JANET RESTINO

_________________________________________________________________________

ARTIST STATEMENT

I've got my heart, hands and head in many media. With piano as my first love, I later found more loves – sculpture, drawing, painting and photography. And I've always been writing and sometime I perform as a singer/songwriter/poet Off Broadway. My poetry and lyrics find their way into my images at times especially the ink drawings of nudes – adding a literary component and taking sensual visuals to the cerebral plane.

Coming to NYC in the 80’s from Philadelphia, I “bopped around” various neighborhoods in the East and West Village and Brooklyn until settling in Hells Kitchen in the early 90’s.

Formally trained as a sculptor, my two dimensional work jumps off the wall. Some of my bold and spunky artwork is created for and about musicians, done while listening and inspired by them.
The human figure, nature and peace are favorite subjects.
Some of the artworks in the show at Pomaire have been exhibited at the Jazz Radio Station WBGO-FM in Newark, NJ.

I also now print and publish over 200 of my images as blank note cards and prints, selling to many shops in NYC, including several in the Theater District.
I exhibit primarily in New York, participating in Group Shows and Arts Events.
My clients and collectors include many well-known cultural organizations and performers in the Arts, Entertainment and Theater.
I've always been committed to creating art that is affirmative – with images that are inspiring and healing. Inspired by all that’s good and healthy – beauty, harmony, a dash of dissonance, pulsating rhythms, curvilinear notions, irony, fresh air, full moons. And at times, also inspired to speak out against war & injustice.

I'm not much different than a bee making honey, a spider spinning a web…while I'm mining the psyche and the spirit to make art.
I'm intuitive, instinctual and often impulsive and thoughtful artist, steeped in visual history from cave drawings to cartoons, from Willendorfs to windmills, frescos to figleafs, Polaroids to pixels.

I’m just a vessel at times – keeping myself able to participate in the act of creation which so many times feels truly divine.
Sometimes I move the hand…sometimes the hand moves me and I see tangible evidence.
I did that? Well I must have…it’s in my sketchbook and this one’s been there for 30 years…I forgot I did it.

Some marks on a surface coming from a chakra higher than a hot dog with everything.

 ________________________________________________________________________________

 Resume

Education
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA.
Fleisher Art Memorial, Philadelphia, PA.
Temple University, Philadelphia, PA.

1991        DOWNTOWN, Art Around Town, Gary Azon, 3/6/91.  Signs of Intelligent Life, 3/13/91 

1989-88    The New York Times, "Consciousness Raising Art", Vivien Raynor, 10/29/89

                The Village Voice, Getting&Spending, Mim Udovitch,11/7/89 and 10/88

  GRANTS, SCHOLARSHIPS, FUNDING

1991        Art Matters:  1990  Poets & Writers:  1989 PEN

1977        Scheidt Travelling Scholarship (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts)

1973        Dolfinger-McMahon Full Tuition Scholarship (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts)

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS, COMMISSIONS

Here Is New York, A Democracy of Photographs.  www.hereisnewyork.org. Hardcover book, Scalo Publ.

Museum of Television and Radio, NYC. (Bill Sims portrait Tshirt)“The Bonfire of the Vanities” Warner Bros.film 1989

Fales Collection, NYU Bobst Library, NYC. Ron Kolm Papers. Art cards, prints, ephemera; T.O. Immisch, Maritzburg Foundation, Germany; Gabriela Mistral Foundation, Chile/USA

The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, NYC.  Artwork commissioned for posters, Tshirts and promotions for the International Association of Schools of Jazz 1994

The African Activist Archive Project at Michigan State University, art on buttons, Tshirts, posters “Free Nelson Mandela”, “Nelson Mandela Released, Abolish Apartheid” and “Free South Africa”