Dualities: Martha Bone and Bart Gulley at Architecture for Art

Painting by Bart Gulley from Black and Blue series

On a recent visit to Architecture for Art in Hillsdale, Bart Gulley and I discussed dualities as I perused his two-person show with Martha Bone in the two-floor exhibition space. It was our first meeting and my first time at AforA, so there was a lot to take in and digest. AforA director Liane Torre was also on hand, explaining the unlikely genesis a year ago of this brick-and-mortar setting from a longer-term, ongoing web-based project of the same name.

Gulley's work first caught my eye in the 2011 Exhibition by Artists of the Mohawk Hudson Region at the Albany Institute of History & Art (see review here); he makes Modernist paintings and collages with great purity, having evolved from a more Expressionist style in what appears to be a reductive maturation process. The work is crisp, clear, and somewhat dry at times, but seethes with a passion beneath the expertly rendered surfaces.

Bone's installation is, according to Torre, her first exhibition of any kind, and it is an engaging and impressive debut that effectively occupies the space it was designed for. Her explorations include a wide variety of materials - plastic cable ties, rubber hose, fabric, hand-built pottery forms, and ink on paper - yet come across in a surprisingly coherent manner (an example is shown at the bottom of this post). I look forward to seeing more from her in the future.

Paper collage by Bart Gulley

So, what of the dualities? Gulley mentioned his own distinction (or lack thereof?) between a landscape-oriented approach and a tabletop arrangement. I noted that his work sometimes hovers in a grey area between image and object. Then there's the issue of graphic design (Gulley's longtime profession) vs. fine art, as well as the given duality of the mission of AforA itself. This, too, suits the topic of Gulley's painting, as it is both architectural and abstract.

As is often the case with artists immersed in various media, collage is a touchstone for Gulley. While the upstairs space holds mostly paintings (and the Bone installation), the much smaller and warmly cluttered downstairs space (think museum shop) has a powerful series of five large collages in it that are every bit as accomplished as the bigger paintings. Based on our discussion, I would venture to say that Gulley values the collages more than the paintings - with good reason, as they have the advantage of being more personal and direct in their physical presence.

Altogether, each feeds off the other. The paintings could not exist without the collages (which often act as sketches for them), but the collages gain credibility from the fact that their maker is also a highly skilled painter. Yet another duality; perhaps we'll get to discuss it the next time we meet.

Rating: Highly Recommended

Note: Martha Bone and Bart Gulley remains on view at Architecture for Art through Dec. 18; the gallery is open Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. and is located in the heart of Hillsdale on Route 23. If you go, plan to enjoy the drive, as it is particularly lovely country around there.

Wall installation of ceramic, fabric and rubber by Martha Bone

Kiki Smith and Whiting Tennis at the Tang

Two artists of both shared and contrasting sensibilities are presented in solo shows at Skidmore College's Tang Teaching Museum through the end of the year. Kiki Smith is by far the more famous and influential of the two; her show did not originate at the Tang, having been brought in from the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle. Whiting Tennis, who hails from Seattle himself, is the subject of a Tang "Opener," whereby the museum's curators make a point of introducing an artist not previously broadly exposed in this area. So we have the known and the unknown side by side; the Seattle connection may be intended or not.

I Myself Have Seen It: Photography and Kiki Smith includes a very great number of photographs, but it also features sculptures, drawings, prints and mixed media, all of which are what the artist is widely known for producing. She is considered a feminist, in that her work runs counter to male-dominated viewpoints regarding the female body in art, and she is clearly very much of her time - a child of the '60s and '70s, wild and undisciplined in many ways.

The installation of I Myself Have Seen It is highly structured, however (see view at the top of this post), prominently featuring a narrow ledge at the bottom edge of the gallery's walls that supports an array of countless 4x6-inch color prints in minimal plastic box-frames, running like a subtitled narrative below the entire text of the exhibition. On the walls are many larger, properly framed photographs, as well as the other works, in great big groups and sequences.

Smith's imagery is process-oriented, often derived from ongoing sculptural installations, and it is gritty, grim, even gruesome by turns. Bodies are depicted nude, distorted and dismembered; faces are expressionless. This is not easy work to confront and, despite a lyrical patina to some of the colorful photographs that belies Smith's overall deathliness, difficult to enjoy.

In contrast, Tennis, who has his own flirtation with deathly imagery in the form of gallows- or coffin-like forms, is like a breath of fresh air. Where Smith is grim, Tennis is playful. Where Smith seems to carry the scars of a brutal childhood, Tennis seems to be carrying on the joy of childish exploration. Like Smith, Tennis is comfortable working in a variety of media; unlike her, he seems to have mastered his techniques, whereas Smith appears to be locked in a never-ending struggle with them.

Tennis shows a curious mix of influences: Pablo Picasso, Philip Guston, and Ed Ruscha all come easily to mind when viewing this collection. One room, which contains just five pieces, all dated 2011, represents all these influences and more. A painting titled Droopy (shown at right) is loosely brushed in narrowly limited shades of grey (Guston); another painting with collage (shown below), similarly structured but far more colorful, picks up the Cubist vein (Picasso); and an all-white wall relief that accurately depicts a streetscape has uninflected observation at its core (Ruscha). Then there is a perfectly formed geometric octagonal prism atop a crusty, wooden found table - going in another direction entirely, yet still in harmony with the rest.

Two crowded groups make up the highlight of this show in the sense of revealing Tennis's process. On one wall, a constellation of 36 drawings, prints, paintings, and constructions mirrors the type of installation used in Smith's exhibition downstairs. These works are variously cast, painted, printed, texturized, stamped, or shaped. Tennis is one of those artists who doesn't worry about how he makes it, he just has to make it however it needs to be made.

In another space, a large display of objects on shelves (shown at the bottom of this post) provides potential hours of perusal - there are 108 little sculptures in it, all around 6 inches tall, all handmade. It's an impressive display of ingenuity and skill, but also of freedom.

A lot of the work in Tennis's show is from the past year, showing an artist who seems to have really hit his stride; it's a pleasure to discover this work, which is exactly the experience intended by the Opener series.

