20th-21st Century Contemporary American Art

The Moon is Black 1988, 20 x 24 inch Polaroid with a water-color painting floating -  17 inch diameter moon painting in the backdrop right hand corner is an  excerpt from the series "The Moon is Twelve Colors." The color  Black recalls the dark tragedy of the HIV/AIDS epidemic which emerged in New York City in 1981 when suddenly colleagues and friends were dying-too young- from this awful emergent disease. 

My art  uses techniques to tell a story I've experienced;   Whether I employ silver gelatin photographs, hand-sculpted 2-dimensional paintings on mahoghany doorskin with acrylic and resins;  archive ink jet color prints from original scans; or share my rare collection of "vintage 20 x 24 inch color Polaroid and SX-70 Prints:" my  art formations are created to classical  standards of  "how this art  archived art object will  last the longest possible to share with future audiences viewers." 

About Polaroid: These are each unique artists proofs that document a performance. From each series, one was given in trade to the Polaroid Art Collection-- from 1977-1987. Over 200 of my images  were sold off in 2010 at Sothebys, New York, NY, from the Polaroid Corporations' Art Collection-- when Polaroid went bankrupt due to the creation of digital photography.  Those in trade were purchased by  the Westlicht Schauplatz fur Fotografie, in Vienna, Austria along with 3,000 other artists' images.

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 Chocolates 2023, 

36 x 22 inches, acrylic on mahogany door skin, is one example of  my ongoing series since 1989, "The Fake-O Cards" inspired by the Haines 1936 deck --used by Hollywood  Magic Castle Close-up Magicians to warm up their audiences by producing a card from their pockets or sleight of hand, that does not exist.

     All my art is titled by American slang language, words and phrases created by others talking past and present or by me--as in "The Moon is Black," inspired by real-life experiences and restructured into art reinterpreted art objects.

For sales: inquire, renasmallone@gmail.com

Race Card,  2020,

54 x 36 inches acrylic, epoxy on mahogany door skin

This painting  represents my total disdain for Racism, symbolizing the concept with a celebration of the beautiful and rich colors of our human beings' skin tones-symbolized in the epoxy-surfaced-reflecting-spades.

The phrase race card first came into play in 1995 during the O.J. Simpson trial, coined by one of his lawyers, the late Johnny Cochran and  used to describe a racist point of view by one of the defendents ...this painting defies the definition by presenting the various skin colors of human anatomy in each playing card spade symbol instead, as a visual clue to humanism.