Dike Blair is the 2010–11 Chuck Close Rome Prize Fellow in the Visual Arts. He is a painter, sculptor, and writer as well as a senior critic in the Department of Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. Dike was awarded the Rome Prize Fellowship to allow him the time and proximity needed to make a number of paintings and sculptures, the sense of which contain some kind of everyday Roman flavor.
Dike describes his work in this way:
“I make representational paintings on paper and abstract, painterly sculpture. Recently I’ve been inserting the paintings into the sculpture. The small paintings are painted from my snap shots and are usually both quotidian and autobiographic. The abstract sculptures seek the same atmospheres as the very literal paintings. There’s a paradox of how the highly representational two-dimensional paintings involve an abstract process, whereas the abstract sculptures employ concrete materiality. I enjoy this binary, or polar, or flip-side approach to making art.”
In keeping with this idea of contrast and juxtaposition, Rome has become the site for Dike to contemplate Japan. During the spring of 2010, Dike and his wife, Marie Abma, traveled there for four weeks. Neither of them had been to Japan before, but had dreamed of making this trip for several years. During their planning process, they had no idea that Dike might receive a Rome Prize and have an entirely different culture to absorb a few short months later. That's all by way of saying that since arriving in Rome in September, Dike has been making paintings from his snapshots of Japan, and beginning designs for sculptures that reflect his Japanese experience, albeit in a very different manner than the paintings. Dike has only just begun imagining what his Roman work might look like. “Japan is shiny, while Rome is dusty,” he offers as a hint. “Whatever the Roman work will be, it should reflect that difference.” Whether that work gets made in Rome during the coming months, or in New York after he returns, Dike does not yet know. He is quite sure, however, that Rome and his experience at the Academy will present itself in multiple ways and forms.
An additional note from Dike Blair:
We composed this “Glimpse” before tragedy struck Japan on March 11. Art and words feel meaningless in the face of this calamity, but I do want to express my profound sorrow and sympathy to the people of Japan.