Behavioral Patterns

Clayspace has a body of Jim Bowling's ceramic figures up in their attached space, Gallery 831. Behavioral Patterns depicts couples and individual figures in different modes and moments of relating to each other, from initial attraction to consummation. That isn't really the complete range, as any stage of a relationship can be purely physical or part of a deeper connection. Bowling captures these distinctions without being obscene. While there is a phallus for every figure, it is so commonplace in the show that it cannot be the only focal point. The emotions are human, not just male.

Bowling clearly enjoys his materials as well as his subjects. The bending of geometric forms makes them into figures. The form sets a tone that is further embellished through low fire glazes and bands of metal that add color and texture. The layers build up to imply depth of the characters and their experiences. Some parts are worn while others are polished to a high sheen. All of the forms and finishes give the feeling of a search for completeness through connection to others, whatever form that may take.

In Charged the two figures are so endowed they are literally tripods, but they stare intently straight into each other's faces. These are beings that have a sexuality but are too concerned with getting to know each other to allow those feelings to dominate other emotions, no matter how strong those feelings may later become. The two figures recognize a fit rather than a clone. Their surfaces are complementary rather than identical. The colors of the glazes and banding of the metal luster expand a common theme.

This contrasts with Mutual Attraction, in which the two figures stare into each other's faces, but the figures end at the waist and each face sprouts directly from a phallus. The expressions and dimensions of the figures let us know that although they might be looking at faces, their thoughts are elsewhere. This different type of attraction is presented as something that happens, not as a form of judgement.

Other pieces depict couples unified physically. In Ride a reclining figure extends through a hole in the center of a standing figure. The point of connection is not anatomically exact to the act, but their feeling of togetherness is unmistakable. Bowling does a nice job of setting up the situation and then letting us know what the focus really is, what details he finds most important.

An Uneasy Alliance features a reclining nude figure. The pose is reminiscent of the countless reclining nude females paintings and sculptures, but it is different because it is a man in this familiar position. The red color of the surface is broken by several bands of black and gold. One band wraps around the head over where the mouth would be, as if the mouth has been taped shut. With his silence ensured, the figure makes his best effort to appear relaxed, but tension remains in his reclined pose. Bowling leaves the other member of this alliance ambiguous.

After seeing all of the pieces, I was left with the feeling that connection is something all people need. Not everyone will connect the same way. Not everyone will be successful, but it is still universal. Can a nude just be a nude? Can a viewer evaluate the concept of nude art through the pose and context without focusing solely on the sexual dimensions? What if there are a lot of nudes and they are mostly of couples interacting? What if all of the many nudes are male? Should I have said “penis?” I feel more like I'm talking about art if I say “phallus,” but that may be a personal problem.

Visit the Clayspace website www.clayspace831.com for more information on the show or their ceramics classes and www.jimbowling.net for more information on the artist and photos of his work.

 

 

National Cup Show

Starbrick National 2013 Cup Show

Through November 23 you can find the National Cup show at the Starbrick Gallery located in Nelsonville, Ohio.  If unable to come out to Nelsonville for the show all of the cups entered can be conveniently viewed on their webpage http://www.starbrick.com .  However, a trip to the Starbrick Gallery would defiantly surpass viewing online to get the full tactile experience of handling the cups along with each artist’s individual statements.

 I found the show to be interesting to the form of what a functional drinking cup can be.  There were many different variations within the formal aspects, conceptual ideas, and sculptural components behind each cup.  Being of affordable price also for a piece of unique art that’s functional as well had people claiming their own “one of its kind” before I even walked in the door opening night.  I found myself wanting to purchase one for myself but many had already been claimed, which left me wishing there had been more cups entered.  Knowing that it is Starbrick’s tradition to be specific to primarily the ceramic material for the cup show I couldn’t help but also wonder why not have a show with the theme of cups open to other materials?  Perhaps this is a biased view coming from someone who works within a range of mixed media, but within the Starbrick gallery itself there is already other work outside of this show in a whole range of materials.  Nevertheless I found the show to be quite charming and appreciated the individual characteristic style within each ceramic cup.  

