Rain Dance 10

Artist: Kahn, Joan b. 1953

Date: 2013

Medium: Archival digital print

Artwork Dimensions: 18 x 24 in.

County Department: Medical Examiner

Artwork Site: Medical Examiner Medical Building

Supervisorial District: 1

Current Status: On view

About the Artwork: In my painting, I create illusionistic space through the use of object-field relationships, and surfaces and textures are developed through the use of different paints and varnishes, and addition of such substances as sand, pearl essence and dry pigments. Through my use of found natural materials such as wood and sand, and my continual investigation of proportions, I am aligned to the concerns and sensibilities of European and American modernist designers, artists and architects of the 1920s and 30s. I am primarily concerned with geometric (often orthogonal) divisions of space and the ways in which color and texture hold that space to create a sense of luminance. I use surface, texture, and color to make areas lighter or heavier, formally and emotionally. In these ways, I am a Neo-Modern Formalist. Since my days as a graduate student, geometric shapes and their formal and spiritual meanings have been my chosen subject matter. I explore the dichotomy of painting as window and painting as thing: thus the coexistence of illusionistic deep space with the physical presence of differentiated surfaces and textures. Transparent varnish over raw wood emphasizes areas of beautiful evocative shapes hidden within the wood grain. These organic shapes are often areas of focus to which my geometric grids respond. I frequently name the paintings after the associations the wood grain shapes suggest to me. Referencing my memory of specific places, things, people, events and emotions is important as a strategy in the process of inventing the geometric grids. Currently, for me the creative process is a collaborative dance of the organic and the geometric. I believe that we humans need to learn about and pay attention to our relation to and with the planet's natural life. Our only hope lies not in continual destruction but in a maintaining respectful attitudes and mindful actions towards Nature. My own relationship with Nature has been vastly revitalizing and the spiritual renewal that I find in making my paintings, akin to my experience of the natural world, hopefully provides a parallel experience to the viewer. Different places I have lived have influenced me tremendously; chronologically, the intellectual refinement and humor of my upbringing in Princeton, the blue-green calm and strength of nature in Vermont, the cool elegance of Paris, the freedom and experimental spirit of Wisconsin, the earth tone surfaces and aesthetic of Italy, the dark colors and formal moodiness of New York City, and the pastel neon retro-eccentricity of Los Angeles. Although my work is pared to essential elements, unlike the minimalists of the 1960s, I am interested in creating a sense of emotion, even elation. Some of my paintings are meditative in mood while others are sensual, playful, or wryly humorous. But there is also mystery. I intend to evoke a contemplative state in my viewer, and at the same time create moments of surprise when personal aesthetic values are questioned.

This print is 1/30.

About the Artist: Joan Kahn grew up in New York City; Princeton, New Jersey; and Vermont; in an environment that patronized the arts. At home her father, a professor, and mother, a state economist and homemaker, collected nineteenth and twentieth century drawings and prints, Middle eastern rugs, and ceramics, pewter, and old tools. Her grandfather, Max Westfield, was an academically trained portrait painter and her great uncle, Walter Westfeld, was a well-known gallery owner and art dealer in pre-World War II Germany. One of the influential experiences of Joan's youth was visiting her grandfather in his studio in Tennessee where the family had first immigrated. Growing up near New York, and spending a year in Paris during high school, provided formative visits to museums and galleries. Joan was academically talented in grade and high school, but after her father's death during her first years at university she found herself concentrating on studio and history of art. It was a subject above others that absorbed and concentrated her focus. Influential in Joan's development and later work are the historic movements of the Bauhaus and Modernist design and architecture, geometric art and design of diverse cultures, and Color Field Painting. Many artists have had an impact on her work, such as painters Josef Albers, Sonia Delaunay, Caio Fonseca, Nancy Haynes, Peter Halley, Robert Irwin, Valerie Jaudon, Paul Klee, Ellsworth Kelly, Antonietta Lama, Robert Mangold, Agnes Martin, John McLaughlin, Piet Mondrian, Thomas Nozkowski, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, Tony Smith, Carolee Toon, James Turrell, Juan Usle, and architects Tadao Ando, Frank Gehry, Walter Gropius, Philip Johnson, John Lautner, Le Corbusier, Julia Morgan, Jean Nouvel, I. M. Pei, Renzo Piano, Gerrit Rietveld, Rudolph Shindler, and Frank Lloyd Wright. After receiving three degrees from the University of Wisconsin in studio art with a minor concentration in art history, Joan worked for the National Endowment for the Arts for five years in the Artist-in-Residence Program in schools in the Midwest and on the east coast of the United States. Subsequently she became an art professor in Rome, Italy, for the next half decade, during which time she maintained a studio practice and exhibited solo and in groups. Becoming a mother in Italy, and raising a son, has been one of the great pleasures of her life. For the past twenty-five years Joan Kahn has based her life as an art professor and artist in Altadena, California, where she maintains a painting and drawing studio surrounded by nature and a thriving garden. Joan listens to jazz in the studio and at home and attends live concerts as often as possible. She spends part of each year in Barnard, Vermont, on family property where she paints in the studio, swims in the pond, and walks in the woods. Joan currently teaches at Art Center College of Design and Pasadena City College in California. Her paintings are exhibited nationally, most often in galleries on the east and west coast of the United States.