Snow, Flora, & Fauna

Show at the Creative Alliance from February 26 to April 9, 2022.

"Cartography" {detail} Snowflakes and acrylic on canvas.

"Nature Morte (Still Life)" Fauna, flora and acrylic on canvas

"Nature Morte (Still Life)" {detail}

"Organic Destruction"

Two of my pieces are included in the “Organic Destruction” exhibit at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore from today till May 29.

It’s a compelling title — “Organic Destruction” — playing off human interaction with Nature: Both how human activity seems to destroy much of Nature, how Nature destroys human creation — and what interplay there may be between the two.

The pieces were chosen by curator Thomas James and after a time — and doing more work on the second — the wisdom of the choices became apparent to me. They are in a sense, related. Similar in size, they are both uniformly applied acrylic spray layerings. "Outside In" is done on one of the most ethereal natural substances, snow; while "Purpose" is done on a hard, highly "artificial" object.

"Outside In" 2019 36 x 24 inches acrylic on canvas, with snow visibly absent $6,000 The piece is made outdoors with quintessentially "outside" material -- snow -- but is made to be shown inside. It gives a sense of portraying a distant planet -- or …

"Outside In"
2019
36 x 24 inches
acrylic on canvas, with snow visibly absent
$6,000
The piece is made outdoors with quintessentially "outside" material -- snow -- but is made to be shown inside. It gives a sense of portraying a distant planet -- or your own insides. The title is also an allusion to the animated Pixar film "Inside Out", which deals with emotional issues felt by a girl, exhibiting the capacity of major US corporations to produce content that prods into psychological issues. Here, the snow "breakup" technique is a metaphor for emotional release, a letting go, or landslide. We understand the "outside world" while we are materially made of it. The use of organic material and processes is in strong contrast to Pixar's use of artificial "unreal" computer graphics, though "Outside In" is "animated" in that it features vibrant colors and depicts motion.

"Purpose of the Petroleum Age: Bessie’s Bosom" (detail) Completed 2021 31 x 23 inches acrylic on car radiator with samaras and spider webs $2,500 This piece is made from the failed radiator of an old car nicknamed “Bessie”. It is the "purpose of the…

"Purpose of the Petroleum Age: Bessie’s Bosom" (detail)
Completed 2021
31 x 23 inches
acrylic on car radiator with samaras and spider webs
$2,500
This piece is made from the failed radiator of an old car nicknamed “Bessie”. It is the "purpose of the petroleum age” in that it not only is made from an auto part, but with acrylic paint -- plastic derived from petroleum product. Most of the colors used are either of “Bessie” or a female breast, playing with the tendency of people to form an intimate bond with their automobiles. Visible are circles (wheels) and some areola-looking elements. Samaras in the piece allude to flora such as leaves getting under the hood of a car. Ultimately, the car, and what it symbolizes, will fail and Nature will work its way in and get the last laugh. Indeed, while the piece is made from an artificial object (a radiator) having an artificial substance (acrylic spray paint) and an artificial process (sanding down) repeatedly applied to it -- its final form has distinctly "organic looking" detailing to it, viewable with a microscope.

Report on CBS Burlington affiliate WCAX: "Maryland artist refining snowflake art"

See video report.

ROCHESTER, Vt. (WCAX) - A Maryland artist in Vermont for the winter is attempting to preserve snowflakes through art -- literally.

Sam Husseini is in Rochester for the winter attempting to preserve the dendrites in individual snowflakes by using acrylic spray paint over canvases made of Vermont-related things like tin-roof pieces. He started these experiments a couple of years ago, back in Washington D.C. after a snow storm. Samples of Sam’s work can be found on his website. He’s not sure how the final products turn out or how to best preserve them.

“I’m going to put some in a garage and some in a warm area because I don’t know what’s best to make them preserve. That might mean I lose some, but hopefully, I keep some really get the best outcome by just being aware about what’s really going on and what nature really wants to have happen. And just being aware of the tools that you have to capture the beauty of that,” Hussein said.

