a ribbon for best in category.
From there, it was on to more gourds, more research, more and still more
unusual materials, and more complicated projects. He is thinking he has
to slow down, but for the time being he hasn't figured out quite how to
do that.
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2003, Kathleen M. Garvey Menéndez, all rights reserved.
