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The Steve Rockwell Sandwich

The original image of the Steve Rockwell Sandwich as styled by Byron Ayanoglou and photographed in 1989 by Skip Dean with its subsequent exhibition at the Arnold Gottlieb Gallery in Toronto

We eat with our eyes as much as our stomachs. Food and visual art share a profound history throughout the ages. Ten years before launching dArt International magazine, publisher Steve Rockwell served an actual sandwich as art at the Arnold Gottlieb Gallery in Toronto. Then as now, he exhibited collage works along with his food creation. James Chatto, then food critic with Toronto Life Magazine liked the collage works, but also deemed the edible offering a “first-rate sandwich” in his review in the gourmet section of Toronto Life. Rockwell created a subject for his collages that might be consumed by both eye and stomach. Here at De Luca Fine Art, by making an art magazine the subject, he links reading and eating, delivering a reader’s and eater’s digest, if you will.

Last year the Steve Rockwell Sandwich celebrated its twenty-first birthday in an exhibition at the Fran Hill Gallery. Restaurant owner, Saeed Mohamed of BQM, the Burger Shoppe, came by to view and to sample. The reviews were positive, and he was inspired to begin work on a new menu selection for his restaurants. De Luca Fine Art, Steve Rockwell, and BQM, are now pleased to present “The dArt Burger!”

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The Color Match Games

The Color Match Game box displayed as art with its interior view on the right. This particular game was played between Taiga Lipson and Steve Rockwell at the Olga Korper Gallery on November, 2019

Steve Rockwell’s exhibits pieces of his “Color Match Game.” Created in 1987, the game was first played competitively in 1999, when it was introduced to resident artists at Omi International Arts Center in Upstate New York. Over the years, tournaments have been held in New York City, Miami Beach, Los Angeles, and Toronto. Although the playing of Color Match is inherently no more complicated than a colorized tic-tac-toe, the resulting variables of each played game, are infinitely more complex. Each game board records a specific moment in time and place between two players. They constitute, in effect, “a conversation in color.”

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Four Artists at Wychwood Barns

Group Show #1 installation view

Group Show #1 was organized by Leah Oates and opened Sunday, February 2, 2020 at the Peter MacKendrick Community Gallery, Wychwood Barns. It featuring work by four Toronto based Artists: Pamela Dodds, Leah Oates, Steve Rockwell and Pierre St-Jacques.

A selection of six of Steve Rockwell's Color Match games from a tournament begun September 2019
A selection of six of Steve Rockwell’s Color Match games from a tournament begun September 2019

Steve Rockwell’s exhibits pieces of his “Color Match Game.” Created in 1987, the game was first played competitively in 1999, when it was introduced to resident artists at Omi International Arts Center in Upstate New York. Over the years, tournaments have been held in New York City, Miami Beach, Los Angeles, and Toronto. Although the playing of Color Match is inherently no more complicated than a colorized tic-tac-toe, the resulting variables of each played game, are infinitely more complex. Each game board records a specific moment in time and place between two players. They constitute, in effect, “a conversation in color.” 

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Pick a Number between 1 and 99

Steve Rockwell, Pick a Number between 1 and 99, 1987, ink on printed bond paper, 42.5 inches x 12 feet 10 inches (detail showing half of installed artwork)

I had dropped out of the art scene already in 1972. When I came up with the idea for Pick a Number Between 1 and 99 in 1987, my contact with people I had known from art school and the early studio days had all but ceased. To quote Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone, professionally I was essentially “…a complete unknown.” Continue reading “Pick a Number between 1 and 99”

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Meditations on Space

Since the inception of the Meditations on Space project in Zurich, Switzerland in September 1995, to the current state of the project in Toronto, the odyssey has spawned a modest collection of journal notations, drawn from almost 150 visits to galleries in Europe and North America. Yet, my particular anecdotal method of record making, was actually an afterthought. During a stay near Aix-en-Provence in France, I began experimenting with a visual documentation of the events – black, sparse linear brush strokes on white paper. I made a notebook these sketches and carried them through the Paris galleries.

Page 18 of the Fall 2017/Winter 2018 edition of dArt part of the dArt International Back Pages story