When I was looking for Gary Passanise's combination home and studio, people up the hill around the spaces of Craig Downs, Sarah Paulsen and Stan Chisholm told me to follow the lane down the hill and look for the hobbit hole. Around a bend, in the lowest of the old commercial buildings built into the hillside over the Mississippi, was a door leading still further downward.That's where I found him in an office/sitting room. The living quarters and studio were down yet more steep steps. Loft-style living and working space blended into one another. Passanise is a painter in the tradition of abstract expressionism. The work hanging there, perhaps still in progress, reminded me a bit of Anselm Kiefer and Clyfford Still. Visit his sophisticated web site to see a variety of his work. His biography is worth a look. Besides his own art, Passanise is director of painting at the Leigh Gerdine School of Fine Art at Webster University in St. Louis.
I'm still inviting St. Louis artists to contact me if they would like to be part of this series.
WHAT I'M TRYING TO FIGURE OUT TODAY: How to use the Vanishing Point filter in Photoshop to paste text shaped in perspective into an image. Come back on Friday for Theme Day and grade my work.
TOMORROW: St. Louis artists portraits continue with Amy Thompson, printmaker.
HEY, WAIT A MINUTE - I just realized that last Saturday was my 500th post! Are we there yet?
