James Entz: Studio Tour Ten Artist

“Water, like painting is elemental.  Water is essential to life, yet it’s also the vehicle that helps the paint to flow, and it’s the metaphor for my creative process.  As Lao Tsu says, ‘The highest good is like water.  Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.  It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.’ Water is the organizing concept of my current body of work of layered sculptural paintings and writings: I am examining and responding to how water shapes us and the landscape.”….James Entz

Website: jamesentz.com

Studio Tour 9 Photo Essay #1

In the Studios with the artists of STUDIO TOUR 9, held on March 19-20-21, 2010.

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Anne Haxton: light sculpture
Anne was the featured artist for STUDIO TOUR 9.

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Rick Badgley: handcrafted furniture

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Carole Clum: clay and metal sculpture

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Elsah Cort: collage, photography, mixed media

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Nikki Crain: handweaving

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James Entz: sculptural paintings

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Aranga Firstman: collage, water based mixed media

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Photos by Marion Hultgren and Elsah Cort, all rights reserved.

Meeting the Studio Tour Artists: James Entz

James Entz
sculptural painting, acrylic on wood

Studio Tour website page: threeriversartstudiotour.com/entz9.html

March exhibition at Fig Tree Gallery, March 4-28, 2010.
Water: New Work by James Entz
Artist reception on March 4 from 5-8 pm during Fresno downtown ArtHop.
644 Van Ness Ave, Fresno.  Gallery open Fri-Sat-Sun from 12-4 pm.

“Water,like painting, is elemental. Water is essential to life, yet it’s also the vehicle that helps the paint to flow, and it’s the metaphor for my creative process. “Water” is the organizing concept of the body of work I am creating, of layered sculptural paintings and writings, which will be shown at Fig Tree Gallery in Fresno in March of 2010.”

James Entz’s exhibition of new work (sculptural paintings and some writings) explores the idea of water as the vehicle of the aqueous medium he works in, as a metaphor for the most valued aspect of his studio practice, “the creative flow–those moments of working transcendence,” as he says, and as the scarce resource and commodity that pervades California politics. “We are running our rivers dry here in the west,” says Entz. “We import water as the fuel for population and economic growth, and mine our groundwater as we did oil in the last century, at an unsustainable rate.”

Though Entz recognizes that water is “captured, diverted, and harnessed for human purposes, especially here in the Southwest”, he sees that, “water has carved this landscape, and continues to be a transformative presence in nature, transporting us out of the mundane disconnections of our modern world into nature’s flow. We live in aqueous bodies; our planet is an aqueous body; it seems that water and its qualities are our nature.”

In many ways, the topological paintings and writings in this exhibition have water as their source: celebrating, revealing, and reflecting water’s hard realities and unique qualities.

Living in the Kaweah River watershed in the Southern Sierra gives Entz a unique perspective on water use–from wild river to dam to irrigated farmland of the Central Valley.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR. Porterville College, Porterville, California. 2005 to present.
ADJUNCT FACULTY. College of the Sequoias, Visalia, California.  1988 to 2005.
•Taught studio courses–beginning and advanced drawing, beginning and advanced color and design, life drawing, and studio painting. Have taught ceramics and crafts courses.
•Taught art history (prehistory to present) and art  appreciation courses.
•Developed my own slide library (for use in the classroom) of over 5,000 art images.
•Co-created and team taught a 9 unit interdisciplinary (art history, literature, and history) course on myth, which we called “Merlin, Madonna, and the Big  Bad Wolf”. Only course of its kind (a learning community) as highly integrated and as ambitious in its scope amongst community colleges in the state of California (at the time). Created the visual textbook for this course.  Received a $1000 faculty enrichment grant for the development of this new course.

EDUCATION
OTIS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN, Los Angeles, California. M.F.A.  in Painting. 1986.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Irvine, California.
B.A. in Studio Art. 1983.
CUESTA COLLEGE, San Luis Obispo, California.
A.A. in Liberal Arts.  1981

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How to get Studio Tour tickets…earlybird price until March 5.

“Water” sculptural painting exhibit

Studio Tour artist, James Entz, will show new work from March 4-28, 2010, at Fig Tree Gallery in Fresno.  An artist’s reception will be held on March 4 from 5-8 pm, as part of the monthly Art Hop event. Fig Tree Gallery is located at 644 Van Ness Avenue (in downtown Fresno.) The gallery is open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, from noon to 4 pm.

work in progress for the new exhibition

James Entz’s exhibition of new work (sculptural paintings and some writings) explores the idea of water as the vehicle of the aqueous medium he works in, as a metaphor for the most valued aspect of his studio practice, “the creative flow–those moments of working transcendence,” as he says, and as the scarce resource and commodity that pervades California politics. “We are running our rivers dry here in the west,” says Entz. “We import water as the fuel for population and economic growth, and mine our groundwater as we did oil in the last century, at an unsustainable rate.”

Though Entz recognizes that water is “captured, diverted, and harnessed for human purposes, especially here in the Southwest”, he sees that, “water has carved this landscape, and continues to be a transformative presence in nature, transporting us out of the mundane disconnections of our modern world into nature’s flow. We live in aqueous bodies; our planet is an aqueous body; it seems that water and its qualities are our nature.”

In many ways, the topological paintings and writings in this exhibition have water as their source: celebrating, revealing, and reflecting water’s hard realities and unique qualities.

Living in the Kaweah River watershed in the Southern Sierra gives Entz a unique perspective on water use–from wild river to dam to irrigated farmland of the Central Valley.