Altered Elements
News/Resume
Mechanical Botanicals
Installations and Proposals
Francine Funke
Fire Works Series
Plume's, Kuwaiti Oil Field Fires, pictured here in the Senate Rotunda, is an installation which has travelled across the country. It was installed in the foyer of the Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and in the main atrium of the Scottsdale Contemporary Museum. Senator Joseph Lieberman from Connecticut sponsored it's installation in the Russell Senate Rotunda on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
A comprehensive exhibition of the Fire Works Series, entitled, "On Fire", took place at the Rich Forum, Stamford Center for the Arts, in Stamford, CT. A book/catalog of this work, entitled "On Fire" poem and paintings, by Francine Funke, accompanied the exhibition, and is in many major museum and university libraries.
The terrible beauty of blazing and explosive fires fueled my Fire Works Series of paintings.
What began for me as a formal artistic process, mainly concerned with the inherent properties of manipulated paper and sprayed acrylic paint, evolved into a social and ecological statement.
Increasing world and national acts of terrorism; the War in the Persian Gulf; wildfires in California; erupting volcanoes; colliding comets in outer space; global warming; and the eternal flame of racial, religious, and ethnic turmoil, have brought many issues relating to fire into focus.
These events graphically depicted how the element of fire links society's mad machinations to forces which are both overpowering and uncontrollable. The distressing consequence is a flammable mix of Man and Nature.
Click on images below
Acrylic and paper on Canvas 96" x 98"
Splitfire
Collection: Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, CT.
Plumes, Panels 1,2,3
Acrylic, paper on Canvas 96" x 96"
Senate Rotunda Installation
Plume 1
Mixed Media and Paper on Canvas 50" x 24"
Heartland 1
Collection: Vertrue Corporation, Norwalk, CT
Horizon 3
FireScape Installation
Sizzle 1
Japanese paper and Acrylic on board 8" x 10"
Fire Ball 2
Mixed Media Collage on Paper 16" x 20"
Mixed Media Collage on Board 20"x16"
Fire Sketch #1
Mixed Media on Paper 14" x 11"
FireSide Sketch
© Francine Funke, 2022