Perhaps my favorites were ones by Mat Rude, James Tingey, and Lucien Koonce.  Their sense of handling the material to mimic a recreation of organic forms you’d find in nature appeals to me.  This referencing nature then becomes an idea or meditation of bringing it into your home or bringing it into your body as a way to become one with nature.  Some other artists like Emily Nickel and Noelle Horsfield reference nature but in more of a graphic style that suggests a drawing or printing processes that is very unique and interesting.  I had to laugh when I saw Dan Roe’s cup which was the resemblance of what you’d associate to be a “holy grail.”  You don’t get much more spiritual than that.  The idea of drinking out of a cup everyday to experience a kind of immortality and emphasizing it as such by its grandiose  gold color and goblet structure.  If not the literal “holy grail” cup then perhaps drinking from Tim Carlburg’s portrait of Andy Warhol on a ceramic tin cup is more your taste.  It’s kind of interesting how this idea of the “holy grail” could possibly be depicted in several different ways. 

With all of these and the other cups I haven’t mentioned I come to see the wonderment and value of investigating the everyday experience of the drinking cup.  The significance and importance of these cups in the personalization and/or reflection of what it’s associating to is what makes them interesting for me. 

  Laura Dabrota

"You Call That Art"

Emily Beveridge Review: “You Call That Art?” at Cultural Arts Center, Columbus Ohio

 

You Call That Art? is a juried exhibit that is on display at Cultural Arts Center now through November 5^th. My friend, Sara Berens was an artist featured in the show, and so I tagged along with her to the opening reception earlier this month. The premise of the show was to cast a wide net, (there was no application fee to submit work) and get a mix of artists that respond to the question asked in the title.

 

As with many group shows, the quality of the art varied widely. I find that often juried shows lack cohesion, and I am afraid that You Call That Art? falls into this category. Although Cultural Arts is a beautiful and historic space, with tall ceilings and great light, I found that the layout of the show was jammed. This only added to the hodge podge nature of the work on display. The space really could have used some floating walls, to allow the pieces some breathing room.

 

Selected works included a bull made of curly telephone cord, a house made of hair, and an encaustic painting. My two favorite pieces both featured women as warriors, and were displayed close together in the space. Diana / Sarah Palin by Sarah Hahn was a mixed media ceramics statue that portrayed Sarah Palin in the pose of Diana the Huntress. This piece made me laugh out loud, and was a formidable presence in the gallery. Behind Hahn's piece was a digital photograph by Amanda Kline titled “Portrait of Xugha”, which depicted a neon warrior woman surrounded by cardboard cutouts with tribal motifs

Margaret Eriksen

Review: A consideration of “local”, and the work of Margaret Eriksen

                                                                                                                     -Misty Morrison

            Cat with Very Little Brain, Ceramic/Acrylic.

Before I painted her, she sat out in the backyard for some time. When I started on her head I discovered a (discarded) wasps nest in her 'brain cavity'! Its still there.

           

           

            I went into Ohio University Lancaster's Wilkes Gallery with a number of presupposed expectations about local artists running through my thoughts. It wasn't until the moment when I glanced around the gallery space, and stood in front of the first painting that I began to confront these thoughts, and then much more slowly, as is the way with these things, the acceptance that I was subject to them. Following which I began to question just what it is about the application of the word local to the practice of art that is so easily acceptable as a negative.

An old song says “Kids! Whats the matter with kids today?!! Why can't they be like WE were (perfect in every way)? -Oh, What's the matter with kids today?” There are many reasons that children have difficulties in school. It's not just lack of effort from them and their teachers!

Why can Johnnie (and Sue and Leroy) still not read? Acrylic on canvas

            Answers to this musing are too numerous to list in the course of a review, and I'd like to focus instead on why I decided for myself that this attitude in response to Margaret Eriksen's work would be misguided. We feel like we know where the local artist is coming from- after all, their inspirations are perhaps places or things we passsed by on our way to see their work. I've given a great deal of thought lately to the practice of considering the intended audience of a work. If the bar I aspire to in my own practice is to raise questions, where does this work fall into that?

            Eriksen's piece “Why can Johnnie (and Sue and Leroy) still not read?” is a very straight-forward acrylic painting on canvas, the surface of which is taken up with stylized portraits, painted words, and color shapes creating a patterned ground onto which words and portraits are placed. There is a great deal of ambiguity for me in the juxtaposition of smiling portraits, and the cliché words attempted to announce exactly why Johnnie, Sue, and other children might not be performing in school. If I hadn't known from the artist's bio, I would know now that Eriksen had taught. It is quite within my presuppositions to expect a retired art educator to address the problems with the education system in their studio practice. But this work goes a little further than that for me, in that what it proports to be doing- telling me what is the matter with kids today- it is in fact, not. Instead, it is raising questions for me. The information that it does give me, that kids in local school districts face problems that make learning challenging, does nothing to lessen the question of why. Because I think it's obvious to anyone reading the painted words “hedonism”, “television”, and “environmental pollution” that the attribution to any one thing, most likely as outdated in concept and understanding as is our education system, just isn't solving any problems. Which raises the question: what will?

