Codebreaker: Shapes and shadows build artists’ foundation in latest exhibit
By Kate Hayden
John Sikula wants you to get lost. Well, not literally –– he’d like to see you hang around his show “Breaking the Code: Connecting with Creation” at the Charles City Arts Center tonight –– but when you start browsing through his mixed media pieces, there will be more than enough for each viewer to digest and interpret, based on what they see.
“I want people to invest in them enough and look at them long enough to where they start making their own representational images,” Sikula said. “The artist’s statement is basically saying that it’s encouraging the viewer to put their own experiences, their own perceptions into the piece in an effort to break down barriers of what normal consciousness is.”
Sikula’s mixed media pieces are textured with layers, layers and more layers of detail –– starting just after he stretches the canvas.
“I like to say it includes God’s influence,” Sikula said. “I’ll let it rain on a canvas that I’ve stretched, and then I’ll start painting over the rain and let the rain effect that. The snow angels ones, I let it snow on top of the canvases, and then I paint over that.”
He uses everything from acrylic and spray paint to colored pencils and markers, designing pieces that are complicated with small patterns throughout to keep the eye interested. It’s part of bringing the audience into the experience, Sikula said, and letting people remain invested in following the lines through to their end.
“I kind of like to take chaos and imply order,” Sikula said. “Almost all my pieces, if you look at it long enough you’ll see something that you think is familiar.”
It took him a couple of years to develop his style to this point, which he experiments with in his converted garage-to-studio, and he doesn’t see it stop developing anytime soon.
“ I like to keep it kind of fluid, and I don’t like to give people the answers –– to be a vessel for them to explore their own imaginations,” Sikula said.
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