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Artists are
observers of the world who interpret their experiences
by translating them into physical form. Marie Fontana
creates assemblages that are a product of times and
places in her life, seen through her eyes and
transformed into art objects. They are the footprints
that tell where she’s been. More interested in travel,
family, sustainable living, ballroom dancing and the
creative process, than in promoting her art, Marie has
amassed a sum of experiences that enrich the story told
by the works emerging from her life. She is a child of the Great Depression, who has lived much of her life, and raised her five children, in Third World countries. Returning to the United States from time to time, seeing the things we throw away, raised her awareness of what she calls our "staggering, gut-wrenching waste." |
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 Decrying
waste, Marie utilizes recycled materials, finding "something
venerable" in the things we toss away, and employing her sardonic humor
to cajole us. As an art student at San Jose State University, she found
her creativity stifled by the "decadence" of large white sheets of fine-art paper. It was then that she discovered the medium that would become her canvas of choice; brown paper grocery bags. Marie says, “Grocery bags liberated me!” Marie’s works are identifiable by their unique patina achieved by techniques that are hers alone. Wood, metal, paper, gourds and other organic materials are transformed by dipping and dripping them with homemade concoctions made from paints mixed with iron oxides and concrete-bonder acrylic. The resulting effects resemble aged, rusted metal or weathered and peeling paint, creating an instant history. Sometimes the size of the panels in her work are dictated by the width of a paint can, sometimes by the dimensions of an unglued and flattened grocery bag. Without completing her studies, Marie left college and set off in search of adventure. Taking a job as a secretary in a branch of the U.S. Foreign Service which offered technical assistance to developing countries, she lived and worked in Ethiopia, Mauritania, Madagascar, French Somaliland, New Caledonia and later France and Spain. |
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While living in Mauritania she discovered inspiration at the local dump.
Sanitized by the arid climate, there were no flies and no smell as she
scavenged for scrap metal and other treasures scoured clean by wind and
sand. Her assemblage "Esprit" was made in New Caledonia out of pieces of an abandoned WWII airport runway. |
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Her travels inform her art and her politics. "The
Stultification of the Sultan" transforms a devoutly religious ruler into a
couch potato as he watches American TV in the panels of a
three-dimensional cartoon. |
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In the early 1990's, Marie re-enrolled at San Jose State University and graduated with a degree in Art Education at the age of 61, with graduate studies, later, at the University of Guam. She then moved to The Big Island of Hawaii where she now resides on 12 acres in Kapoho. She lives a solar powered existence with an abundance of cultivated organic materials that she incorporates into her art. At “almost 79” Marie has entered the most productive period of her artistic life. For the first time, she has a dedicated art studio of her own. "Finally,” she says, “I don't have to clear away the dishes from the dining table to make my art." |
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