Ratings: Smith - difficult to recommend; Tennis - Highly Recommended

LOL at Albany Airport Gallery

At left, Granny Panties for My Ex-Girlfriend by Benjamin Entner;
at right Self Portrait by Spring Hofeldt

In a way, the Albany International Airport Gallery is like an ongoing Whitney Biennial of the Capital Region. Curator Sharon Bates mounts just two shows a year, usually around a pithy theme, and she often populates these shows with work by artists she's spotted at other venues around the area, in a sort of sifting and consolidation process.

The downside of this approach is that regular viewers of local galleries and museums will encounter things in these shows that they've already seen before, sometimes quite recently. But those are not the viewers the Airport Gallery targets; rather, Bates creates for an audience of travelers, many of whom are not from around here and will never venture beyond the terminal as they seek ways to kill time between flights.

And, in more than 10 years of honing that aim, Bates has adopted a formula that really works - even achieving national recognition for excellence in cultural programming at airports. So, it's no surprise that the new show at the Airport Gallery, titled LOL, is fresh, funny and - yes - surprising, despite including some familiar work.

OMG by Brian Kane

While being humorous would seem to be a prerequisite for inclusion in this exhibition, there are many kinds of humor, and not everything here evokes giggles or guffaws. But some of the artists do purposely go for the laugh, particularly Tim Davis, whose sly, slapstick video sequence titled Upstate New York Olympics features such hilarious pursuits as Lawn Jockey Leap Frog and Snowman Jiu Jitsu, in which the artist is seen nonchalantly launching himself over little statues on display in yards of every economic demographic, and violently assaulting unsuspecting Frosties, ninja fashion. I like slapstick and, yes, watching Davis did make me laugh out loud, as it did the Three Stooges-loving friend who accompanied me.

Other work had a more sardonic appeal, such as Roger Bisbing's meticulously detailed, miniature construction titled Shaker Air, in which stoic wooden furnishings are arranged in the configuration of a 737 jet. Created specifically for LOL, this work's humor depends on your understanding of Shaker life, and the fact that the airport is on Shaker land.

Also thoughtful and evocative is Michael Oatman's installation titled Cesare Lombroso's House of Pizza, in which a slightly tongue-in-cheek narrative explores the unlamented stereotyping of the mustachioed Italian pizza man. Sixteen silkscreened variations of the character are arranged in a grid to illustrate the cultural phenomenon, but it's hard to get to exercised about a happy pizza guy when, well, happy pizza guys are such a good thing.

This is how you repay me? by Gregor Wynnyczuk

Oatman also collaborated on Forest Freshner with Brian Kane, in which the artists made an oversized version of the classic pine-tree car freshener, shaped and scented like a new car, and photographed it being hung in the great outdoors. Kane's solo contribution to the show is equally witty and Pop-inspired: a big, red word balloon that says "OMG!," just like every tween alive.

Also notable for dry wit and impeccable technique are the drawings of Andrew DeGraff, an illustrator who likes to tilt at iconic figures, and who makes you smile but also makes you think. His We are All Descended from Homeless People is, rightly, the poster image for the show; and his The Lord's Typewriter and The Selection of Darwin are wonderful comments on scientific and religious objects of worship, which also happen to be beautifully crafted works of art.

Equally beautiful are the three small paintings in the show by Spring Hofeldt,  which are more playful than funny, but which are so well painted they make you want to see many more. Her self-portrait distorted by a glass vessel in front of her face shows that not all postmodern feminist artists take themselves too seriously.

Two of the other three women in the show cover domestic topics (Minna Resnick on the family vacation; Joy Taylor on garden tools and personal accessories) in fun or self-mocking ways, but don't completely avoid the heaviness that seems to curse so many women artists since the awakenings of the '60s, and which doesn't plague the men quite so much, leaving them free to go completely off the wall.

Technically far more crude than Hofeldt or DeGraff, but just as clever, are the found-art musings of Gregor Wynnyczuk, who elevates kitschy paintings to the level of existentialist philosophy by placing black vinyl text on top of them, then adding evocative titles, such as What's gotten into you lately? and I'm not like the others. But his indirect take on personal issues is dwarfed by Benjamin Entner's 7-foot-long Granny Panties for My Ex-Girlfriend, which just dives right into the outrageous way relationships make us feel.

The other artists in LOL are Torrance Fish, Linda B. Horn, Steven Rolf Kroeger, and Owen Sherwood. The exhibition, which is accessible to the non-flying public from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day, will remain on view through Mar. 25, 2012.

Rating: Highly Recommended
 

Forest Freshner by Brian Kane and Michael Oatman

Are We Having Art Yet? Bill Griffith at BCB Art

Irreverent, absurd, existentialist - Bill Griffith’s Zippy the Pinhead embodies these traits as only a character born out of the San Francisco underground comics scene of the 1970s could. Yet in 2011 he is going stronger than ever, in syndication to about 200 daily newspapers, out in a new book, and now appearing in an inspired exhibition at BCB Art in Hudson.

Titled Are We Having Art Yet? Selected Drawings 1978-2011, the show presents numerous original inked versions of daily strips, several inked originals of a 1990 Zippy calendar, a few pencil renderings of early Zippy covers, and signed inkjet prints of other Zippy material. All the work on the walls is in ink or pencil – i.e. no color – and was, of course, created for reproduction, so it has that special quality of blacks and whites, of hatching and cross-hatching, that gives all graphic art a certain eye-appeal.

But, rather than let the monotony of monochrome get overwhelming, Bruce Bergmann, the gallery’s owner, has placed most of the work along a bright yellow rail, backed by a garish band of the same yellow with a pattern of big, red polka dots. The design scheme is taken from Zip’s costume, but it also imparts a properly carnivalesque atmosphere to the exhibition. Yes, it says, you may be in an art gallery, but you don’t need to take anything too seriously here.

An art calendar drawing by Bill Griffith

As these are comic strips, naturally the show is a hoot; but what makes it really special is that all the strips are specifically art-related. It is certainly a comic fan’s delight – but it is also an art critic’s paradise. Griffith went to art school and attempted a career as a painter before stumbling into comics in 1969, and he loves to send up the posturing of serious artists and pundits. Jokes about Picasso, Giacometti, Pollock and Magritte here coexist with jokes about Ingres, DaVinci, ancient Greece and cave art.

With the irrepressibly idiotic Zippy as his guide, Griffith has no fear, and the results are hilarious.

