Dan Anderson &

Steve Hartman

Opening Reception Friday December 6 - 7-9pm
Showing from December 6 - January 20

Sacred Grounds Cafe - 233 N Main St, Edwardsville, IL 62025

DAN ANDERSON

As soon as the Gogh Getters invited me to exhibit at Sacred Grounds Café, I knew I wanted to create something entirely different from my ceramic work that has been influenced by water towers. These vintage Japanese baseball card images are right up my alley, because I love baseball and I’ve always been drawn to Asian arts and culture.

I recently discovered John Gall’s Sayonara Home Run! (Chronicle Books, 2006), a wonderful exploration of Japanese baseball trading cards, and I was eager to honor some of the book’s narrative images by incorporating them into the creation of ceramic decals. The result is this series of square and rectangular plates I like to call sushi trays.

The images of the Japanese baseball players fascinate me. Visually, they’re reminiscent of Pop Art paintings of the 1960s — a style and an era that inspired my early approaches to artmaking. I find the bright colors to be bold and warm at the same time, and the off-register dot patterns of the silk-screening process innately charming.

After photographing images, I sent them to a commercial decal company, which printed the decals on a four-color laser printer using glaze toner instead of ink. I especially enjoyed making the images large enough so the dot patterns in the originals became prominent features of each tile.

STEVE HARTMAN

In 2013, I added painting to my creative career as a Creative Director. I’m not one to stay focosed on one medium, and my work has evolved from painting loose interpretations of objects and location with oils, into more abstract studies using spray paint and watercolors. One thing has been consistant: the use of color. Showing with Dan Anderson is an honor. He’s a keystone influence of the art scene in Edwardsville that resonates nationwide, and has been a great sounding board and critic of my art