I hope all has been well and that you’ve been safe and healthy!
Lately I’ve been so occupied with a number of things in my personal life, that I’ve not had the chance to share with you some of the projects I’ve been up to. As I’m in a bit of a “cool down” period right now, I can finally have this chance!
I’m delighted to share with you all that my newest work, Zwischen den Butterblumenfeilen, is a contributing piece for the Dark to Light exhibition that will be on display in the Art Depot’s Spotlight Gallery from August 8th – September 19th in Abingdon, Virginia.
Benefiting the Ashleigh Langbein Project Foundation, the exhibition showcases the artworks of 21 artists across the US in response to Ashleigh Langbein’s poignant literature. For the show, I’ve selected this particular writing as I found myself immediately connected to it…
“Death and Grief”
“Dense Macabre Round-a-bout of skeletal fractions, Bones picked for sport. A festival of frantic actions, of the ephemeral type of sort. A shot taken- gone through the ribs, Albeit alcohol or a bullet, who knows? A feeble old man comes, and they call dibs, There massive numbers only grow. A prayer is made where one of them rests, The 1st prayer to him ever spoken. A mist appeared inside his chest, so he vanished now, unbroken. For years now, unbroken. For years now they’ve all been waiting, as the people they love grow older. They keep each other company-craving. For a name whispered on a sepulcher.”
The passing of my father was one of the most monumental experiences that shaped me into the artist I am today. Watching both of his cancer and alcoholism strip him of strength, awareness and mobility had all been instrumental in my understanding of what death and greif entail.
Naturally, the relatable sense of anguish, as transcribed so vividly in this poem, is what prompted me to demonstrate my connection. The subject of my work touches upon the complexities of loss and sorrow in addition to paying homage to all of those who’ve battled, and or continue to, suffer from cancer and alcoholism.
Zwischen den Butterblumenfeilen, 2020 graphite on paper, 11 x 17
Those of you who are in the VA area, I hope you all have the opportunity to view the outstanding artworks in response to the lovely poetry of Ashleigh Langbein. A huge thank you to Rayne Singree and Paula for putting together such a remarkable exhibition. To view the gallery’s website, please follow the link here: http://www.abingdonartsdepot.org
Below is a beautiful description that was written for the ALP open call:
“The Ashleigh Langbein Project was founded in 2017 by Paula and Russell Langbein in honor of their daughter to continue her legacy through acts of love and support. The ALP works to fund scholarships for students in Psychology and Theater at the post-secondary level through endowments established at Emory and Henry College, Ashleigh’s Alma Mater. With this exhibition, the foundation hopes to connect to Ashleigh’s words and story to a wider audience by asking artists to create a piece in response to a selection of her poetry. A prolific writer, Ashleigh’s poems talk about her struggles and victories, the light and dark. Thus, the title of the show: Dark to Light, inviting us to do what Ashleigh did for so many people she met- turn the darkness in this world into light.”
Friday, I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in fine art drawing with a minor in painting from the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts.ย I had the tremendous honor of delivering the commencement address as the class of 2019’s student speaker.ย
I couldn’t have been more thankful for all that I’ve been given by my fantastic peers and mentors; Roland Becerra, Dr. Janis Mink and Dr. Charlotte Gray. These lovely souls have supported me in a number of ways. With their emotional encouragement and academic guidance, these individuals have transcended so much more than the role of being our educators.ย They’ve been our protectors, challengers, students and dearest of friends. There were never any questions asked when it came to validating their care for the student body.
Because of my classmates, family and professors, I’ve found the strength in myself to overcome many fears and hardships. It’s because of these souls, that I was able to speak before everyone and confidently express just how much my life had been impacted.
These people had faith in me when I reached moments of crippling self doubt. They’ve brought me back from one of the darkest points in my life and have saved me from myself a countless number of times. Simple moments of laughter, group excursions to Lake Compounce, or the simple lunches together before a horror movie induced night, have been the most cherished memories that I’ve ever had.
There’s never enough words that I can fully say to articulate all of my love for these artists.ย Thank you so much for pushing me when I’ve felt at my weakest. You are all such amazing souls.ย Congratulations everyone! ๐
Image courtesy of Viktoria Sundqvist / Hearst Connecticut Media Image courtesy of Viktoria Sundqvist / Hearst Connecticut Media Image courtesy of Viktoria Sundqvist / Hearst Connecticut Media
I’m extremely excited to relay that tomorrow, I graduate as a drawing major with a painting minor from the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts. It’s been an incredible journey these past few years, and I wanted to celebrate by sharing with you what I’ve composed for my undergraduate thesis project.
*Just a quick note, my drawings depict the male and female unclothed form with heavy anatomical alterations. For any friends who have sensitivity to nude art or abstracted figures, I just wanted to let you know ahead of time so that way you don’t have to look through my works if undesired. *
So before I begin, I would like to introduce the greatest influence on me as not just artist, but for everything else in my life. This is my father Sal, who passed away from a rare form of cancer just over three years ago.
Salvatore Joseph Tasca jr.
Watching him suffer with such aggressive and painful symptoms, resulted in a pivotal turning point in my life that completely altered my perspective for the way that I view things.
Following his passing, I started inventing figures with muscle and joint alterations. By personifying the deterioration of what was happening to my father, these forms assumed themselves as channels for my frustrations in having to watch someone that I loved struggle.
