“Environments and Atmospheres”
Studio 917’s Is honored to show the work of:
David Neufeld
ENVIRONMENTS AND ATMOSPHERES
David Neufeld began his career as an artist at age seven with the robust encouragement of his radical parents. His frequent visits to the Brooklyn Museum of Art imprinted images in his mind that he carries to this day and his wanderings in the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens planted the seeds for a vocation in landscape design.
Later, he pursued painting, primarily landscapes, wherever he traveled and lived. In his early twenties, he partnered with a potter and for eight years crafted wood-fired stoneware and porcelain. In 1980, a chance to study with renowned mime and actor, Tony Montanaro, developed into a sixteen-year professional storytelling career with over 2500 performances in the U.S. and abroad. As his grasp of narrative grew, writing followed, resulting in some thirty books for children, newspaper columns, and magazine articles.
His life as a touring artist stopped in 1996 so that he could raise a family, but his early love of landscape returned to support them. He began, what continues to the present, a landscape design and stone masonry company. In the past twelve years he has become a leading expert in the construction of traditional wood-fired brick ovens.
As is often the case with artists who wish to remain working artists, David’s various self-employment careers have overlapped: Painting with pottery, storytelling with writing, landscape design with photography, stonework with sculpture; all of them image-making. In 2013, he returned to college for a Masters of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts degree which spliced his sculpture practice with the study of Jungian psychology.
At present, he works with photographic portraiture through the surface of water. These ‘mergings’ reflect his love of the natural world and his passion for testing the limits of media. He has always pursued avenues of the arts that demonstrate the existence of deep evidence; the consciousness that we are swimming in a world far greater than ourselves.
· His 1973 paintings are in the permanent collection of Death Valley National Park. The rest are in private collections.
· Pottery of his is being used to serve and consume food by thousands.
· Some percentage of the million people who have seen and heard him tell stories, recall him. He currently performs on request.
· Some of his books are still in print.
· He has designed and installed over 300 residential and public landscapes.
· His found object sculptures, exhibited across New England, intrigue people.
· His reputation as a brick oven builder has brought him all over the U.S. and has allowed him to collaborate with bread bakers and chefs.
· The photos in ‘Mergings’ are on tour this year across the U.S.