He’s taking inspiration from Vermont’s famed William “Snowflake” Bentley and says he can understand how Bentley got so passionate in his craft.

Scott Fleishman caught up with Husseini in Rochester as he experimented with some freshly-fallen flakes.



Washington Post review of my ““Invisibly Present/Visibly Absent” show: “Artist explores the dissonance between humanity and the world”

By Mark Jenkins (see original)

To convey the quality of something that’s missing is a formidable technical challenge for a visual artist. Doing so can also function as a metaphor, as Sam Husseini demonstrates in “Invisibly Present/Visibly Absent,” his Gallery Al Quds show. A Jordan-born Marylander of Palestinian heritage, the artist applies paint to natural materials that disappear, whether largely or entirely, in the finished work.

The most imperceptible of Husseini’s ingredients is snow. He sticks it to a canvas and then covers it with layers of sprayed paint. When the snow melts, it leaves dried ponds and rivulets amid the textured, multihued pigment. Since Husseini often employs earthy and metallic shades, the craggy finished paintings sometimes suggest topographical renderings of the artist’s sandy ancestral region. He titled one “Cradle” after noticing that two prominent fissures resembled the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Traces of other natural elements, among them flowers and even remains of dead birds, persist in some of the paintings, although not always identifiably. One picture is made entirely of the natural tints left behind by decayed leaves; others incorporate grass or spider webs. Husseini also paints on found objects, including a car radiator and window screens. The latter were partly inspired by the much more conventional pictures found on old Baltimore rowhouses.

Husseini, who also works in journalism, is not the sort of artist who stays mum about his interests and references. Each of his works comes with an explanation, which can be quite involved. In addition to musing on dispossessed Palestinians and the relationship between the United States and the Arab world, the painter invokes the Tao Te Ching’s teachings about the universe’s natural order. He has named one canvas “Accelerate,” for an R.E.M. song, and another, the uncharacteristically pretty “Gain-of-Function,” for the term used by biological research labs for making a pathogen more lethal. Husseini “sought to co-mission Nature as a collaborator,” explains his statement, but his paintings depict a world where humanity and the world are profoundly out of balance.

Sam Husseini: Invisibly Present/Visibly Absent Through Oct. 31 at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery Al Quds, 2425 Virginia Ave. NW. Open by appointment.

My 9-11 and Jack Whitten's

I'm not out to compare myself to Jack Whitten, but on this day, my mind is on his 9-11 story and my own. 

I'm sure we all have lots of 9-11 stories, but I told one of mine for the first time in my new art show, "Invisibly Present/Visibly Absent" that just opened at Gallery Al-Quds at the Jerusalem Fund near the Kennedy Center.

The piece is "The Scorching Sun Which Brings Them Forth".  

On Sept. 11, 2001, my then-partner was visiting me in D.C. and was helping out a bit with my media and political work. She was set to leave town that afternoon, but of course stayed after the attacks -- the planes stopped flying and she helped me full time at my job. We worked nonstop, trying to get information out that might avert the coming further catastrophes. After about two weeks, I took her to Union Station so she could finally go back to Texas, where she was in grad school. Exhausted, I walked in the area, ending up at the Library of Congress, where they had a remarkable art exhibit about prophetic visions. Finally, I went to the main reading room, sunk in a chair to feel like I could breathe for the first time in weeks and looked up at the rotunda to see written on a plaque what appeared to be an ironic boast: "We Taste the Spices of Arabia Yet Never Feel the Scorching Sun Which Brings Them Forth." The quote appears to be from Dudley North, a wealthy British merchant and political apparatchik who was treasurer of the English Levant Company.