For most, including myself, Zippy is an acquired taste. His bizarre appearance, politically incorrect moniker and – above all – chronically off-the-wall pronouncements are not going to be for everybody, even those of us who are used to edgy stuff. But he grows on you – his sweetness, his persistence, his inability to grasp basic reality – it all adds up to irresistible charm.

Whether you like the humor or not (and in the case of these strips, it helps to be conflicted about modern art), seen up close in the original, the drawings show that Griffith is no pretender – he’s got the chops to draw anything well, and he’s got the graphic sense to know what to draw and what to leave out. It’s clear, crisp communication.

While much of the work is simplified, and much of the content goes in the direction of one-liners, some of these drawings also have a great deal of complexity built in, and with lengthy perusal will yield new secrets. Mostly, though, it’s about the humor of absurdity and, in this particular selection, the absurdity of the art world. Which works real well for me.

Rating: Highly Recommended

Three exhibitions at the Fenimore Art Museum

Maurice Prendergast - Landscape with Figures 1910-12 oil on linen

Hurricanes notwithstanding, it’s a nice time of year for a drive to Cooperstown - and with three special exhibitions all ending soon at the Fenimore Art Museum, there’s plenty of reason to make the trip now.

Fans of the Mexican proto-feminist painter Frida Kahlo will be entranced by a traveling show titled Frida Kahlo: through the lens of Nickolas Muray, which centers on pictures of the enigmatic artist taken throughout her 10-year love affair with the Hungarian-born, New York City-based photographer.

Nickolas Muray
Classic Frida (with Magenta Rebozo)
1939 carbon process print

Augmented by inkjet prints of titillating ephemera such as lipstick-kissed letters, the show is not much more than an illustrated soap opera, strangely cool yet passionate, though Muray’s estimable skills with both classic black-and-white and early color technique are brilliantly on display. It’s easy to see from this collection why people such as Salma Hayek and Madonna find Frida so irresistible, though I was equally repelled by the degree of self-indulgence in evidence. If you’re intrigued, you must hurry: The show ends on Sept. 5.

On view through Sept. 11 is a fine, small exhibition of Edward Hopper’s early work titled a window on Edward Hopper, in which the Fenimore has collaborated with the nearby Glimmerglass Festival to reveal the roots of the painter whose work inspired an opera that was mounted there this season.

Though the opera’s performances have ended, the art exhibition stands alone as a valuable investigation into the development of one of America’s foremost painters, and it features some of his really outstanding graphic work that might easily be overlooked if it were in a different context. But here, with just two full-scale oil paintings, and five watercolors to compete with, Hopper’s etchings are a revelation, and his earlier studies are worth the time to examine.

Edward Hopper - Night Shadows 1921 etching

Anyone familiar with the artist’s work will gain insight from the rare display of drawings, going back to his student years and including some commercially oriented illustration (Hopper the painter was 40 before museums began acquiring his art). It’s always a treat to see how an artist develops, and it’s also great fun to have a chance to look at sketches that ultimately led to more impressive finished work.

And, still, the two paintings (Freight Cars, Gloucester, an almost Cubist industrial composition from 1928 and The Camel’s Hump, a dazzling view of Cape Cod dunes from 1931) are as good as it gets; and the watercolors are simply wonderful. Go to see a window on Edward Hopper with the right expectations, and they will be fulfilled.

William Baziotes
Toy 1949 oil on linen

The Hopper show, which draws heavily from a collection formed by Edward W. Root that is now housed at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute in Utica, is a good setup for the highlight of this trio of exhibitions, Prendergast to Pollock: American Modernism from the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, which is also drawn from Root’s amazing collection.

Spanning about six decades of painting, Prendergast to Pollock is a mouthwatering showcase of exquisite work by both famous names and also-rans, organized into loosely tied groups of landscapes, still lifes, figures, and abstracts. Not unlike the current New York, New York! Show at The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls (reviewed here), this show surveys the transition of styles in American art during much of the 20th century from Impressionism to abstraction, and it demonstrates what an auspiciously astute collector Root was.

The highlights of this exhibition are almost endless. The show opens with a Fauvist-colored masterpiece by Maurice Prendergast, but I skipped by it until I was stopped dead in my tracks by three modestly sized Arthur Dove paintings that still shimmer with energy more than 70 years after they were made. A single piece by William Baziotes, small and playful, is mesmerizing, as is a surprisingly small and energetic Mark Rothko from 1947, before he homed in on his mature style of large blocks of color. Nearby is a similarly patchy and transcendent Arshile Gorky.

Charles Burchfield
House and Tree by Arc Light 1916
watercolor

Charles Burchfield is represented by three paintings as well, all watercolors, two of which date to 1916 but seem much fresher, as his work always does. Stuart Davis and Theodoros Stamos sit side by side in an asymmetrical, yet perfectly balanced pairing, while other great moments are provided by lesser-known painters, such as Morris Kantor, whose 1929 Ode to the Antique is deliciously surreal, and Charles Howard, whose stylized cityscape exploits great skill with form and color.

I do have one quibble with the show: No women are represented in this selection and, though Root collected very few women artists, that is an oversight in 2011. But the installation is a great success, due in part to the careful selection of medium grey, royal blue, and acid green for the background colors on various wall panels. It continues through Sept. 15.

The Fenimore also offers permanent exhibits from its world-class collections of folk art and American Indian art, and has beautiful, accessible grounds on the shore of Otsego Lake – altogether, a destination worth setting aside a good chunk of time to explore.

Rating: Highly Recommended

Edward Hopper - Freight Cars, Gloucester 1928 oil on canvas

75th Mohawk-Hudson Regional at AIHA

Escape - Susan Stuart, oil on canvas

The 75th Annual Exhibition by Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region, commonly called the Regional, is at the Albany Institute of History & Art this year, and it is huge. Selected by prominent painter Holly Hughes, who considered 1,020 submissions by 235 artists (a record for the Institute, though still far fewer than the nearly 1,500 works submitted by 340 artists to the Hyde Collection last year), the final cut includes 160 pieces by 85 artists.

