Beautiful plasma hearts

Link to her video, of this work....

https://www.facebook.com/groups/857676194347502/permalink/1604523682996079/

Now at The Museum of Neon Art

The Art of Plasma: A Group Exhibit Featuring Works by Over 25 Artists Designing the Improbable: New Works by Wayne Strattman

Exhibit runs through July 30, 2017

A not to be missed show.

Where are the plasma sculptures?

So i'm not seeing new plasma artists, where are you hiding?
Please show your work, as I would love to blog about it, or even better show it in the gallery.
In the mean time, here are 3 more 2015 pieces by the amazing Ed Kirshner.

More art in the gallery...

More art in the gallery...

http://thefloatcenter.com/current.html

It’s Alive!, Plasma Sculpture by Ed Kirshner & Paintings by Yvette Buigues

 Opening Party Saturday November 15th, 6 to 9pm
Show runs November 9th, through January 6th 2015

FLOAT Gallery is once again proud to present the new work from Ed Kirshner one of the worlds leading plasma artists. Celebrating the 4th state of matter, Kirshner continues to advance plasmas elusive self-replication process for us to behold. Adorning the walls of the gallery Yevette Buigues will be displaying her latest work, having taken yet another turn in her ever evolving twist on animals and nature.


About Ed Kirshner, Plasma Sculpor & glass artist
I find the sculpting of kinetic gas plasma within the space of a glass vessel both

fascinating and absorbing. As might be expected from a media based on chaos, my work is very experimental. It is most often unpredictable and surprising, as well as extremely sensitive to fine-tuning and a delicate balance between numerous non-linear variables. The resulting chaotic order is beautiful, enthralling, interactive with the viewer and often mesmerizing. It seems suggestive of many other natural processes and forms. I believe that some of this beauty and attraction derives from an underlying similarity between the processes creating the plasma forms and the circuitry and functioning of our minds. They actually seem to be in tune with each other.

So, like Dr. Frankenstein in his lab, I hover over my glass and gas plasma work, spending many hours mixing, balancing and fine-tuning. Still, the plasma light behaves in a way that I can never completely control. I can change or direct its behavior by varying the pressure and mix of gases, or the frequency and the voltage of the power, but I can never fully predict the detailed effects any of my actions will have. Though frustrating at times, this unpredictability is at the very heart of my work. This is the personality, the mystery, the life that I try to create in my art.
It has been suggested that the self-organizing chaos of gas plasma is one of the very few natural processes, beyond biochemistry, that might evolve the feedback mechanisms to enable self-replication and thus possibly even life. Igor may have had it right when he declared, “It’s alive! It’s alive!”  Aurorasculpture.com
 

About Yvette Buigues, Painter

When art is transcendent, it will take the common and make it profane. The art of Yvette Buigues takes everyday animals in ordinary situations and imbues these friendly subjects with context and dialogue, giving often taken for granted creatures a unique opportunity to speak to viewers through visual expression and become part of a sort of innocent iconography.
Language is the key to transcendence in Buigues' translation of the lives of animals, insects, and all who appear in her work. Buigues' positioning of creatures in silent dialogue evokes sensations of an important announcement, tracing back to the annunciation painters of the Renaissance and early Christianity. What is this message? Is it a call to respect animals and nature? Is it the artist speaking in her own sacred language? Perhaps reaching into Buigues' own cultural background between the United States and Argentina, there is a quiet reverence for animals in their benign yet glorious nature. This reverence could be seen as an emotional or political statement, as animals sometimes appear with weapons, in landscapes, or with flamboyant floral prints. At other times these figures appear with scripts of jumbled language, almost seeming to be speaking in tongues or in a sort of chant, warning us of something.

Buigues' art crosses the border between animal and human, between countries of origin, between love and war. Her work remains humble, even when glamorous. Perhaps it is that humility that her animals remind us to keep in all circumstances. As Rudyard Kipling tells us in the poem IF: “If you can walk with kings without losing the common touch... you'll be a man my son!” Buigues reminds us that we too are animals, often searching within ourselves for that right thing to say.
-Ana Landis Velazquez, HeavyBlackLine.com

"Viscosity" Showcasing the sculpture of Michael Sturtz & Benjamin Cowden

Show runs February 20th through April 14^th , 2012

Viscosity is a mix of kinetic and found objectification art, mimicking and expanding beyond the human experience.

Michael Sturtz:

As a fixture of the Bay Area arts community, Michael has worked as a sculptor, a teacher, and as a facilitator since the early 1990s.  As the founder of  The Crucible  , a non-profit industrial arts education facility and gallery, he is known for his innovative creativity and ability to make challenging artwork and ideas possible.

Michael’s pieces address concept and form through the visualization of fused biological and mechanical elements. His sculptures are hybrids of impossible pairings and momentous environments coming together to radiate destructive and re-constructive energy.

