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“Liberating architecture from the practical constraints of
building, American artist Anthony Viscardi examines the space between art
and architecture through explorations of solid/void, presence/absence,
static/dynamic, and material/ephemeral continuums. Trained as an architect,
Viscardi uses drawing, a practice common to both art and architecture,
respectively, to employ Rapidograph, ink wash, and graphite to reveal
intricately detailed examinations of shadow and void. These shadow
mappings have been the basis of the artist’s twenty-year practice and
pedagogy, and most recently, the subject of a compelling exhibition titled Anthony
Viscardi: Tracing Time To Measure Space, at Lehigh University Art Galleries in
fall of 2013, which articulates the artist’s process through drawings and
three-dimensional constructions.”
Domus Magazine. Anthony
Viscardi: Tracing Time to Measure Space by Danielle
Rago. September 25, 2013.
The practice of engaging the shadow as the progenitor of form has directed my architectural scholarship and artistic investigations for over twenty years. The shadow is born of one thing yet reveals another as its transparent and immaterial essence animates the surface upon which it falls. It is this phenomenological quality of the shadow, once severed from the object that ignites my imagination and informs my creative process.
The work of my most recent exhibition, “Prints of Darkness,
Shadow Cast Impressions” derives from a series of drawings, Tracing Time
to Measure Space, in which I record the passage of time at three intervals—morning,
noon and night—by sequentially tracing the shadow of an architectural object as
it is constructed in one day’s time. The object is then
dismantled, releasing the shadow to exist as a singular composite drawing
of individual moments frozen into a single image, a “shadow map,” from which
new iterations of the shadow may be formed. In this process, I
use pencil on Mylar and purposely allow my hand to smear the
graphite. Sections of the drawing are then erased to articulate
highlights against the complex pencil wire frame. The resulting
palimpsest retains the evidence of the process while revealing something
new.
When anticipating my 2013-14 artist’s residency at the
Experimental Printmaking Institute (EPI), I was concerned about how I
might express the ephemeral effect of the graphite “smear” via the techniques
of printmaking. With great insight, Professor Curley Holton
suggested that my focus should be with finding the “smear” that is
inherent to the printmaking process, rather than seeking to replicate the
effect of the smear. And so, in collaboration with Jase Clark, EPI
Master Printer in Training, I began to conceive the potential of the
printmaking process as a means of reflecting or re-casting my shadow drawings.
In this exhibition at The Williams Art Center in Easton, PA, the
latent image of the shadow revealed in my drawings assumes new substance
and form, translated through a variety of printmaking methods, including
calligraphy, etching, silkscreen, viscosity, embossing, template airbrush, and
laser cutting. Whereas my shadow drawings are projections of their
objects, my prints became their inverse or reflection, shadow cast
impressions, Prints of Darkness.
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About Anthony Viscardi
Professor Viscardi began work at
Lehigh University’s College of Arts and Sciences Department of Art and
Architecture in 1992 and was awarded Full Professor in 2007. Under his tenure
as Chair, 2002-2010, the Department of Art and Architecture was expanded to
include the Design Arts program. Viscardi earned his Bachelor of Architecture
from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and a Masters of Architecture
from Georgia Institute of Technology. He co-founded Hoss/Viscardi & Co.
Architectural Design Firm in Atlanta, where he served as Partner and Principal
Designer from 1979 until 1992.
Professor Viscardi is a
nationally and internationally known scholar-teacher in the design and art of
architecture. He has a special interest in study abroad and established the
Lehigh in Italy Summer Program in Vicenza in 1995 and serves as its director. There
he teaches his students about Italian public places through sketching as well
as, studies the work of the Italian architect, Carlo Scarpa, which has been a
topic of Viscardi’s research for over 20 years.
He has conducted design workshops and presentations at institutions of
higher learning in Canada, Malaysia, Europe, Brazil, and Puerto Rico and most
recently was invited to teach a month-long creative design workshop for forty
professional architects at the Beijing Victory Star firm. Viscardi also served
as Co-Principal Investigator during the first two years of the Henry Luce
Foundation funded Chinese Bridge Project (2009-2011) that took Lehigh students
on two summer study tours in China and led to the construction of a 12th
century style Chinese bridge on campus.
Throughout his career in
architectural practice and as a professor of architecture, Viscardi has
continued to work as an artist. He has had solo exhibitions at the Atlanta
College of Art, Lehigh University Wilson Gallery, and Gallery 164 in Buffalo,
NY, and has exhibited at Nexus Contemporary Art in Atlanta, Philadelphia
University of the Arts, Philadelphia Third Street Art Gallery, Auburn
University Frank Seltzer Gallery, Allentown Art Museum, and Banana Factory
Center for the Arts in Bethlehem, PA. Viscardi’s work has been exhibited widely
at national and international academic conferences. He developed a particular
interest in creative collaboration while working with Italian artist
Michelangelo Pistoletto during his three-month residency in Atlanta. He has
since engaged in a number of collaborative design-build projects with artists,
architects, students, and community members. Viscardi is represented in the NYC
Drawing Center curated Artist Registry.
3 was begun during
Anthony Viscardi’s 2011-2012 sabbatical when he was awarded a MacDowell Colony
Fellowship to continue his theoretical drawing/visual investigations on “shadow
mapping.” He has since received the 2013 Faculty Fellowship award from Study
Abroad Italy (SAI) in Florence to begin work on a manuscript that documents a
drawing method he developed for teaching students to more closely observe the
architecture and culture of Italy. Viscardi was the Artist in Residence for The
Experimental Printmaking Institute at Lafayette College in Easton, PA for the
2013-2014 academic year. In spring of
2014 he had a solo exhibition called “Prints of Darkness…shadow cast
impressions” at Lafayette’s Williams Art Center. The work was a product of his shadow casts
impressions viewed through the portal of printmaking.
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