It does not take long after arriving in the capital city of Argentina, Buenos Aires, to feel the passion and creativity that permeates just about every part of daily life. This sprawling modern city with a European feel seems to embrace just about every form of expression with vigor. Architecture, design, food, Tango, music and the visual arts find a knowledgeable and appreciative audience in Buenos Aires. In this respect, it is not surprising to find a growing acceptance for what is often considered a serious problem in other major cities of the world. Graffiti, also know as street art or tagging (a mark left by gangs to define turf) plague most urban environments and is treated by authorities and society at large as a crime.

My first real exposure to graffiti that clearly had a purpose beyond vandalism was the Berlin Wall prior to German unification in 1990.  Creative, defiant, and powerful images of every kind were placed on the West Berlin side of the wall with the support of the local population and government. I would walk for miles along this concrete canvas often under the spyglass surveillance of East German guards in watch towers.

Graffiti, unlike its more constrained cousins, gallery paintings, is primal, raw, large and more concerned with communication than being an object to be consumed. Perhaps this is why despite its power galleries and museums worldwide have been slow to acknowledge the talent working today in major cities around the globe.

Even though contemporary graffiti and street art can defy easy categorization, many street artists are taking it upon themselves to market their designs and art through the production of posters, T-shirts, prints and some even welcome commissions that include interior space. In Buenos Aires one such collective that combines a bar, nightclub and galleries with a generous dose of graffiti is “Hollywood in Cambodia”. Located in the Palermo district among trendy shops and restaurants, it serves as a home, hangout, meeting place and hideout giving the street art crowd roots to grow. “Hollywood in Cambodia” is also a featured stop in Graffitimundo’s popular tours showcasing the city’s best street art.

Increasingly throughout Buenos Aires and especially in neighborhoods like Palermo, San Telmo, and La Boca, graffiti art is gaining acceptance. While technically still considered a property crime, many residents and even business owners are tapping into the power of this often raw visual form. It is not uncommon to hear stories of police pausing to admire a work in progress or have trendy business owners commission a unique façade treatment. No doubt city planners with more homogeonous expectations must be pulling their hair out. One highly regarded restaurant, Tegui, invited several artists working in graffiti to collaborate on its façade and the result is an edgy, chic wall of words and images that clearly has helped it to stand apart from the crowd of fine eateries.

One catalyst for this creative explosion appears to be the traumatic economic collapse in Argentina in 2000 and 2001. Less violent than rioting and looting, graffiti artists were seen as giving voice to an angry population during this turbulent time. What remains today is a wide range of styles and techniques created by a talented group of nonconformists that continues to grow in acceptance.

At the very heart of this art form is the basic need to express the human experience and it is a direct link to the rock and cave paintings of past civilizations. Ultimately there can be meaning for our lives in the messages on the walls. It only requires that we invest with curiosity, wonder, and an open mind in this art regardless of where it is found to enrich our lives.

More images can be found at the Graffitimundo Flickr site - check it out!

This month’s new images are available for use!  We are approaching 300 images in our E-card galleries and love to introduce new artists to you as well as expand the work available from some of the artists you already know.   Today’s new images include work from Stefanie Graves, David Lucht, Giovanna Gazzolo and our own Art Director, Michael Matlach.  Their work represents the diverse content that HarmonyWishes is known for!

Here’s a brief sample.  Take a peek at HarmonyWishes e-card site for more!

"Amigas Viejas" ~ Copyright 2005 ~ Stefanie Graves

"Floating" ~ Copyright 2008 ~ David Lucht

"Black Dancers" ~ Copyright 2007 ~ Giovanna Gazzolo

Stone Musicians ~ Copyright 2009 ~ HarmonyWishes,inc

There’s much more to see, so cruise on over to HarmonyWishes to see the latest additions (hint - the most recent updates will always be found at the beginning of each gallery).

Help change the world one ecard at a time. …
Staying in touch has never been so creative.

Cheers!

Meg

Delfino Cornali

Q:   We are curious about how you strike a balance between your artistic side and your work as a software engineer.  Does one influence the other or is one a release from the other?

A:   When I first began on my artistic path, art represented my connection to “the genuine world.”  Although art was a source of solace for me, it wasn’t a release per se—more as a touchstone to the real world.  I see now that that was a rather monochromatic view of the world and my creative space.  Now I see these two major creative forces in my life as flowing from the same source. Software is creative in a verbal and functional way—my pastels speak to something much less tangible.  Visual creativity doesn’t quite capture my creative process, there’s so much going on simultaneously—emotion, illusion, symbol. I believe software & pastels have had tremendous influence on each other—through me—in ways I will never get my work colleagues or my arty friends to quite understand (or believe, even). Yet the cross-currents are most definitely there.  I think the highest praise I could ever receive would be “Delfino lives a creative life” as that is my goal.