           

Lunchin' at the Sistine, Mixed Media

            Eriksen uses “humorous” as a descriptor in her own statement about her work, and there is a great deal of humor in them, but also something of whimsy. “Lunchin' at the Sistine” is the most overtly both, delivering no direct social message, but allowing us to form many of our own assumptions as to potential themes. This painting, and the body of work as a whole, references traditional tropes of painting that make them easily accessible (and in some cases easily disregardable) to insert social commentary that doesn't answer and of the issues it raises, combined with something wimsical to make it palatable. The recipe, though no update to any of the means she's employing, I have to say is compelling none the less. The group of work as a whole begs the questions, what is sacrificed of expanded perspective in the choice to remain local? Can that be a choice made to engage a specific audience? What sort of expanded understanding can be gained without leaving “home”?   Misty Morrison

"Peeled Paintings"

Peeled Paintings, Robert Tavani
Grid Furnishings, 944 N High St, Columbus, Ohio
August 4 – October 31, 2013

In Columbus, Ohio the first Saturday of every month is Gallery Hop. Art spaces in the Short North stay open into the evening. Some spaces are galleries in the traditional sense while others have incorporated galleries into other businesses. One such establishment is Grid Furnishings. Contemporary art goes nicely with the highly designed furniture in the showroom.

Currently Robert Tavani’s paintings are hanging on the walls at Grid. When I first saw Tavani’s Peeled Paintings, I couldn’t figure out what why they seemed so different than other paintings with color fields. It finally hit me that although they are obviously layered, the surface is smooth, almost glassy. It didn’t seem like it should be possible, but Tavani was kind enough to explain his process in the statement with the show. He works with acrylic paint on a clear support, peeling and adding layers and then observing changes through the clear substrate from the back of the painting. When he is finished, the back becomes the front and he removes the entire painting from the clear support and mounts it on canvas. The effect is similar to collage, while the smoothness of the surface unifies the many shaped layers into one.

Tavani strives to transform base materials, showing something familiar in a different light. The trace of the artist’s hand is preserved through the brushstrokes and jagged edges of shapes. The work maintains a very physical presence despite the glossy smoothness of the surface. What has obviously been painted almost appears manufactured because of the pristine finish.

L.E.E.K. I (2012), like most paintings on display, has no clear subject. The colors and shapes are given spotlight. There appears to have been some writing, but enough has been removed that only a few stray words remain. Here the transformation is nearly limited to the materials. There is a lingering sense that something was previously here, but the viewer is left to determine what it might have been. The tracks have been scrubbed clean since we are only left with the smooth reverse side while the side the artist worked from is fixed to the canvas.

Bouquet (2013) is the most clearly representational of the works. Tavani has transformed the subject matter as well as the paint. The blooms, stems, and vase appear to be flattened onto the same surface as the collaged swaths of paint. Instead of the cubist notion of viewing all sides at once, here all sides have become one; the bouquet seems to have been launched onto a slide like subatomic particles in an experiment at CERN. The elements of the floral arrangement exist, but no longer in their natural state. The colored paper of the wrappings takes the foreground amidst a field of blossoms, reversing the usual hierarchy. A recognizable, usually peaceful element, element of still lives is infused with chaos.

While Tavani has not turned the world of painting on its head, he has managed to find a way to keep paintings on canvas fresh. They weren’t created on canvas, but exist that way now. Something new retrofitted onto something old creates a space just weird enough to linger.

                        Brett Barton

Barbara Vogel Luminosity

The Columbus Gallery Hop is scheduled once a month, but I still always manage to arrive late- often too late to take in any galleries! October 5^th was one of those days for my wife and I. On our way to enjoy a delicious but overpriced treat of Jenny’s Ice Cream (a local favorite and regular tradition), we poked our noses against the window at the Sherrie Gallerie ( 694 N. High St. Columbus, Ohio). In the dim auxiliary light coming thru the window, I could just make out these ghostly apparitions staring back at me from countless black frames. I knew I had to return, if only to assuage my curiosity.

It took me another week, but I finally made it when they were open. The show, Barbara Vogel Luminosity, was worth the wait. Mrs. Vogel’s Bachelor of fine arts and Master of fine arts in photography both came from the Ohio State University. She resides in Grandview Heights, Ohio. Her show will be up until November 9^th.