The more that I explored the motif of anatomical distortion, the more I began to realize that these figures were actually speaking to me about something more. In a sense, they were becoming a body of unconscious self-portraiture.
Around this time last year, I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, which is a disorder characterized by heavy amounts of fatigue, brain fog and chronic joint and muscle pain.
Having learned this, coupled with the loss of my father, I started to grow extremely discouraged to the point where I started allowing it to impair me artistically.
So towards the end of the term, I decided to focus on an entirely different thought process altogether with. I felt that in doing so, It would enable me to better accept the events that were going in my life. Consequently, this led to my original concept for a senior project.
Something that Iโve always wanted in life was to find love. Building a deep connection with someone has always been one of the most important things to me, and after looking at the paintings of Michelle Doll, I was completely inspired to manifest this need of mine into a full body of work. Although, the more that I tried to keep going with it, the more that I felt an unexplained corruption to my confidence in my ability to keep moving forward with the concept.
There was something that was holding me back and I just honestly wasn’t sure what that was at the time.
So after putting up all of my works for my first open school critique, a vast majority suggested that I was actually doing the exact opposite of what was intended. Because of this, it conducted strong encouragements for me to work with my fragmented figures again.
By this point, I was so overwhelmed and frustrated, that for the complete purpose of appease, I scrapped the entire monthโs worth of investment to pursue these figures again when I just emotionally wasnโt ready to.
So I tried again…
During the process of starting over I was looking at the works of Albrecht Durer, Nathan Reidt and Zdzisลaw Beksiลski to pull inspiration from.
These were the first two pieces that I started for the project. I decided to approach them with an experimental attitude to further explore the abstracted forms of Beksinski, while applying the value structure of Nathan, that was than anchored by the calligraphic mark-making of durer.
Although I enjoyed the processes of working more experimentally I found myself more at home with a piece that I composed with a limited value range rather than one of stark contrast.
I approached this with the idea of dissolving the forms in and out of the spaces they were in; picking and choosing certain areas to be defined or not. Each figure was purely innovative, without being drawn from life or with photo references.
No matter how badly I wanted to hide it, I found this method of working spoke volumes to everything that I was trying to suppress in my life…
Sensations of fatigue and memory impairment….
Loss and immobility…
Or for how I perceive my own body to look….
At this point in the project, one of the faculty told me,
“Someone has got to love these bodiesโ.
This in particular stayed with me more than any other commentary I’d been given from the instructors. I brewed on their words for such a long period of time, well up until the end of the semester. So, I essentially did just that.
I started giving these bodies someone that could love them for all that they incompletely were.
By entwining these figures in states of embrace, I felt that they were beginning to transcend everything that I originally sought after.
For the first time, I saw that these figures were redefining intimacy for themselves. They were limited, yet encouraged and supported by their accenting partners. They were whole.
Truthfully, it was the most excited that I’d been about my project all year.
It finally felt as though everything was coming together for me.
Although, In early February just after completing this piece, I went through a very dark period that deteriorated many things for me. I lost entire faith in myself and felt completely undeserving of the things that I loved.
All of my artistic investments, passions and interests quickly became questionable to me, and the stresses of these feelings caused my health to decline.
Under this fact I had no energy, I wasnโt sleeping well and I was finding myself in a constant state of worry.
Thankfully, after a month of several doctorโs trips, I was able to get the proper care that I needed to get myself back on track.
Although I started feeling healthy enough to try and produced work again, I can’t say that something didnโt change. I realized that the void I was feeling over my original project was because I was unconsciously trying to build a world that wasnโt permissibly my reality.
This understanding hit me harder than I ever expected, and with it also came the realization that I was pushing these figures away because I didnโt want to accept that my father was gone and that they were also projections for how I see myself physically.
No matter how angry or upset it made me, I had to accept that I couldnโt hold back any more.
It was really than that I started realizing that it was ok to let myself to feel these things and to be patient with myself all the same.
If there is one thing I want my viewers to receive from my work, It would be for them look at illness with a different perspective.
My father taught me that there are some things left completely out of our control, but if we carry forward with every ounce of love and determination, we can find the strength to pull through, even it means taking a break when necessary.
In the words of Confucious, โ Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. โ
The Roots Project
Rochelle Tasca
Artist Statement
Seen through the lenses of a dysmorphic perception of self, manifestations of sexual trauma, loss, violation, neglect, depression and chronic illness speak to one another with languages of flesh. Gentle caresses of graphite to paper breath life into fragmented forms of subtle anatomical manipulation that are obscured behind their own wet, matted and dirtied hair. Calligraphic mark-making trace the landscape of each figureโs skin to create a sense of sculptural three-dimension. While projecting an influence by the hands of Albrecht Durer, I utilize integrations of bodily elongation for my work to evoke conversations of empathy and compassion.
Each figure begins as a pencil sketch that gets refined and adjusted before the final idea is conceived. A series of these sketches grow to test different dynamic-fusion arrangements. They are then transferred onto a larger surface, with where more intimate line work and detail is applied. The figures are in a constant state of change from one another, developing to assume different identities of ailments.
Fall 2018 – Spring 2019โ Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts Undergraduate Thesis Project
RochelleTascaArt 