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WELCOME TO SAVANT GARDE
Savant Garde is a new publication dedicated to curating ,
electronically publishing, and developing an archive of outsider art.
Head Dress--------------
From Protractors to Paint Brushes
- Shanté Booker
- April 13, 2015
It all started with a check. Tom Yezza was bored at his desk during a grade school lesson and started
to doodle. He drew one line, then another, and eventually a curve. When he was done, he had a figure that looked similar to the Nike logo, but “way cooler,” according to Tom. It was his first drawing, and the beginning of a career as a geometric graphics artist.
A geometric graphics artist uses geometry to create intricate designs. In fact, Tom’s unique designs are so precise that many who see them ask whether his work is digitally enhanced. One viewer at an art gallery—at a loss for words—simply described him as “interesting”. “That was the best thing somebody said, I was interesting,” he said.
Tom, a tall gray-haired 67-year-old with a humble personality, walked into the New Jersey gallery of Arts Unbound—, an organization that displays and helps sell outsider art—with about five large paintings on cabinet wood and traditional canvases. After a few more trips to his car to finish unloading, he walked toward a bluish-green painting on wood, his favorite thing to draw on at the moment. “You see this one?” he said, pointing. “I really like it.
The painting had a total of 61 checks, and looked like an evolved version of the doodle he had drawn in class. It was almost as if grade-school Tom had time-traveled to the present and was bored out of his mind. The checks were drawn so tightly together that, from a distance, the entire piece looked like a couple of bird wings and a spinning sphere.
Tom stared at the painting for a few seconds and then shook his head, saying, “I could never recreate the same shape that I made that day” in grade school “but I still like this one.”
Painting from Point A to Point B Tom is technically retired, but he spends so much time sketching out new designs and showing his work at galleries “for fun” that he doesn’t feel retired. He’s been a member of Arts Unbound since 2007 or 2008 (he can’t recall the exact date). He became involved with the organization after his seizures—which he’d been dealing with off and on since 1979—became more frequent and were having a stronger impact on his life. At age 2 Tom was diagnosed with encephalitis, inflammation of the brain, due to an infection. The seizures started shortly after his diagnosis and were at first manageable with the help of medication. But eventually the drugs stopped working and in 1987 he was forced to go on permanent disability. In 2011 he decided to have Gamma Knife Surgery. While Tom’s condition has been a constant battle, he somehow managed to keep pushing. “It can’t bother you, you just gotta’ keep going on.” It is that attitude that inspired him to start drawing heavily in the early 90s.
With a little over 300 designs to date, Tom intends to do just that; he isn’t going to let anything stop him from creating art. Tom doesn’t approach his work from an emotional standpoint. He doesn’t draw based on his mood or a feeling,, because his creative process is technical. It’s mathematical, to be exact, and draws on basic rules of geometry. “I just start drawing. The main thing is you have to have a guide. You have to have a certain technique that you have and go wild with it.”
When he says “a guide,” he’s referring to a ruler, a protractor, or any tool that can help achieve the specific shape he wants. And when he says “technique,” he’s talking about how to literally get from a point A to point B. You have to say to yourself, “Okay, I’ve done all of these points on the paper. Now let’s put certain items to those points, join them, and see what I get,” Tom says.
When starting a project, Tom will go to his work desk at home, turn on some classical music (it doesn’t matter what, just anything to get him into the drawing mood), and then pick up a protractor or a ruler. All he needs is one point to get him started, and from there he’ll meticulously make other points and angles until he can’t make anymore. In the end, he always has an eye-catching design that makes people want to take a second look. Tom is known for doing two things in his work: covering the entire page and creating designs that play tricks on the eyes. His figures often pulsate off the page when a viewer is in motion.
