Left to right: Hamadi ben Saad, artist; Ray Cooper, artist; Professor Cathy West, Converse College; Hamadi's assistant. Tunis, January 2010
Just returned from Tunisia where Converse College Professor Cathy West and I helped Tunisian artist Hamadi ben Saad select his new work for our upcoming exhibit, Transatlantic Voyages, at Converse College, February - March 2010.
Part of this Converse College student tour included a collaborative art project for the students with Hamadi. He works with found materials - paper, rags, cardboard, anything - to make collages. Using American papers that I had gathered as found art material, Hamadi led the students in a group collage project.
Hamadi, with every work of art, creates "a little dream" of hope. I try as well.
Spiritual clarity in a troubled world is the goal I have determined to pursue artistically. This view through turmoil toward a hopeful, luminous future is art that the world needs now.
Overwhelming problems? Certainly, for everyone. Despair? No! I promote an attempt to understand across cultural barriers and national borders.
I use art to understand reality. Even abstract art reflects essences of the natural world. Some realism is a far remove from photo images of the surface of things. My painting wants to get at the spirit of matter. All things are connected and common ground can be established where discord prevails, if only a will to do so is encouraged.
I am concerned with how an image feels as well as how it looks. Therefore, some paintings are abstract and some are figurative, while both are about the same reality. I attempt to beguile the viewer with beautiful paint. It helps in the acceptance of the ideas I present over and over: birth, death, transcendence. Sublime if not pretty, reality is beautiful. Look to the light to try to get over our problems. Start again each day to set things right. This is an endless journey of hope.
Hamadi on the roof of his studio with a mural he recently exhibited in Germany.
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