By Nanette Wiser
PAMELA JOY TROW
Her newest book of poem and illustrations is mesmerizing and an ode to Mother Nature: There’s A Crystal Clear Pond: The Unseen World of Water Pollution Coloring Book. Working with content director Jeremiah D. Tipton (funded by NEA, Pinellas County and Creative Pinellas), she is hosting free interactive workshops at local libraries 11/12 Dunedin, 12/3 Tarpon Springs and 12/17 Safety Harbor; attendees get the book, colored pencils, and other goodies. Pamela finds inspiration in the places she has lived. Brooklyn instilled a love for mythology, archetypes, and metaphors, Santa Fe inspired her Day of the Dead work, and Florida’s West Coast has prompted creations of fantasy, mermaids, and sea life themes. Joyous art is her jam, and Trow’s artworks can be purchased on greeting cards, prints, stickers, bookmarks in stores and museum shops across the United States as well as the UK, Ireland, and Paris. Locally, you can find her creations at holiday shows (Florida CraftArt, Morean Arts Center) plus The Merchant, Florida CraftArt Gallery, Dunedin Fine Arts Center, Zaiye Artizan Market and Sail Market. www.pamelajoytrow.com
HOLIDAY GIFTS
Looking for unique presents that support local artists? Shop the weekly markets for handmade crafts, Shopapalooza, Sail Market, local galleries and museum gift shops, especially Museum of Fine Arts, The Dali, MAACM, The Imagine Museum, Morean Arts Center, Creative Clay, Florida CraftArt, WADA and 2nd Saturday Art Walk downtown St. Pete; find them in PN’s Arts & Leisure listings. Pami Designs’ cell phone purses are wearable art, and I love my Bucs, flamingo and typewriter bling bling designs. www.pamipocket.com
THE TAO OF DOW The Museum of the Arts & Crafts Movement (MAACM) is showcasing the legendary artist and visual composition guru Arthur Wesley Dow through 1/15/2023. On exhibit are 18 color woodblocks, six paintings, and 41 original cyanotypes from the rare Ipswich Days album. Also included in the exhibit are the original album By Salt Marshes, where Dow illustrated his friend Everett Stanley Hubbard’s poems with simple woodcuts, and the three sets of Ipswich Prints, which include 18 prints of Dow’s original designs. Dow began experimenting with woodblock printing in 1891, when he looked for new, non-Western inspirations for landscape painting. While researching at the Boston Public Library, he discovered the flat, linear woodblock prints of Japanese-master Hokusai. Struck by the simplicity, elegance, and decorative beauty of Hokusai’s compositions, Dow’s way of seeing landscapes was transformed. Dow embraced certain compositional techniques from Japanese sources which defined the ukiyo-e aesthetic: bold lines, flattened planes of color, asymmetry, truncated forms, the division of an image into sections through devices like windows, screens and walls, and the use of strong diagonals and unusual perspectives.
In ukiyo-e prints, Dow found an alternative to traditional academic techniques, wedding an admiration for Oriental aesthetics with an English Arts and Crafts sensibility and seeking a synthesis of Western and Eastern art. Dow called his woodcuts “color themes” and executed every step of the printing process: choosing the image, carving the blocks, selecting and applying colors, and printing each impression by hand. He frequently experimented with color in his prints, using the same blocks to make multiple impressions in different inks. which enabled him to suggest different seasons or times of day.