Opening Reception: Friday, January 27th, 6-9 pm
Closing Reception: Friday, February 24th, 6-9 pm
Show Closing: Friday, March 10
About “The Odd Couple -Unusual Works by Joe Cordaro & Jock Pottle”: A combined collection of two artists drawing inspiration from the world around them to create similarly styled works through different mediums. Their pieces showcase the elaborateness of Joe Cordaro’s simple hand drawings when combined with the digital arts. At the same time Jock Pottle employs his skills as a professional photographer to capture detail in his colorful etchings.
Joe Cordaro’s Bio:
Joe Cordaro started out as a traditional pen and ink artist, but found himself attracted to the digital arts. When asked about his work, Cordaro says, “I have never had any intention or interest in letting the computer create the artwork; consequently, all my present work is still entirely hand drawn and painted with the use of a digital pen or stylus and tablet, along the appropriate high-end software.”
Once Cordaro completes the basic artwork and elements of an image, he then incorporates the computer to duplicate, arrange, and rework aspects of what he’s created, until a new image makes itself known. He then jumps back in with his pen to enhance or add to the new digital image. Artwork is output as a giclée, or a digital image, and is printed on premium, photo quality, resin-coated, luster paper in a wide variety of sizes.
Much of Cordaro’s artwork in “The Odd Couple” show represents what he says are the pressures, stresses, and ills, real and imagined, that we face in today’s society. Cordaro says, “Society has set up a collection of norms that do not reflect an individual’s reality, but establish in many cases, unachievable goals. As a result, instead of focusing solely on our own circumstances to better ourselves we are diverted, trying to live up to this fake ‘normal’.”
Jock Pottle’s Bio:
Growing up in the 1950's in North Carolina, Jock Pottle had an older brother who convinced him there was "something in those bushes." That along with the "Twilight Zone" and "Chiller Theatre" created the early foundation for the drawings that come out of Pottle's head today. Pottle suppressed those early images and instead turned his artistic energies to photography, eventually becoming a successful architectural photographer in New York City for the past thirty years. In January 2003, Pottle finally sat down and began to draw those buried memories from his childhood and life as a young adult. His first drawing was a simple rendering of a man and children running through the woods. Expressing his thoughts on paper initiated a well-spring of creativity, opening up a world of imagination that photography never offered.
Pottle says, “An observer can get lost in the detail of his work, whether it's a rendering of a festive Zydeco house party, or a dark look at the animal kingdom, my creations are both fanciful and frightening. Be it an oversized killer turtle, the Devil hiding behind a door or visions of Elvis' life in hiding, every drawing is made up of many small pieces of the things that I remembers in my life's experiences.” Pottle credits many artists that have influenced him - the late Glen Rounds for his simplicity and humor, Billy Ray Hussey, a potter in North Carolina, for his animated character development and sense of humor, and his father-in-law, Filippo Balboni for his early encouragement and continuing support. And finally, the never-ending battle, good versus evil.