Summer Solstice Benefit 2010 Featured Artist: Richard Hricko

Today's featured artist is Richard Hricko, a Philadelphia-based artist, printmaker and sculptor.

Richard Hricko's influence is abundant in the Philadelphia art community. He's an educator, an Associate Professor of Art at Tyler School of Art, where he has held various faculty and administrative positions throughout the years. He's an artist, creating striking images in print, drawing and sculpture. He's also a founder of Crane Arts, one of the city's largest and most-reknowned arts communities, housing several galleries, artists studios, and arts-related businesses.

Richard Hricko Ombre

Richard Hricko's work, ultimately, is about contrast. There's the high-value visual contrast, evidenced in his often black and white print and drawing work. It's also seen in the composition of his images, often playing with the "white space" that is traditional in printmaking, including changing the size of the image to create atypical borders, or reversing the tradition and allowing black borders to bleed off the paper, thus contrasting the fine art print archetype.

Richard Hricko, Aloe II

It's also quite apparent in the imagery itself. Hricko constructs compositions of organic shapes, both from observation and imagination, and executes them with machine-like precision. The contradiction established from producing loose, natural forms in a very refined and constructed manner creates a unique energy, one that is especially powerful when combined with his awe-inspiring intricacy. The apparent theme of the search for harmony between nature and mechanized progress is classic and everlasting issue in American culture.

Richard Hricko has donated two works to the Summer Solstice Benefit: Aloe II (2001) and Ombre (2010).
RSVP today and take one home!

-Dan Haddigan