In one piece that looks like a never-ending staircase, he used slightly slanted angles to make the shape appear infinite. Another piece gives the illusion that the figure is popping up like a top. The drawing, which doesn’t have a name, has been a great topic of discussion. “Some people see it as coming out, but if you look at it closely you see that it is going in,” Tom says. People often get pretty dizzy if they stare at one of his pieces long enough. For that reason Tom doesn’t have many of his drawings hanging up around his own house. “I don’t want that hanging up,” he says, with a smile. “You kidding me?”
Tom’s techniques and designs have grown more and more daring over the past decade. The first gallery he ever submitted to, Upstream People Gallery, in Omaha Nebraska, is proof of that. Five of his paintings were archived on the gallery’s website in 2007. One of them “Bang,” looks similar to a work Tom recently completed named “Headdress.” Both paintings are multicolored and seem to flicker when stared at straight on, but the up-to-date version is far more detailed. “Headdress” looks a lot cleaner than “Bang,” and less textured. “I really like this one. I like the way it came out,” he said of “Headdress.” It’s his favorite at the moment.
Tom likes to challenge himself to make wild and complicated designs, and he loves to play tricks on the mind with his art. He’s been praised for his work, and he’s been called crazy. He takes it all in as a compliment. “There’s a thin line” between being crazy and being a genius, he knows.
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VVVVV
- Tom V10
Tom Yezza’s geometric designs are tantalizing. They gyrate. They play tricks on the eyes.
At first when viewing any one of his many prints and canvases you have the impression
of being sucked-in to their central core. Then in the next instant your eyes are drawn
outward toward infinity. Forms seem to implode inward and yet simultaneously lines,
curves, diamonds and squares seem to move outward in a kaleidoscopic array. Others coil
and snarl, still others twirl, churn and spin; others cut and pierce. The art work is so
precise that viewers often think they are digitally enhanced. But in fact his extremely
complex geometric abstractions are hand drawn and painted. Some are rendered with
black ink on paper, others are painted onto canvas and wood. These works can be
viewed on his website, tomyezzageometricart.weebly.com. He also sells reproductions
of his original works. He scans them on the computer and then prints them onto canvas.
Most recently his designs have been printed on textiles.
His works are exacting, so precisely rendered that one would imagine they are
meticulously planned. But Yezza insists he creates in the moment, spontaneously
moving from “dot to dot” with only one preliminary sketch as his guide. The wood he
uses, a precious commodity to him, so he feels he must be ultra careful. He says he
calculates as he goes along. He takes careful measurements using ruler, compass, and
wire. So it is not surprising to learn that before turning to creating art in retirement Yezza
worked as a computer operations manager for 21 years, an exacting and methodical job.
Before he began to render mathematically inspired art he made a living from his capacity
for interpreting and managing technical data and processes.
He explains that there is a connection between data processing and his art: He says in - data processing “there are two numbers : zero and one. There is a rhythm to it, and you
could find it,” he says. This is telling for Yezza describes his technique as stemming
from a process of “connecting two points - point A and Point B. I continually do that. I
take certain measurements. I apply dots. Then I connect the dots.” He further elaborates
on his website, “now I join an inner point to an outer point, clockwise then counter
clockwise. However, there are many shapes one may use as a line, but ultimately you’re
always moving from point to point. Repetition is the one constant in all my work.”
Yezza deals with hundreds of intersecting points so it is not surprising that Yezza says
he’s always been intrigued with binary, decimal and hexadecimal numbers. On his
website he sums up his technique , “compass+ruler+geometry+imagination.”
Yezza has created about 30 wood pieces to date. “Its not like working on paper which
you can throw out,” he says laughing. So he works very slowly, painstakingly, creating
just two or three wood images a year. “You create a certain part of it and then you walk
away. And then you go back to it. Relax with it.” He notes playfully, “If you do make a
mistake somewhere you better be sure you make it in another place. That’s what you call
balance.”
