New Review
Sue Zola: “True Romance and Art of the Game” at Peveto Gallery by donna tennant Jul 2014 Art of the Game – Liberty 2013 Glitter and Monopoly money on canvas 30″ x 40″ Photo: courtesy Peveto Gallery It’s a dazzling show of nostalgic images executed almost exclusively with glitter. Sue Zola’s paintings are created with thousands of sparkling specs of reflective color. Zola, who is referred to as the “Glitter Diva of Austin,” has been working with glitter since she moved from Connecticut to Texas in 1999. It’s not unusual for artists to use glitter in collage, but it is rare to find an artist who actually paints with glitter. “I have had a thing for glitter since I was in second grade,” Zola said. Her paintings are stylistically complex, and she often uses dozens of colors executed with great attention to detail. Each area of color must be applied and allowed to dry completely before another color can be applied. Zola works in series, and her current show focuses on two—the board game Monopoly and True Romance comics. The Monopoly series includes familiar characters from the Chance and Treasure Chest cards, as well as other symbols from the game presented against a background collage of Monopoly money. The True Romance pieces focus on overwrought women from the romance comic books that first became popular in the 1950s. In Que Sera, Sera, Zola pays homage to Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein and his signature weeping women, their eyes overflowing with tears due to betrayal by handsome, cold-hearted men. Zola’s past subjects have included icons of American culture such as Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash; fictional characters like Frankenstein, Wonder Woman, and Superman; and advertising creations such as Tony the Tiger and the Kool-Aid man. She has even done a Campbell’s tomato soup can like Andy Warhol’s. Glitter has been used extensively since prehistoric times—mica was used in early cave paintings to give them a shimmering appearance and make them more lifelike. The Egyptians created glittering cosmetics from the iridescent shells of beetles, as well as ground malachite crystals. Native Americans used powdered galena, a form of lead, to make sparkling paint for purposes of adornment. But the nostalgia in Zola’s work is for a more recent era. Her bright, shiny paintings have caught the attention of stars such as Quentin Tarantino (who commissioned a portrait of Bruce Lee), Megan Mullally, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, and filmmaker/artist David Lynch, all of whom collect her work. The combination of clever imagery, seductive surfaces, and expert execution makes Zola’s work both evocative and...
Read More
Stash Gallery
It’s probably no coincidence that two of America’s most eccentrically exciting and unpredictable directors, David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino, are big fans of glitter artist Sue Zola and have snapped up her work for their art collections. Zola, like Lynch and Tarantino, has created her own unique niche in the art world, one of the only artists dedicated to not only incorporating, but exclusively utilizing, the uber-difficult material of glitter in her pieces. Zola somehow manages to use the fun, shiny, messy, tactile substance to evoke emotion and lovingly, and with dead-on accuracy, recreate the faces and logos of iconic American entertainers and symbolic Pop culture products. Visit the Stash...
Read More