His art showcases a strong juxtaposition between materials including; metals and glass, stone and kinetics, fire and liquid, 3D objects and video.  By contrasting natural functions with industrial and technological processes, Michael has formed a body of work that is incapable of stagnation, and instead explores the exponential evolution of medium and concept. MichaelSturtz.com

Benjamin Cowden:

Benjamin Cowden began working with metal during an undergraduate anthropology project in Cameroon in 1997, where he studied how Baka Pygmies turned worn machetes into utility knives. He later worked with street-jewelers in Costa Rica, learning small metals techniques, before taking a more formal route to education by attending blacksmithing workshops at the John C. Campbell Folkschool in North Carolina. Benjamin was an Artist-in-Residence at the Appalachian Center for Crafts in Tennessee from 2001 to 2003, during which time he focused on utilitarian forged ironwork, including furniture and kitchenware. Cowden began earnestly making sculptures in 2004 when he entered the Master of Fine Arts in Metals program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Making work which viewers can touch and use remained central to Cowden’s work, and throughout his graduate studies Benjamin focused on interactive mechanical devices which addressed human experience. After receiving his M.F.A., Mr. Cowden relocated to Oakland California, where he is continues to explore the depths of mechanical sculpture. His current fascinations include pseudo-random and 3-dimensional movements, as well as 3-D printing in metal.  Twentysevengears.com

Sacred Terrain, New work From Ed Kirshner... Opening Party 2/12/11

Sacred Terrain

Black & white photography by Cathy Shine,
Illuminated by the plasma sculpture of Ed Kirshner.
Guest curator Craig Riedel , free psychic readings by Virginia.
Show runs February 1^st through March 19th
Opening party February 12^th, 2011 6 to 9pm
Live improvised music by Cornelius Boots and Freddi Price

About the artists:

Cathy Shine

Photographing since 1974, Cathy has performed her own darkroom responsibilities, including printing, developing, artistic editing and composition. Working exclusively in the medium of black and white, her efforts have achieved technical elegance demonstrating a true quality un-touched by the onset of the digital age. From 2001 on, Cathy has illustrated her mastery in Sepia thereby enhancing the historical quality of the finished product. Each ultimate piece is a true work of art, sometimes taking 30 hours to complete.

These prints are unique, hand-prepared and timeless. Her photographs of forgotten scenes and now historical memories depict life on the Earth's most spectacular, aesthetic and sacred terrain. All photographs produced in her inventory are hand-processed in a darkroom, hand-spotted and sepia-toned by individual effort. Her images are produced in the traditional concept and not digitally captured or enhanced. Completed photos are burned, dodged and printed on fiber based paper, (now approaching extinction), that demonstrates, (since 1977), years of devotion to her craft. Any Cathy Shine photograph will be an appreciated piece of art and an addition to one's legacy collection. cathyshine.com 

Ed Kirshner 

Artist statement:

Like Dr. Frankenstein in his lab, I hover over my glass and gas plasma work, spending many hours mixing, balancing and fine-tuning. Still, the plasma light behaves in a way that I can never completely control. I can change or direct its behavior by varying the pressure and mix of gases, or the frequency and the voltage of the power, but I can never fully predict the detailed effects any of my actions will have. Though frustrating at times, this unpredictability is at the very heart of my work. This is the personality, the mystery, the life that I try to create in my sculpture.

Ed Kirshner of Oakland, California was born in New York City in 1940.  He studied architecture and sculpture at Cornell University, the University of California at Berkeley and the Oskar Kokoschka School of Vision in Austria.  After thirty years of developing and financing affordable housing, he returned to study art at the California College of the Arts in Oakland as well as at Pilchuck and Corning glass schools and Northlands Creative Glass in Scotland.  His glass and gas plasma sculptures have been exhibited throughout the U.S. as well as in Taiwan, Japan, Australia, Austria, France and Turkey. His work, “Cone of Chaos”, was a Corning Glass selection in 2000 and is included in Corning's recent book "25 Years of New Glass Review."  His piece, "Java High," was a recent acquisition of the di Rosa Fine Arts Preserve in Napa, California.  Ed has taught glass and gas plasma workshops in the U.S. as well as in Asia and Europe and is on the faculty of The Crucible Fire Arts School in Oakland and the Glass Furnace in Turkey.  He is also on the Technical Advisory Board of the Museum of Neon Art (MONA) in Los Angeles and served several years as its Treasurer and a Trustee.  aurorasculpture.com 

About the Guest Curator, Craig Riedel:

Professional photographer and owner of Gamma black + white photo lab in San Francisco, Riedel has been printing and processing “Old School” negatives for over 30 years.  gammasf.com.

Opening night music:

Cornelius Boots and Freddi Price will be creating structured, improvised textures in response to the artwork utilizing shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute), Taimu (bass shakuhachi), clarinet, bass clarinet, electric guitar and drone loops.

East Bay reed renegade Cornelius Boots is a progressive rock composer, bass clarinet performance specialist, wu wei woodwind instructor and Zen flute adept.  Since 1996, he has led and released two albums with Edmund Welles, the world’s only composing bass clarinet quartet, for which he has composed and arranged over 60 pieces of virtuosic “heavy chamber music.”  Recent projects include Sabbaticus Rex (elemental sound-structuring ensemble) and mukyoku etudes: 27 Training and Performance Pieces for Taimu shakuhachi (large Zen bamboo flute). He has three music degrees (clarinet, audio, jazz) and is currently working towards his shihan (master teaching license) in shakuhachi. sabbaticusrex.com