Multimedia and Mixed Media
Los Angeles
d.massa@yahoo.com; http://www.yessy.com/dmassa
UVA Artist's in Action - January 4, 2008
UVA Liberty Square Exhibit - December 29 - February 30, 2008
The Member Show -
November 16 - December 21, 2007
UVA Liberty Square Exhibit -
October 15 - November 30, 2007
Art in the Park Juried Exhibition - September 14-16
We Came Here Not To Represent -
August 1 - 31, 2007 -
Anne Bonney Tattoos and Gallery
Group Show -
July 6, - July 30, 2007
Visual Vernacular -
April 26 - July 30, 2007
Being an artist is a vague thing to declare; not in doing...but in telling; it's much less complicated being a plumber, an engineer or doctor. When you say “I’m a plumber”, everyone knows what you do; same with a doctor or engineer; most know why you do it and can probably accurately guess how much money you make doing it. When you announce, “I’m an Artist”, peoples’ minds tend to go mad and you can see all these questions building up and spreading out to the ends of their hair. Still, everyday I proclaim, “I'm an Artist.”
My work assimilates emotion; layers upon layers of acrylic paint and media; found objects, text; signage; construction; rusting; sanding; staining; scratching with my fingernails; carving with screwdrivers and woodworker’s tools and assemblage in order to obtain a crude urban texture.
People tend to describe my art as abstract, yet the expressionist complexity is blatant. I’m not hiding anything in my art; I’m just not making it obvious. I want viewers to experience the challenge and pleasure of decoding my art on their own. At first glance, forms appear distorted, and yet one is eventually taken into the message. Oddly it becomes easier to read the sketchy details; with changing light and viewing angle details appear and recede. My art is open to interpretation; if what the viewer sees is what I felt when I created it-great- if they see something different that more than interests me, it intrigues me.
Formerly educated and employed as a graphic artist I’ve had the opportunity to work with many wonderful clients including Public Television, Human Rights Campaign, United States Conference on Aids, National Lesbian and Gay Journalist Association, Service Member’s Legal Defense Network, and National Minority Aids Council. But I became frustrated creating throw-away-art in the form of public service announcements and designing for the client, who has all the say. Eschewing art schools with their labyrinthine structures and syllabi based on obtaining academic units and defying the class distinctions pervading the art world-I made my transition from graphic designer to Artist with aplomb. Now I’m creating art for art’s sake, I bring my voice, my view.
Being an Artist and a Graphic Designer have made me a public information monster in that I passionately want to take all the public spaces back from The Man and return them to The People in the form of visual vernacular. I have dreams of replacing advertisements on buses and billboards with art and of organizing a Philanthropic Artist Group. I’m talking about feeding/helping/healing/caring for the world and its people artistically—in big ways. It is crazy. It is impossible. And that’s exactly why I am in pursuit of seeing it as reality.