The Hangover Jitters of the American Zeitgeist

(Liz Di Nunzio)

By Emanuel Jalonschi

Sitting in a Dumbo cafe, DiNunzio gestures over her sesame tofu, stretching her hands to accentuate the last part of, "doesn't anyone else see this shit?"

Liz DiNunzio is one very blunt visual artist, and her vision (while markedly 21st century) is a reminder of a certain lost spirit in American culture. "Whatever happened to the multi-faceted human, the people who could see things in the big picture?"

Her work reflects this need for reveille in the American spirit. In her works "DaVinci" and "The Path" (a take on the eastern notion of dharma) an attention begging humanism flows from the canvas in rich late Rennaissance color schemes. "DaVinci is one of my heroes in that he was an artist, an engineer, a scientist."

In her collage work Greed (a part of her seven deadly sins collection) an American flag bumpy with the flow of corporate logos fades in the background as a big golden dollar sign emerges dead center, flaming and seemingly in the midst of evolving into a swastika. Her images are powerful and direct, and this is a reflection of Di Nunzio's brutally direct view of contemporary American mores.

"I'm so proud of what my country is supposed to be, of the things we're supposed to stand for."

Her fascination with death of the American Spirit can be seen in "Addiction", where the Statue of Libery has lost her guiding flame and instead, jets of black oil shoot out of her arm. In her mixed-medium work "Sacrificing Freedom", a craven hunched over President Bush is dressed as a Roman Legionairre, as a cross, facing away from the viewer, seems to be holding the nailed lifeless frame of Lady Liberty.

"A lot of my art" says DiNunzio "is actually me posing questions to the viewer... one, is it just me, or does anyone else notice this shit? Two, ain't that shit fucked up? and three, has anyone else felt this way?"

While much of her work is political, a good deal of it also focuses on that last question, the question of feeling a particular way. Di Nunzio sees herself as an emotive artist, expressing a thought or an image as she sees it in the hope of creating a reaction, or more importantly, a conversation between the piece, the artist and the viewer.

This latter attention to the emotive nature of art can be seen in her jazz series. In her pencil and paint piece "Jazz 3" a saxophone and roll of piano keys entangle in a complex syncopated embrace. "I was one of those dorks in elementary school that got bussed out just to do music." Di Nunzio, who plays over a half-dozen instruments including the piccollo flute, french horn and bass guitar, has an deep love for the emotional intensity of musical _expression.

In "Jazz 2" a saxophone falls back on a bed of staffs, a deep blue infinity stretching below. Halfway through our interview, a Nina Simone Song comes on, and things have to stop.

As she recovers from her daydream, and picks up her fork, she says, "I just don't fit in with the 'scene', whatever the fuck that means." While she was recently on display at the Square Foot Show in Chelsea, DiNunzio confesses a distaste for the gallery circles.

"More often than not, getting your work in has more to do with who you know then how talented you are or what you're saying." For the struggling artist, galleries can feel more like a pimping station than an exhibition space. "Galleries want to take fifty percent of your take, and that's ridiculous. This is my stuff, my art."

If nothing else, Di Nunzio is strikingly independent, whether in the way she markets herself as an artist or in how she garnered her influences. She traces her artistic heritage from renowned American essayist and transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, and even to more contemporary comentators like "Eminem, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart."

"I try to inject some humor and create a lot of stuff outside of politics and world events." She confesses to getting a bit too serious even for herself, and art, on the whole, says Di Nunzio "is fun, even while there's always the possibility of touching or inspiring someone. If I can get one person to look at a piece of mine and say. 'I've felt that' then I will feel satisfied--in a passing transient manner."

Between the dusk and the cigarette smoke her portfolio closes.

"Either that or getting banned by some religious famiy values group or some Kansas school board. 'Cause when you piss off those people, you know you're doing the right thing."