Porter Don


Portfolio:

temporary sculptures

Beginning as a six-year old sculptor using recycled materials pilfered from my parents’ waste bin, I have been a life-long artist and been taught and mentored by some of the finest: Gui Ignon in Ojai, then Elmer Bischoff, Peter Voulkos, Richard Diebenkorn, at UC Berkeley - and many others along the way. My award-winning photographs, sculptures and paintings have been exhibited and collected worldwide. My recent work is photographing experimental temporary sculptures that I make with literally anything imaginable. As I add pigmented liquids, lights, and motion, I photograph the fabrications as they transform, dissolve, cease to be what they were. I often paint the photographic prints, or otherwise alter them (scrape, burnish, add pastel, ink, anything necessary), and then photograph them again until I have achieved my intended result. Aside from cropping for composition and controlling for contrast, I do not use Photoshop - I don’t know how. I prefer the tactile, analog way.

If You can Keep It  (Benjamin Franklin 1787) “If You can Keep It (Benjamin Franklin 1787)”

“If You Can Keep It” symbolizes the division with which we struggle in our country. In this blood-red scene, the right’s black rapier rises with simplistic ignorance to pierce the left, whose concentric vision is obscured by its own nuanced knowledge; and, due to its in-fighting, is being pushed off the edge. Can the pink (youth) divert the evil, back onto itself? .... soon enough?