Surpik Angelini and the Transart Foundation for Art and Anthropology in Houston, Texas, are delighted to present Recent Work by John Calaway.
Dates: Thursday, September 12 - Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Hours: Wednesday to Sunday -- by appointment only.
Biography
John Calaway
John Calaway (born 1957, Corpus Christi, TX) is a sculptor and a painter based in Houston, Texas. His three-decade long career as an artist has intertwined with his entrepreneurial work in renewable energy. In the 90’s he was a lead innovator in the creation of computer driven 2D and 3D data visualization. His passion for creating new technology and his gift for taking massive amounts of data and identifying readable patterns are the underpinning of his paintings and sculpture.
Calaway approaches his art with the same kind of driven curiosity that had him excel in new computer technology. After decades of working with found objects and traditional materials such as marble, steel and bronze, Calaway is currently exploring large-scale 3D printing. His printed sculptures can allow for a delicate physicality and grace of form on a massive scale that is unachievable with conventional materials. As he develops sculptures in virtual reality, the cast shadows of these virtual sculptures become a springboard for his paintings. The paintings are intensely physical and read as maps or images of the earth from outer space. Calaway’s paintings explore the beauty of the forms and patterns forms on the micro and the macro level.
Committed to being at the forefront of accelerating technologies, Calaway is currently using hand-held, super high-resolution scanners to capture visual data from any object or surface. This data is then digitally molded and rendered into a 3D model of a sculpture that can be printed to any scale. His sculptures and paintings are fluid meditations on the possibilities of art making in the ever- evolving world of big data.
“I want to free myself from the constraints of armatures and maquettes and think of sculpture like a ballet dancer rather than an engineer. The challenging aspect of this is to manifest physical objects that will withstand the stress of time, while at the same time, have great openness and fluidity. The artist must integrate all aspects of the process.”
Calaway’s work has been shown at the Dallas Contemporary, Blue Star Art Space, Lawndale Art Center, Brookfield at One Allen Center, Winter Street Studios, Sculpture 2000, and Meg Poissant Gallery. He has worked with Flatbed Press in Austin on multiple printmaking series. He was one of the founders of Commerce Street Art Studio. His studio is located in the Acres Homes area of Houston.
(Reproduced with permission of the artist)
DOWNLOADS
The Art of John Calaway (PDF) | By Surpik Angelini, Founding Director of the Transart Foundation for Art & Anthropology | September, 2019
Photography by Thomas R DuBrock.