My really dealing with 9-11 in a painting was probably inspired by Jack Whitten. Below is text from a 2009 interview with the artist, who died in 2018. Everyone has heard his voice, he's the person who says "Holy shit!" in what I believe is the only video of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. He then made a great painting titled 9-11-01. He talked about both of these below with Judith Olch Richards for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

MR. WHITTEN: Now I was in the street that day when the planes came over. There was a gas leak in the street and I went out with the firemen, which I always do. It's always a policy of mine when I hear fire trucks to go downstairs and see what's going on, especially in that area of Manhattan. 

MS. RICHARDS: Especially since you had a fire.

MR. WHITTEN: Yeah, and as I'm talking to the firemen, that sound came over our head, huge, loud, tremendous sound, and all of us looked up. The young Frenchman that was doing the documentary [9/11, 2002] with the fire department swung his camera up. As he comes up, half of my body is in that shot. This is the first shot of that, what happened. 

MS. RICHARDS: Would you just say that Lispenard is about a mile north of the Twin Towers? 

MR. WHITTEN: About that, or less, yes, quite close. 

MS. RICHARDS: Yes. 

MR. WHITTEN: Lispenard is a block below Canal Street. 

MS. RICHARDS: Right.

MR. WHITTEN: We looked up just in time to see this plane over our head, low, wobbling, making a beeline to the World Trade and ramming into it. On that first video when you hear somebody say, "Holy shit!" that's me. [Laughs.] That was my expression, "holy shit." That damn thing rammed in there and a big gaping hole. 

MS. RICHARDS: Yes, I read you said you had no doubt that it was not an accident. 

MR. WHITTEN: My gut feeling, I'm there, the [fire] captain I remember was there, my tenant downstairs was there, and I remember the captain said, it's a horrible accident. I said, "man that ain't no fucking accident." Excuse me word, but that's what I said. I said, "no, that ain't no fucking accident" and I remember my tenant, "what do you mean, you saw what I saw, you saw what happened." I said, "damn right I saw what happened but it ain't no accident, no way." That was my gut feeling. I had no logical reason or whatever to say but that was my gut feeling. It ain't no accident. 

MS. RICHARDS: Yes, he could have steered slightly and missed the building.

MR. WHITTEN: Yeah, I mean okay I've had a little bit of pilot training, enough to know that I can muscle the damn thing. The captain and his men jumped in the [fire truck] and just went, didn't even think twice. They took all of their equipment, men, jumped in the [fire truck] and went straight downtown. 

MS. RICHARDS: Was there a gas leak on your street?

MR. WHITTEN: [Yes, they] left one or two guys there still investigating. We still [had] the problem with the gas leak. Two things [are] going on in my mind, right. We're there still arguing with my tenant about whether it being an accident or not. While we're arguing, the second plane circles around to the south tower and then hit. Then I looked at him straight in the face poking him in the shoulder, I said, "you still think that's an accident" and that time he [and] people were crying, people were yelling on the street. Nobody knows what was happening. But my gut feeling proved to be correct. 

MS. RICHARDS: True. 

MR. WHITTEN: Nobody could question my gut feeling at that point and then of course the flames. I hate to admit it but I often tell the story about when that plane hit, that was a clear day in Manhattan. The sky was filled with this fantastic chandelier of glass, fantastic. It was totally sublime, glittering. 

Before you saw the smoke, before you saw the flames jutting out, you could still see the plane of this thing tucked into the hole. [The tail.] But the breaking of the glass just formed this big chandelier. I assume[d] that the firemen that went down were just automatically killed. That's what I assume but I was in my local bar like a few days afterwards and I was telling the story of what I saw and I thought these guys were dead and somebody came in the bar and said, "I remember you were telling that story. He says, those guys are not dead. They lived." I felt such relief. [Laughs.] I remember I just broke – I couldn't control my tears because I was talking to them, you know, and they just took off. I just assumed they all died. This person came and says, "no, those guys did live. They're alive man." It was such a relief. Now we were moving out. I had to clear the whole building out, four floors I had to clear out. ..But I made a vow when that happened in the street that when I got another studio, I made a vow. The first painting I will do will be a memorial to 9/11. That was my vow and I stuck by that vow. ...