Q:   Mike, our Art Director, sees an Edward Hopper influence in some of your work.  Is he one of your influences?  If not, who is?

A:   I love how Hopper’s works capture the gold in California’s light. I’ve long admired Raoul Dufy and Georgia O’Keefe. They more than any others have shaped the way I approach landscapes & still life respectively.  I love the worlds-within-worlds that O’Keefe brings to her flowers.  I think she delighted in bringing her viewers so very deeply into the interiors of her flowers, she showed the world the eroticism of simple flowers.  Flowers were my first love for pastels—this piece “Irises for Anthea” was one of my first.  They still call to me.

"Irises for Anthea" ~ Copyright 2004 ~ Delfino Cornali

Now I am discovering the work of the pastel artist Odilon Redon—his simple still life pieces blow me away.

Q:   Can you elaborate on your creative process?  How do your images originate?

A:   I don’t know if I have one creative process.  I often work directly from a photograph—printing the image directly onto watercolor stock or a canvas-rag paper, and apply pastels directly over the image.  When I work this way, painting becomes more of an evolutionary process than the “normal” create-from-nothing process.  Instead of rendering, my role becomes one of shifting an image, its contrasts, color palette, etc.  What emerges is a synthesis of the camera’s rendering and my own, although as the artist I get to control the extent to which the underlying image appears in the final work.  In some pieces like “91st Street Roses” the original image is completely obliterated.  The original image was just an evolutionary stepping stone.  I think of the original image like a builder’s chalk line—an interesting artifact of the building process, not part of the finished work.

"91st Street Roses" ~ Copyright 2007 ~ Delfino Cornali

I work a lot with nature and natural forms—vegetables, flowers, the living fractal shapes of landscapes.  I think the human mind is hard-wired (after ten million generations) to interpret immediately the natural world.  Yet for all the “advances” of our modern society, I fear our culture is busying itself to forget its connection to the natural world.  Re-creating natural forms and returning them to our cultural attention is a major focus of my work.

I think I have a completely different creative process when I do abstract pieces.  I try to get out of the way, to let the images flow from wherever they flow from, and not try too hard to control the evolution.  “Sunbather” evolved this way, where I only took on smaller tasks rather than attempting to guide and control the larger vision of the piece.  Surrendering control—and having faith that all will be “okay”— is an important exercise for artists, and for me as a human being.

"Sunbather" ~ Copyright 2009 ~ Delfino Cornali

Q:   A lot of your artwork appears to have origins from other countries.  Is there a particular part of the world that seems to inspire your work more than another?

A:   Travel has been an important part of my life for many years.  I did a three-year around the world trip back in the 1990s—working on farms, family home-stays, bicycling through New Zealand, riding buses through Latin America, and writing as my media for recording the journey.  Travel sharpened my sense of observation, and I think observation is THE motivation & reward of travel for me.  It’s our opportunity to pause and really comprehend what’s before you.  In that respect, travel is just the opposite of the Western Science that says instruments don’t change, they only record.  With travel, we become the instrument, and we WANT the instrument itself to change—that’s the goal.

The Mediterranean speaks to me at such a core level, to my ancestral roots.  It’s where I truly feel “at home.”  The light in Greece and Italy never fails to astound me; it forces me to observe and renews my sense of wonder.  Yes, much of my work derives from photos from my travels.  I’m planning a five-week trip to Croatia this summer-fall, where I’m planning to do more with seascapes in plein air.

Q:   Where do you see your work going in the future?  New techniques?  Any personal projects, shows, books in the works you want to talk about?

A:   I began a project earlier this year, an art blog called “One Hundred Paintings to Inspire Your Life” (http://rosewoodart.wordpress.com/).  Here I’m reviewing the pastel pieces I’ve created over the past six years and exploring how they speak to me now (rather than dwelling on what I was trying to do, art techniques, etc.)

"On The Andaman" ~ Copyright 2008 ~ Delfino Cornali

I’m working these days with some interesting techniques and materials—underlay of watercolors beneath pastels, sandpaper, canvas with sun-softened oil pastels (like the seascape in “On The Andaman”) My travel to Croatia will give me a chance to gain more experience working plein air, seascapes and doing architectural forms.  I plan to assemble a show here in Seattle the following year based on the body of work that emerges.  We’ll see how that progresses, and I’ll keep HarmonyWishes in mind to show some of my latest works.