That’s about five times as many as the 35 works by 17 artists that were in the same show at the University Art Museum in 2003 (presumably a record low). Think of it – one Regional five times the size of another. It sort of boggles the mind. Just reading a list of the whole roster is hard work, and I’ll prove it by putting that list right here:

Mr Swifty - Linda B. Horn
Fake fur, foam structure, plaster shoes

Samuray Akarvardar, Jim Allen, Fern T. Apfel, Jaimee Atkinson, Sebastian Barre, Tina Baxter, Meredith Best, Pennie Brantley, Allen Bryan, James Burnett, Paul Chapman, Yaminay Nasir Chaudhri, William Coeur de Ville, Terry James Conrad, Peter Crabtree, Katie DeGroot, Chris DeMarco, Ginger Ertz, Ray Felix, Abraham Ferraro, Jessica Fitzgibbon, Richard Garrison, Charles Geiger, Barry Gerson, Gail Giles, George Gruel, Bart Gulley, Stephen Bron Gurtowski, Michael J. Gwozdz, John Hampshire, Patrick Harbron, Theresa Hayes, Sarah Haze, Andrea Hersh, Susan Hoffer, Stephen Honicki, Linda B. Horn, Renee Iacone, Mary Kathryn Jablonski, William Jaeger, Paul John, Richard Kathmann, Pooh Kaye, Scott Keidong, Sandie Keyser, Amanda Klish, John Knecht, Ivan Koota, Phyllis Kulmatiski, Gary Larsen, Naomi Lewis, Harold Lohner, Iain Machell, Mona Mark, Paul Mauren, Gwenn Mayers, Mark McCarty, Bryan McGrath, Michael McKay, Jenny McShan, Renata Memole, Michael Mooney, Robert Morgan, Art Murphy, Nedra Newby, Philip J. Palmieri, Liz Parsons, James Paulsen, Kenneth Ragsdale, Marc Rosenthal, John Ruff, Mark Schmidt, Deborah Schneider, Lynn Schwarzer, Jon Segan, Mary-Alice Smith, Charles Steckler, Susan Stuart, Barbara Todd, Ken Vallario, Nancy Van Deren, David G. Waite, Nicholas Warner, Edye Weissler, and Wendy Ide Williams.

With so many people chosen, I feel compelled to offer a few words of commiseration to those who were excluded: Remember, a juried show is by definition subjective. Don’t give up! There’s always next year … . Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the included were feeling a little put out to be part of such a broad presentation. After all, how special is it really to be one of the 85 "elite" from the region this year?

Empire Views with the Green
Nedra Newby, Watercolor

As it turns out, not so very special at all. The show is, indeed, too damn big. Beginning in the first small room that typically introduces AIHA exhibitions, it gets off to a very promising start with a large, vertical, black-and-white video projection of a doubled rushing waterfall that greets the visitor as if to say "this Regional is bold, get ready for a wild ride." Other works in that room, from traditional oil painting to Sharpie on whiteboard, express weather in many forms, setting an intriguing tone for the show to come - it will have themes in whole rooms or parts of them, an almost necessary strategy for presenting so much diverse work, and a wise one - though it fails to deliver on the promise.

The second room takes us in a completely different direction, immediately understood as being all about color. As a shameless color junkie, I have no argument with that, and found many pleasing pieces gathered there. But, in the next (and largest) room of the museum's second-floor spaces, this crispness of organization begins to break down a bit, and some questionable decisions become apparent. (The layout, by the way, was planned by Hughes.)

WC #6 - Paul Mauren
Aluminum, wood, ceramic tile

What at first seems to be charming quirkiness of placement - a very subtle and small box assemblage by Jon Segan is placed well above eye level; three large color photographs by Mark McCarty are forced into a tall totem - turns into extreme imposition in the form of seven works by five artists being jammed into an awkward and tight group on the gallery's end wall. This type of problem recurs in the next large room, where two color photographs by Chris DeMarco are interspersed with two watercolors by James Burnett, a distracting way to show them.

I've heard this increasingly common phenomenon called "curator as artist," and I've seen it work better in truly curated shows - but, when it comes to presenting so many unwitting individuals in a juried regional, I think the artists deserve the respect of less interpretive placement. Had the two DeMarcos simply been placed side by side with the two Burnetts, we still would have gotten the point that they are closely related, without seeing them diminished.

Meanwhile, as I trolled the show for favorites and new discoveries, I found it harder and harder to respond with any energy to the art - even the works I knew immediately to be among the best seemed to have lost their oomph to the crowding and - more to the point - to the juxtaposition with other works that, frankly, should have been edited out. Inclusiveness is a beautiful philosophy, and I think it works extremely well on a youth soccer team. But, when it comes to presenting carefully made and meticulously installed artwork, less is very often more.

If the juror had gone one more round in her process, and retained only the strongest 80 or 100 pieces, all of them would look stronger still. Instead, they are made to keep company with lesser art - not just one or two odd choices, but dozens of them - and this, again, leaves them diminished. Which is a shame, because there is a bunch of terrific art in this show.

Umatilla - Ken Ragsdale, Inkjet print

Among the highlights for me were new works by familiar names: Richard Garrison's four wittily bloodless Circular Color Schemes; another set of four works by Fern Apfel that blend color-field abstraction with simple realism; Paul Mauren's wall-hung aluminum and wood sculptures; two fine color portraits by photographer Peter Crabtree; and two "non-narrative silent videos" by Bil Jaeger.

Equally compelling were works by people new to me, including: Ken Vallario's highly polished neo-Surrealist paintings; two paper collage abstractions (and a painted one) by Bart Gulley; Terry James Conrad's intriguing small geometric constructions in paper and other materials; and two luminously dark color photographs by George Gruel.

These and many other works in the show will shine through the clutter and hold your attention as you make your way through this challenging but very worthwhile presentation. Note that admission to the Institute is free on Fridays and two-for-one on Saturdays through August. There will be Artists Gallery Talks at 6 p.m. on the next two 1st Fridays: Aug. 5, and Sept. 6.

Rating: Highly Recommended

Transition in Troy (Fence Show, Nadia Trinkala memorial show)

Mixed-media painting by Nadia Trinkala at Fulton Street Gallery

There are two major transitions under way in Troy’s arts institutions, with tearful departures and joyous events tied together. The local news has carried much coverage of the decision of the Arts Center of the Capital Region’s president, Amy Williams, to step down and enter the private sector – and her going-away party at the Arts Center on Thursday drew a huge crowd of friends who were happy to share their appreciation of Williams’ leadership over the decades and to wish her well. 