MS. RICHARDS: How did you arrive at the form, at the image of the painting? 

MR. WHITTEN: From the dollar bill. I'm sitting in the bar one night drinking, thinking about this painting, knowing that I had to have something to start with conceptually. I'm paying my bar bill and I happen to look down at the dollar and I'm thinking, my god, petroleum, oil, money, not a bad place to start, not a bad place to start. 

MS. RICHARDS: The image of the pyramid on the dollar bill? 

MR. WHITTEN: Yeah, came off the dollar bill, notion of power, symbol. MS. RICHARDS: And the blackness? 

MR. WHITTEN: Right, petroleum, a lot of blood in that painting, gallons of blood.

MS. RICHARDS: Yeah, I've read that. What kind of blood did you use? 

MR. WHITTEN: Out here where I live with the Spanish, they make blood sausages. It's pig's blood. So I can buy it directly from the butcher shops. They sell it frozen. I had already done experimentation with blood in acrylic. It holds. 

MS. RICHARDS: Had you? 

MR. WHITTEN: Oh yeah. 

MS. RICHARDS: For what work? When was that? 

MR. WHITTEN: For paintings that I was done during a lot of experimentation and I had to use blood just to see what would happen. So I had paintings already that I had made with blood in it. It's an amazing color, by the way. You're talking pure iron oxide. It doesn't fade or nothing. Acrylic sets it. I had already done some experimentation with blood but when I came up with the theme that was the guiding conceptual principle for the painting, blood, petroleum, money, which I think are the three components that caused 9/11, the politics of that.

Jack Whitten, “9-11-01”

Jack Whitten, “9-11-01”

"The Scorching Sun Which Brings Them Forth"

"The Scorching Sun Which Brings Them Forth"

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Show: "Invisibly Present/Visibly Absent" at Gallery Al-Quds

My first art show is now up on the walls at the Jerusalem Fund's Gallery Al-Quds. Hopefully, the gallery will be open for people to visit soon on a limited basis, but the work is all online, along with descriptions [PDF] -- and there will be a online chat on Wednesday, Sept. 2 at 3 p.m. ET. Hope to see you there, please feel free to spread the word. [The video of the talk is now here.] [As of mid-Sept., in-person Gallery viewing is available by appointment only through the curator on a first come basis: Mondays and Tuesdays at noon, 1:30 p.m. 3 p.m. and on Sundays at 3 p.m. when minimal staff is present with physical distancing precautions followed. Please email curator Dagmar Painter directly at dpainter@thejerusalemfund.org to arrange. Gallery Al-Quds is at 2425 Virginia Ave NW]

The show was originally slated for months ago. On the night of March 11, I loaded up the car with my art for the show "Invisibly Present / Visibly Absent". The following day, the show was called off and I unloaded it and put the art back into my home. A virus invisible to the human eye very much made itself present and much human interaction became visibly absent. 

In fact, themes touched upon here are clearly related to the pandemic., rooted in examining what our relationship should be with Nature. Our hubris needs to be tempered, our desire to control and conquer Nature needs to be checked. Failing to do so does tremendous to the outside world and to our inner lives. 

These notions are especially relevant if the ultimate causes of the pandemic are human actions like factory farming, deforestation or -- more directly -- the very real threat of dangerous bio-laboratory work. Nature (as in Katrina in New Orleans) or "alien" culture (as in Chinese wet markets) are often blamed for disasters rather than actions of establishment institutions. 

It's fitting that this work appear at the Jerusalem Foundation's Al Quds Gallery since the Israeli assault on Palestinian people and culture is the "tip of the spear" in many respects of a settler colonial / corporate model attack on indigenous populations whose culture tends to work more with Nature. My trips to Palestine have been a source of inspiration in my artistic work and several pieces, especially “Answer Key” relate to Palestine.

Very special thanks to Executive Director Mohamed K. Mohamed and the entire staff and board of the Jerusalem Fund — especially to Curator Emerita Dagmar Painter.