Local tattoo artist Dirk Spece tag teams with local radio show host and crypto-zoologist Alex Reisfar in an artistic journey to lesser explored corners of the human psyche this month at Thump Coffee in downtown Bend. Throughout September, Spece displays his woodcut prints, and he invited Reisfar to exhibit his paintings on glass, as well.
Life-long Central Oregon resident Spece describes himself as “a tattooer by trade” working at Black Rabbit Tattoo in Bend. He began making woodcuts in 2004, shortly after he began tattooing, and his work has been shown in New York and Los Angeles, as well as locally. “My printmaking experience is self-taught,” says Spece. “I am influenced by traditional American tattoo imagery, skateboard graphics, early 20th Century illustration, and early American folk art. All of my work is printed by hand without the use of a press.”
Reisfar was born in Romania, and orphaned when his mother, an oil painter, was killed in a logging accident. Adopted by a Bend couple at age 2, he grew up here with a working woodcarver, Tristan Reisfar, for an adoptive father. “I think a fear of death, brought on by the loss of my mother at such a young age, was for me the main drive in wanting to become a great painter,” says Alex Reisfar.
“My father used to say that the sculpture was always there in the wood, waiting for him to carve away the surrounding stump that had entombed it. That image stuck with me, and still today I think of my paintings in the same way. The painting is there behind the glass somewhere. When I prepare to start a new piece, I’m like a child looking into a mirror in the dark, letting his mind and eyes dictate reality.”
For more about Alex Reisfar, his art and his radio show on KPOV 106.7 FM, “The League of Anarchist Crypto-Zoologists,” visit Alex Reisfar’s website.
To see more of Dirk Spece’s tattoo art and woodcut prints, visit the Dirk Spece “Artists & Staff” page in the Portfolio section of blackrabbittattoo.com
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