I was a willing part of that throng, as a close follower of the ACCR’s activities since my association with it in the early 1980s, when it was known as the Rensselaer County Council for the Arts and I was a member of its board of directors. At that time, the RCCA established a budget line for a paid Exhibits Coordinator (before that it was a volunteer position), and Williams was the first person hired to fill that post - part time, at $1,600 a year. She and the Arts Center have come a very long way since then, and I wish them both more great progress in the future.

The other big news in Troy is that the long-struggling Fulton Street Gallery is slated to close – but I have it from a reliable source that, instead, it will remain open under new management, with founding Director Colleen Skiff stepping away but continuing to present art under the Fulton Street name at the Uncle Sam Atrium.

This is exciting for many reasons, not least of which is that it means the current Fulton Street exhibition of work by (or inspired by) Nadia Trinkala will continue through the month of August (hours yet to be determined). It is an extraordinary exhibition of very high quality, made all the more touching by the fact of its protagonist’s suicide this spring (click here to see GV’s In Memoriam for Trinkala).

To anyone who may have doubted Trinkala’s credibility as an artist, this exhibition is a revelation. Comprising work in several media – photography, drawing, painting, jewelry, and more,  all of it sensitive, revealing, well-made, and consistent with a personal vision – the show does her memory justice. Trinkala’s dear friends Ray Felix and Robert Gullie made it happen, and they did an outstanding job of curation, preparation, and installation, producing a finely coherent whole that uses the Fulton Street location perfectly, and underscores the importance of keeping this ideal storefront space open as a gallery.

Meanwhile, back at the ACCR, the Fence Salon will come down on Saturday (July 17), to be replaced by the reconfigured Fence Select, which will open on July 29 (along with a solo show in the President’s Gallery by John Yost, a photographer and video artist who earned his MFA at UAlbany this spring). An annual juried show open to all artist members of the ACCR without an entry fee, the Fence Show’s 44-year history and broad appeal qualifies it in my estimation as “the other Regional,” and this year’s lineup fulfills that expectation with strong work in many media, selected by Hudson gallerist Carrie Haddad.

Viewing the hundreds of entries in the Salon, where those that were selected by Haddad are mixed in but designated by a paper marker, I found myself nodding in agreement over and over again. “Yes,” I found myself thinking, “she’s nailing it!” That is, until I saw a superb trio of color photographs by Chris DeMarco, and searched in vain for the “selected” card. Did Haddad fail to notice them amid the chaos of the salon? A staffer assured me that she had been thorough in her perusal – and that I was just one of a number of people who had asked the same thing on DeMarco’s behalf. So it goes with juried shows.

As it happens, the Fence Show had strangely few photography submissions this year. I have no way of knowing why that would be (it has attracted work from numerous fine photographers in the past), but I wonder if the overlap with the Photography Regional (at Albany Center Gallery through July 16) had an effect – or if the fact that Haddad judged that exhibition in Troy just last year (under Fulton Street’s auspices in the Atrium) made some photographers decide not to bother.

Aside from that, I think we can expect the installed Fence Select to be high quality and well representative of the art that this region has to offer. As for the true Regional, which recently opened at the Albany Institute of History & Art, watch this space for a review to run soon.

Pissarro’s People at the Clark Art Institute

Jeanne Pissarro, called Cocotte, Reading 1899 - Oil on canvas 22 x 26 3/8 in.

With a museum like the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute just down the road, you can tend to get a little spoiled. Every summer for as many as I can recall, the Clark has had a show good enough to top my list of the year’s best: Last year, it was Picasso Looks at Degas; the year before, it was Dove/O’Keeffe; and so on, going back (at least) to 2003’s amazing show of J.M.W. Turner’s late paintings.

This year is no exception: Pissarro’s People is a superb exhibition that brings together a wide range of the artist’s work in unique combinations for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Though it probably won’t draw huge crowds like Picasso or O’Keeffe (and that’s a shame), this exhibition offers rewards beyond the woozy feeling you get when confronted by genius on canvas, largely by telling a whopper of a true story.

The Little Country Maid 1882
Oil on canvas 25 x 20 7/8 in.

In effect, Camille Pissarro’s life and career were so fascinating as to almost overshadow the art itself – born half Jewish and half French in Danish-held Saint Thomas in 1830, he goes on to establish and lead the Impressionist movement and to personally mentor Modernism’s two key founders (Paul Cezanne and Paul Gauguin), all the while adhering to a lifelong anarchist philosophy and raising a brood of eight devoted children.

This amazing story is illustrated, so to speak, by Pissarro’s many paintings and works on paper in the show – a thin slice of his life’s work, really, due to the “people” theme. The works also nicely delineate the artistic process in effective ways. And, along the way, they happen to include enough eye-popping masterpieces to keep even the hungriest sensation-seeker satisfied.

As one of those types myself, I might have preferred an arrangement where just the 10 or 12 knockouts were grouped in a room and the rest of the lesson could be left for the more academically inclined – but that’s not what curators tend to do. Anyway, the lesson is more than worth the trouble, and so is the process of hunting down the best stuff in this selection.

Washerwoman, Study 1880
Oil on canvas 28 3/4 x 23 1/4 in.

Among those standouts is a later painting that’s hung in the first gallery (the show’s organizing principle is based on subject, not chronology), and which all alone would be sufficient to nail down Pissarro’s position among the most important painters of his time. That 1899 painting of one of the artist’s daughters, titled Jeanne Pissarro, called Cocotte, Reading (shown at the top of this post), forms a bridge across the two centuries of Pissarro’s life (he died in 1903), and provides a template for the full-blown Modernism of similar work done by Henri Matisse just a few years later. It’s not surprising that such a piece is in the private collection of Ann and Gordon Getty, he the heir to the oil fortune that funded the family’s sprawling Los Angeles museum.

Cocotte, Reading is part of the exhibition’s first section, labeled Family and Friends (an overview with very informative text and just a few exemplary paintings is provided on the museum’s main floor, while the body of the exhibition is upstairs). Several other fine works are in this section, including many portraits of all generations of the family, and one of Cezanne, in etching, that captures the younger artist’s intensity.

