{"id":985,"date":"2023-01-17T19:13:14","date_gmt":"2023-01-17T19:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blfineart.com\/?p=985"},"modified":"2023-02-25T22:24:27","modified_gmt":"2023-02-25T22:24:27","slug":"steve-rockwell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blfineart.com\/?p=985","title":{"rendered":"Steve Rockwell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Canadian Artist: (1945-     )<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/image-65.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1290\" width=\"260\" height=\"347\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Steve Rockwell was born in Helsinki, Finland in 1945 and lived in the outskirt town of Espoo until the age of five. Arriving in Gothenburg, Sweden with his family and eventually settling in the town of Grangesberg, his father here having found his lifelong vocation as a miner, which continued with the family\u2019s move to Canada in 1957. Moves from one mining town of Northern Ontario to another, furnished a rugged natural backdrop to the artist\u2019s life and imagination growing up, one that Canada\u2019s Group of Seven artists had so richly exploited.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first formal art training for Rockwell came through artist and teacher Peter Kolisnyk&#8217;s  summer classes conducted in Elliot Lake, Ontario, and Rockwell&#8217;s two years at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. By 1970, the artist had been the co-producer of an art house showing of television commercials premiered at Toronto\u2019s Cinema Lumiere. He joined an artist studio at 567 Queen Street West, taking part in three group \u201cWorkscene\u201d exhibitions, as they were dubbed by studio member Jim Tiley. The work tackled minimalist, pop, and conceptual art trends, but in an ironic twist, one of its paintings titled \u201cIT\u2019S ALL OVER\u201d signalled the artist\u2019s 1972 exit from the art scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/image-24.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2106\" width=\"544\" height=\"376\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/image-24.png 365w, https:\/\/blfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/image-24-300x207.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 544px) 100vw, 544px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Although Rockwell had resumed his craft privately by 1979, his official return was marked by the 1989 solo exhibition at the Arnold Gottlieb Gallery in Toronto. It was only after this hiatus of 17 years that the present persona of Steve Rockwell emerged. To family and close friends, however, he answers to Jouko Salomaa, his legal Finnish identity. A pivotal 1987 work, \u201cPick a Number between 1 and 99,\u201d explored the relationship between the public and private, artist and non-artist. That same year, the floor sculpture \u201cGallery Space\u201d elicited the participation of 64 art galleries in Toronto, and become the vehicle of its own exhibition. Another work, \u201cColor Match Game\u201d pitted two players in an &#8220;aesthetic combat,\u201d generating the raw data for making art in the process. Since 1999, &#8220;Color Match\u201d tournaments have been played across North America.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/image-66.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1293\" width=\"677\" height=\"292\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/image-66.png 490w, https:\/\/blfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/image-66-300x129.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 677px) 100vw, 677px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>With the publication of the 1996 book work \u201cMeditations on Space, An Artist\u2019s Odyssey through Art Galleries in Europe and North America,\u201d Rockwell\u2019s interest in the gallery as subject was made international. The notated visits to seven art galleries in Zurich, Switzerland; one in Aix-en-Provence, France; twenty-six in Paris; forty-four in New York City; sixty-eight in Los Angeles, CA; and thirty in Toronto, garnered an introduction and base for the founding of dArt International magazine in January, 1989. The 2021 release of a signed, limited edition of dArt was an acknowledgement  of the publication&#8217;s roots in art making. The mining of dArt content as creative potential continues for Rockwell in his work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blfineart.com\/?p=988\">AVAILABLE WORKS<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canadian Artist: (1945- ) Steve Rockwell was born in Helsinki, Finland in 1945 and lived in the outskirt town of Espoo until the age of five. Arriving in Gothenburg, Sweden with his family and eventually settling in the town of Grangesberg, his father here having found his lifelong vocation as a miner, which continued with &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blfineart.com\/?p=985\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Steve Rockwell&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blfineart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blfineart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blfineart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blfineart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blfineart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=985"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/blfineart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2108,"href":"https:\/\/blfineart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions\/2108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blfineart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blfineart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blfineart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}