Upon closer inspection, and with much better lighting, I did not lose that ghostly apparition effect. Not in the least. As a matter of fact, I would say the effect was much stronger directly. Displayed were a series of portrait oriented pictures stacked within an inch of each other, extending the length of the wall on both sides. The effect was that of stacked tombstones. The heightened repetition of form made the collection seem quite limitless, but also had the effect of making each image less special. It felt like an archive or a catalog. The combination of some smiling faces, the mix of the views from front to ¾ view, and the use of first names seemed to want to make the subjects personal, but the effect of stacking really canceled that out.  

I found myself transported to the Pere Lachaise Cemetary in Paris. Off the beaten path were a series of crematorium tombs tucked into a hallway of sorts, most decorated with sepia tone photos looking out at the visitors from the other side. I poured over the photos and tried to imagine the lives attached to them. These photos had that same strange eternal feeling, and I was captivated.

These “photos” were bleached of all but the faintest color, and they had a strange but beautiful shifting feel to them that gave the illusion that they existed behind the frame in three dimensions. The final touch was that the photos were entombed in encaustic. The lack of color combined with the shifting lack of focus made them feel like old photos with a strong link to history.

Not only was there an element of time implied by the archive, and by the reference to historical photos, but they also just felt like they were not just one second trapped, but several minutes trapped in one picture.  These wonderful mysterious photos seemed to exist outside of time.

Mrs. Vogel’s statement may help clarify her intent:  The “clickless” work presented is created from a hand held wand scanner, a “decisive moment” when my photographer’s eye and brain signaled my hand to press the shutter and capture the person’s character. This allows a new perspective on portraiture and gives my work overtones of mystery and intimacy. All of my images are fused with encaustic, giving the portrait or landscape a more haunting and ephemeral quality.

Ok, so my read was a bit dramatic, but pretty spot on in many ways! On my way out I got to speak with Sherrie Fox, the Gallery owner. She informed me that it took quite a while to figure out how to pour the hot wax on to the photos without burning them! Sometimes process can be boring, but the combination of the physicality of the hand held wand scanner recording time, and the use of hot wax to seal the image in perpetuity was far from boring. Bravo!

                         Aaron Smith

"Let's Talk About Love Baby"

Chido Johnson’s “Let’s Talk About Love Baby” at Columbus College of Art and Design is an exhibit on love and its many forms. The idea stated is that each artist conceals within visually uniform titles of romance novels, their interpretation of “love”. The books are to be presented on some form of shelving system with seating for viewers to relax and peruse the books. Each book has a call number ala the Dewey Decimal System. Each venue has its own “love librarian” to assign the type of shelving and sitting formations. For this show, “love librarians” Danielle Julian Norton and Erin McKenna located the books on two long shelves with what looked like church pews with pink lame’ covered cushions to sit and read on. The show has had several venues including but not limited to; Indiana Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art of Detroit, National Gallery of Zimbabwe.

 I buy into the notion of the church pews because we all long for and worship at the altar of love, but the cheesy pink lame cushions, along with the poor construction of many of the books, distracted me from taking the show too seriously. Also, I may be nit-picking but there are no, “visually uniform titles”, thus deleting the notion that each bookmakers intentions were hidden, you absolutely could tell the intentions for many of the books before opening them. The only thing uniform on the book covers were the call numbers. That being said there were some interesting books in the exhibit.

L’Amour, the Book of Love  by Marie Bourger contains famous quotes on love ranging from  humorous; “Love cures all things except poverty and tooth aches” by Mae West, to the idealistic; “I hope you feel that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world” by Charles Dickens. The mixed media techniques and construction of pockets within pages led to many interesting discoveries and made for an enjoyable interaction with the book.
Rats by Robert Sullivan contained ads for used cars culled from phone books, a commentary on feigned love.
Frankenstein by anonymous, is craft paper  covered, sealed with packing tape then emblazoned with the title and an image of Casper David Friedrich’s The Wanderer in the Mists ,leaves little doubt of the artist’s negative feelings on love.
Gidion Bible, an interesting addition negating the notion of romantic love and focusing on the Christian idea of love.
I found the most compelling book had no title or author. Swatches of a linen textiles cut to the same proportion, with edges frayed to uniform length were painstakingly stitched together. The care and love that was put into the construction of this book that far out-weighed the unsophisticated binding of most of the books present, may be the greatest testament to love present at this exhibit.

On view October 11 through November 9, 2013
Byers Gallery, CCAD Design Studios on Broad
390 E Broad  Street, Columbus, Ohio
Gallery hours: T/W/F 1-5pm, Th 2-7pm
For more information go to letstalkaboutlovebaby.com

Connaught