One immediately understands from this grouping that there was not a separation of the personal and the professional for Pissarro, a fact that is reaffirmed throughout the rest of the exhibition. Indeed, his personal, familial, and political philosophies all blended to create a powerful approach to picture-making.

Beyond family, the most represented people in Pissarro’s world are servants, workers, and market-goers; the equal footing each has been given shows their portrayer’s deep commitment to the humanism that was spawned by his early Moravian schooling.

Peasant Woman Lying in the Grass, Pontoise 1882
Oil on canvas 25 3/8 x 30 3/4 in.

Pissarro expressed this equality upon the backdrop of a utopian world of rural work and rural leisure. One fine example is an oversized tempera painting, on loan from a museum in Tokyo, titled The Harvest (and shown at the bottom of this post). It is a fine painting, but the show makes it even better by offering a special treat in the form of several graphite-and-wash studies, which were the basis for some of the figures in the painting, on view nearby.

These and many other studies throughout the exhibition provide similar insights into the artist’s working process, as well as the additional excitement that comes from knowing he never exhibited them himself – most were preserved by family members – but that we have the privilege of seeing them now in a new context.

Leisure is captured best in another outstanding painting, titled Peasant Woman Lying in the Grass, Pontoise, where the pleasure of resting in the sun is as palpable as the countless brushstrokes that build the image. Though not yet Pointillist, this painting prefigures the scientific approach to dots of color that Pissarro would soon immerse himself in. Much of the work to follow would be done in that almost ecstatic style; but, for me, it was a digression that lacks the pure energy and emotion of the work he did both before and after.

Pissarro’s People continues at the Clark through Oct. 2.

Rating: Must See

Note: Also at the Clark are two exhibitions of contemporary art that are both well worth seeing. Ghanain sculptor El Anatsui has three monumental works on view in the Stone Hill Center through Oct. 16; and Spaces: Photographs by Candida Höfer and Thomas Struth is on view in the main collection area through Sept. 5 (filling space that was liberated by an international tour of a large group of the museum’s Impressionist holdings).

Robin Kelsey, Shirley Carter Burden Professor of Photography, Harvard University, will present a gallery talk on Spaces at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 13. The talk is free with admission.

The Harvest 1882 - Tempera on canvas 27 11/16 x 49 9/16 in.

Jim Boden and Alison Denyer at Lake George Arts Project

Alison Denyer - Flow VI - graphite on paper

At first glance, the two-person exhibition by Jim Boden and Alison Denyer at Lake George Arts Project seems like a mismatch of unrelated work, one monochromatic and abstract, the other more colorful and figurative. But it turns out that Boden and Denyer share sensibilities on multiple levels, and that the pairing is quite brilliant.

Denyer, a native of England now based in Utah, makes compositions that appear to be little more than dark squares from a distance, but which upon closer inspection emerge as shimmering surfaces made of countless graphite marks on black paper. Her imagery is topographic - her subject, Earth's surface, specifically as it is affected by water.

Boden, who works in South Carolina, paints the figure with the loose confidence of an expert, quite small, on Mylar, which is slippery and translucent. His attention to the surface is no less focused than Denyer's - yet his true subject is far more profound than his simple human models at first suggest.

The experience of seeing Denyer's work from afar, glimpsing its obscurity and darkness, and then moving in to where the marks are visible and their reflective surface catches the light creates a "wow" response. Though her style is subtle, the effect is not. It is very impressive work, intensely detailed, dramatic.

Boden, on the other hand, sneaks up on you gradually. At first you think he's painting the figure for itself - yes, the palette is a bit muddy, a bit rusty, and the figures are often seated, their faces mostly obscured. Oddly, the limbs often disappear from view - are they cut off, maybe bound? The lighting is bright, then shadowy; there are signs of blood, an open mouth. My notes from this viewing show the question, "Nightmares?", then in all caps "TORTURE."

It was only later that I noticed the entire series (25 are presented here), is titled Interrogate. And that I began to think about Denyer's drawings as being about the marked and bruised living skin of our planet. It looks like a peaceful place from her satellite view - not at all from Boden's direct one. Both have something important to say.

Jim Boden and Alison Denyer runs just through June 10. Try not to miss it.

Rating: Must See

Jim Boden - Interrogate 34 - oil on Mylar

Sketcher Recalls at ACCR and other Troy shows

The anagrammatic Union College stage designer Charles Steckler has revealed a hidden identity as an irrepressible doodler in a show at the Arts Center of the Capital Region titled Sketcher Recalls, which opened, along with several other shows of interest, at last Friday's Troy Night Out.

Steckler has been unusually active in the exhibitions arena in recent years, and is now widely known for his inventive and layered dioramas. This show brings out a related body of work that is both more subtle and more personal. Because the drawings are mostly on the scale and level of doodling, anyone could relate to them (after all, who among us doesn't take pen or pencil in hand and make sketches while on the phone or in a meeting?).

However, this is the doodling of a master doodler, and the drawings are enchanting. Most of them have an organic feel, featuring semi-recognizable plant forms or landscapes. Others are less concrete, emphasizing fantasy or pure mark-making. Though no color is employed, there is a notable breadth of media, including metallic inks, Wite-Out, various types of pens and pencils, and occasional embellishments in the form of abrasion, collage, or even added materials such as wire.

Altogether, what Steckler the Sketcher recalls is a lifetime of thoughtful, time-absorbing attention to detail, mood, and form. Four of the 20-plus drawings in this show were included in a recent exhibition at Union's Mandeville Gallery titled Of Weeds and Wildness, which was recently reviewed here. This solo show presents a nice opportunity to revisit those gems and see many more from the same deft hand. It hangs through April 22.

Not far from the Arts Center is the Clement Art Gallery, where a show titled { sub/urban } features the work of painters Ben Schwab and Scott Nelson Foster. Aptly paired, these two look at the built environment in distinct ways, using different techniques that move toward each other in a nicely balanced relationship.

Schwab, who teaches at The College of Saint Rose, works larger, more geometrically, and more colorfully than Foster (his show at Albany Center Gallery was reviewed here in 2009), though his most recent entries in this show represent a departure into smaller, sketchier works in pencil that he calls "postcards." These offer a welcome window into Schwab's process.

Foster is new to the area, having come last fall from Idaho by way of Utah to teach at Siena College. His small-scale, monochromatic watercolors evoke black-and-white photographs, though up close they are just as seductively loose and flowing as watercolors ought to be. The quasi-cool look he takes at subdivisions and big-box stores has an almost spiritual reverence for its subjects.