The key to his many works is the “harmonic balance” he achieves between geometric
shapes. The visual harmony he creates, be it on paper, canvas, wood, or textiles, he
defines as adhering to the same laws of harmony that exists in mathematics, music and
poetry. For Yezza, each discipline is an expression of the other. Music is his pulse. The
first thing he does when he is about to draw is put on classical music. “Music is created
by applying laws of frequency and sound in certain ways. That applies to art too,” Yezza
says. Tom finds inspiration from ancient philosophy. On his website he posts
Pythagoras’ description of geometry as visual music. In music, Pythagoras says, “States
of harmonic resonance are produced when frequencies are combined in ways that are in - unison with universal law. These same laws can be applied to produce visual harmony.
Instead of frequency and sound it is angle and shape that are combined in ways that are in
unison with universal law. Geometric shapes can be orchestrated in ways to produce
visual symphonies that show the harmonic unification of diversity.”
Poetry is an essential ingredient of Yezza’s creative process. He is inspired by his own
poetry. As he creates visually he continuously edits a poem which he repeatedly pastes
to the wall. He quotes an ancient saying he found in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations,
“Painting is silent poetry and poetry is painting that speaks.” (Simonides of Ceos,
556bc-469 bc.)
It is not surprising that he is inspired by Sacred Geometry and the Dutch graphic artist M.
C. Escher. Sacred Geometry is an art form that ascribes symbolic and sacred meanings to
certain geometric shapes and proportions used in the design and construction of religious
structures such as churches and temples.
Over the past year Yezza has turned almost exclusively to computer generated art,
digitizing literally thousands of abstractions using computer design software. Each image
is a variation on a theme. Some of these images are used as patterns for textiles which
are manufactured by Arts Unbound and sold in their retail gallery in Maplewood New
Jersey.
Yezza, has hundreds of art pieces and thousands of designs for textiles so it is surprising
to learn that he didn’t start creating art until about 1990. Yezza, now age 71, had no
inclination to become an artist until he was forced to retire from computer operations in - 1987 on a medical disability – due to a seizure disorder - and was looking for something
to fill the void created by leaving his full time job. At age 2 Yezza was diagnosed with
encephalitis, inflammation of the brain, due to infection. The seizures started shortly
after diagnosis . At first they were manageable with the help of medication. But
eventually the drugs stopped working, the seizures became worse in frequency and
severity and in 1987 he was compelled to go on permanent disability. But amazingly,
after Yezza had Gamma Knife Surgery in 2011 the seizures stopped with the exception of
one seizure in 2013 which landed him in the hospital. He continues to take seizure
medication.
Yezza, who is entirely self taught, started getting recognition for his art early on. His
work was exhibited in his son’s a junior high school in 1991. The show made a
sensation. The students were fascinated and wanted to learn how the designs were
created. But Yezza’s seizures at that time were chronic and he couldn’t physically get to
the school to talk about his work. But in 2005 he exhibited his work in Upstream People
Gallery, an online international art exhibition, and was selected as a finalist among
thousands of contestants. Over the next 11 years he submitted his work for competition
annually and five times won a $500 stipend award and “World Wide Recognition” for his
work. Still, it wasn’t until about two years ago, when he discovered AU that Yezza
started to get the recognition his artwork warrants. It wasn’t until 2014 that Yezza made
that career changing connection to AU. For the first time in Yezza’s life his wood and
canvas pieces are being exhibited and sold in a physical gallery space. This is crucial for
Yezza who is essentially homebound and hence cannot physically promote his work.
Since then AU has exhibited his work both in their Dora Stern gallery in Orange and in
shows they sponsor in restaurants and schools, principally the New Jersey Medical
School in Newark. Yezza is now earning an income on his art. For the past two years AU
has reproduced his designs on scarves which they are selling in their retail gallery in - Maplewood. AU has assumed the cost of the textiles, the manufacturing and production
costs and is promoting the work. In addition to exhibiting his work, AU has also helped
Yezza create multiple websites and to network with other artists. Yezza also exhibits at
the Limner gallery in Hudson, NY.