WAAC Culture Corner: Leaf-ing for September with John Waski
Art by John WaskiPrepared by WAAC Member and Westport Poet Laureate Diane LowmanWelcome back to the Westport Local Press’s Westport Arts Advisory Committee’s “Culture Corner.” Each month, the WAAC scours our 33.45 square miles and highlight one of the many artists – visual, written, performance, and other – who call Westport home. These artists create a spectrum of color that shines over town like the rainbows often seen over the Saugatuck, so we have made “color” our theme.
In September, just as the foliage takes on rainbow hues of its own, we focus on the colors of those leaves: brown and deep burgundy, among others, as we highlight local visual artist John Waski.
I have known John and his family for most of the 20+ years that I’ve lived in Westport; his daughters and my boys attended KHS together. Waski and his wife Norma run a product design and branding business from their home studio here in town. He studied fine art and design at the Atlanta College of Art, and she has a corporate background, so they married not only each other, but their skills too, to create this successful venture.
Working from their home office (since long before COVID-19) allows Waski the freedom to pursue his own personal art as well. He sketches constantly, and his subjects and media have evolved over time. He finds inspiration in the world around him and from fellow artists such as Jim Dine and Antoni Tapies. I have followed him on social media for as long as I’ve known him and appreciate his style and focus on the natural world. It was, in fact, the paintings that he did on dried leaves that drew me to his work, and I purchased not only two of those but one of his skull series as well.
He now works on large canvases in his home studio, incorporating organic materials into the enamel paintings. Waski notes: “This ‘Distant Figure’ series relates to the human relationship with nature. At times we forget that we are all part of nature. We tend to surround ourselves with material objects that make living with nature easier, and sometimes that creates a disconnect. Portraying a skeletal image of a stripped figure shows the vulnerability of our relationship with the environment. The pose, whether lying, sitting, or bending in an awkward way gives the sense of being out of balance or uncomfortable withing nature.”
He has shown his work in Mesa, AZ, Bridgeport at the Discovery Museum, and in a Brooklyn gallery. His community involvement included creating birdhouses for the Project Return fundraising auctions for several years; he created one from a small guitar. He feels strongly that art ought not to “spoon feed” perspectives to viewers, but rather encourage them to ask questions and begin a dialogue. In his case, he hopes to provoke questions about our relationship to the environment – and how we might improve it.
Waski plans a pop-up show of his work this month at his 2 Ivanhoe Lane studio: Please feel free to see him and his artwork there on 9/24 from 6-8pm, and 9/25&26 from 12-5pm, or on Instagram @johnwaski.