This is a nice local debut for Foster - I hope we'll see a lot more of his work around here in the years to come. The show remains on view through April 28.

Across the street from the Arts Center is a recently relocated shop called Artcentric, where Albany photographer Connie Frisbee Houde has mounted a solo show amid the clutter. I'm not opposed to alternative spaces, and this seems to be a bustling one, overseen by the keen eye of longtime photographer Debra Lockrow and featuring a range of local artists as well as tons of other crafty stuff.

Houde's show is a departure from her well-known Afghanistan subject matter (reviewed here in 2009), this time representing the more tranquil Caribbean setting of St. John. Though this particular venue doesn't demand a clearly honed style or consistent presentation, Houde's decision to include everything from landscapes to portraits to street scenes to nature details takes away from the overall impact of her vision. That's too bad, because her stuff is great (example shown at right above).

More photography can be seen in a two-person show at the Photography Center of the Capital District by Eric Lindbloom and Joseph Schuyler titled Truro Light. As expected, the pictures are from Cape Cod, but most of them are not your everyday beach scenes, and some are purely transcendent.

Lindbloom, who hails from Poughkeepsie and also shows in New York City, works in medium-format black and white - yes, he still shoots film and makes prints in a darkroom - and his very sensitively seen images are gorgeous. Some of the work is presented in series, such as one group of wonderfully wave-tossed sea grass, and another of selectively focused woodsy details with more than a little hint of magic.

Schuyler offers digitally-based color prints here - most are elegantly composed, some quite dramatic, while others have an Oriental lyricism. The digital color is distractingly blocked up in some of Schuyler's prints, but in others they remain quite subtle. His take on the Cape is more about the place than Lindbloom's (whose images could be from almost any climatically similar place); Schuyler's best work puts you right there in the elements, where you feel the wind, sand, and salt. The show continues through March 25.

Eunjung Hwang and Ati Maier at UAlbany Art Museum

When you've been to as many shows at as many venues as I have, you start to see patterns emerging, curatorial consistencies that hold up over time from one place to another. So, while the current pair of solo shows at the University at Albany Art Museum are fairly cutting-edge, they hold few surprises, because they cleanly fit into the curatorial pattern that has been established there.

Eunjung Hwang: Three Thousand Revisits and Ati Maier: Event Horizon are presented separately, though they have enough in common to be compatible: both artists have created their own fantasy worlds populated by cartoon-type characters, and both have turned to digital video as an extension of their drawing and painting habits. It also happens that each is an immigrant living in New York City, which may inform the inside/outside perspective their works embody.

But here the similarities taper off quickly. Huang, who is female and was raised in Korea, has a simplified style of drawing and painting that pulls from dreams and Buddhist concepts of the spirit world to create quasi-narratives that often feature brutal violence and orgiastic behavior, yet somehow remain charmingly naive.

Maier, who is also female, grew up in Munich, Germany, and was educated in Vienna. Her extremely vivid palette harks back to the groundbreaking approach of certain European painters of about a century ago, but Maier is clearly looking forward as she crafts visions of otherworldly experiences that are heavily influenced by science fiction and graffiti.

Despite a great deal of visual complexity and sophisticated layering techniques, much of Maier's work feels superficial, even decorative. It has that art-fair commercial air about it. Three large pieces that form a group on one long wall depict roller-coasterish landscapes that could be in outer space or underwater; their corners are rounded, an odd affectation that adds to the commercial flavor of the work.

Two constellations of smaller works mirror this style (and each other, with perfectly matched configurations of size and shape), though the earlier the works go (back to about 2002), the more clearly they show a diversity of influences including anime and geometric abstraction.

Maier's two videos in the exhibition are animated versions of these garishly hued adventurescapes. The one titled Space Rider seems to imitate a video game such as Tron; the longer one (over 7 minutes) is more ambitious - titled Event Horizon, it clearly aims to depict visually what can never be seen in reality: the activity at the edge of a black hole.

Hwang also takes influences from video games (specifically Pac-Man) as well as anime, but her approach seems much more personal than Maier's. Whereas Maier seems to be trying to impress us with her skill and flash, Hwang seems compelled by uncontrollable impulses to obsessively draw and redraw an endless series of very small critters and characters (hence the show's title) that may make no sense at all to the viewer but must have an existence nevertheless.

Whether in the many animated videos on view here (actually, they are countless, as several small monitors show many very short snippets, while other larger monitors show countable longer films), or in the series of 15 22-by-28-inch pencil drawings titled What We Are You Will Be, or even in the five inflatable sculptures that depict some of her creatures in larger form, Hwang's world remains her own - we are merely spectators.

A couple of early videos from 2001 retain narrative threads (one is unironically titled If You Play With Ghosts, You'll Become a Real Ghost), but the more recent work, often titled Future Creatures, is more free-flowing and circular. In these, Hwang employs several different styles, including line drawings, watercolor, smoothly digitized color, and a combination of her images with calendar-art landscape photographs.

If you liked the style of Peter Max, you may like the darker underbelly that Hwang explores in a similar way. Equally, if psychedelia turns you on, you will probably get into Maier.

Both artists will be present at a closing reception set for 5 to 7 p.m. on Friday, April 1, which was scheduled because the show's opening reception was cancelled by a snow storm. The show ends on April 2.

Rating: Recommended

Artworks shown (from top):
Ati Maier - Savvy, airbrush, ink, woodstain on paper, 2010
Ati Maier - video still from Event Horizon, 2010
Eunjung Hwang - video still from Future Creatures, 2009
Eunjung Hwang - What We Are You Will Be, pencil on paper, 2010
Eunjung Hwang - video still from Future Creatures, 2009

Note: An earlier version of this post had misidentified Maier as male. I regret the error, which has been corrected. - db

Swan Song

Desiree Alvarez, The Contents of the Falconer’s Bag, 2011

The last exhibition at Union College's Mandeville Gallery to be mounted under longtime curator Rachel Seligman's watchful eye has just ended, as has Seligman's 13-year tenure there. She moves on to become an associate curator at the Tang Teaching Museum, and this last show, co-curated by Middlebury College photography instructor Sally Apfelbaum, has been dispersed.

But the show, Of Weeds and Wildness: Nature in Black & White, leaves traces worth contemplating (as well as a lovely printed catalog). Initially inspired by a small Louise Bourgeois etching titled Hairy Spider, the show brought together a completely unpredictable group of artists working over a range of many decades in diverse media and subject matter.

Quite unlike most curated exhibitions these days, and quite unlike the ideas the title put into my head, Of Weeds and Wildness was extremely subtle and anything but a facile look at nature. Viewing the show on its second-to-last day, I was perplexed by the inclusion of work that seemed not to fit the theme of the title, much of which didn't particularly seem to belong together. Perhaps the show was just a good excuse to present some favorite work in under-appreciated media (particularly printmaking) and sensitive shades of grey?

While this wouldn't have been a bad end in itself, the catalog essay explains that the show's intention was not to represent nature, but to "explore the mystery and beauty, romance and brutality of the human experience of the natural world." That makes the inclusion, for example, of Harold Edgerton's chilling high-speed photographs of a 1952 atomic bomb test, or of the mysterious abstract etchings of Kate Temple seem much more sensible.

These and other works in the show reach areas of artistic expression far broader than the title would imply. Other virtually abstract prints by James Siena and Lee Bontecou join Temple, while photographs in the social documentary mode by Robert Adams, Danny Lyon, and Margaret Moulton flesh out the human aspect of the discourse.

Drawings make their appearance as well, by two representatives of the Union art faculty (Charles Steckler, current, and Arnold Bittleman, long-deceased) who share a mesmerizing mark-making fascination expressed in very divergent scales. Bittleman conjures large, brooding cloudscapes, while Steckler's elaborate doodlings fill tiny pages with imagined naturalistic forms and textures (one is shown at left).

An animated film loop by Hedya Klein, also hand-drawn, has an affinity with Steckler's style and with a beautifully made etching/aquatint by Michelle Segre. Other fine examples of the old printmaking media on view included Kiki Smith's Fawn and Bird Skeleton (shown above at right), two sugarlifts by William Kentridge and a Robert Gober lithograph.

In a departure from traditional forms, Desiree Alvarez created a site-specific installation by hanging swaths of diaphanous fabric embellished with images drawn in ink and printed with wood blocks. Intriguingly titled The Contents of the Falconer's Bag, this piece brought an almost jarring freedom to the otherwise staid presentation of the show.

Overall, it was a show for quiet contemplation, and a fine note for Seligman to go out on. Fortunately, she won't be traveling far, and we can look forward to seeing her future efforts in Saratoga Springs.

Harold Edgerton, Atomic Bomb, 1952, gelatin silver print

Color Moves at RPI's Shelnutt Gallery

I'm glad the exhibition Color Moves at RPI's Shelnutt Gallery continues through the end of March, which is not Black History Month, though it did begin on Feb. 1, which is. Yes, the five artists in the exhibition (Francelise Dawkins, Ayriel Hunt, Femi M. Johnson, George W. Simmons, and Stephen Tyson) are black - but they have a lot more in common, and a lot more to offer viewers, than their racial identity.

Before I get into the specific qualities of the works in the show, allow me to ponder the issue of segregation. The art world is largely liberal, but segregation can exist there as much as anywhere. And it doesn't necessarily have to do with race, nor is it necessarily bad. For example, we regularly segregate artists by medium - showing painters with painters, sculptors with sculptors and so on. There is also a tendency to separate older artists from younger ones, male from female, conceptual from representational, major from minor. These types of divisions often make sense and help the viewer understand the work within its context.

A lot of times, though, I think curators go too far to separate. While women artists were unfortunately ignored through most of history, does it make sense in 2011 to have a show just of women artists? Ethnicity is another tricky zone - we probably wouldn't balk at the idea of a show featuring Asian or Latino artists, and clearly it's considered good politics (especially in February!) to organize a show around the artists' blackness - but what would happen should someone mount an exhibition specifically restricted to the work of gay white men, or American Muslims? I'm just not sure I see the use in all that.

So I'm glad this show of five worthy artists has its month of March. The gallery has a tradition of showing ethnic artists' work, and that's a fine thing to do; it is a fairly non-traditional space upstairs in the Rensselaer Student Union, where the walls are clean and the lighting effective, though it also serves as a meeting room, so access can be limited and the furnishings do get in the way a bit. If you go, the best bet for parking is in the visitor lot next door, where meters can be fed.

This year's edition of Color Moves (it's an ongoing series) weaves common threads and themes among the group: colorful abstraction fairly dominates, collage is the medium of three of the artists, and there is a certain graphism throughout. Two of the artists are using non-rectangular shapes, and the materials are mostly outside of the mainstream (fabric, carbon paper, wood, acetate).

All this makes for a fresh and compatible array of artists who are nonetheless rather divergent in their approaches and (one would assume) intents. The oddest one out would be Hunt, who is a student at RPI whose work fits squarely in the mode of graphic design (one piece is shown at the bottom of this post), and has the clearest messages in it. Her deft, assured drawing style blunts the force of Hunt's confrontational subject matter, which seems to be suburban black youths' need to be more aware of history.

Also somewhat narrative are Johnson's painterly collages, made of torn paper fragments that articulate figures in a very loose way and use color whimsically. I especially like the most recent of his four pieces in the show, titled Night Train (another, titled Village Keeper is shown above at right).

Dawkins' and Tyson's works are intermingled on one wall, nearly competing with each other in terms of vivid color and rounded forms (one of Dawkins', titled Sanctuary/Still Waters is shown at the top of this post; one of Tyson's, titled Tempo, is shown above at left). Dawkins, a fabric collagist, wields a wild pair of scissors to make vibrant compositions that are as complex as they are playful. Two earlier pieces (both circular) are more muted, layered, and soft than the two newer ones, which are more direct. The larger of the two, which is her only rectangular piece in the show, is liberally peppered with images of fruits and birds.

Tyson, a Siena College professor, has a history of making busily patterned abstract paintings. His four pieces in this show, all dated 2009, are brightly painted, shaped planks and slabs of wood with stripes, color-field elements, soft geometry, and metallic gold. Their rhythms show jazz as a clear influence, but two of the titles (Asteck and Eltem) mystify.

Simmons appears to be the most prolific of the group. His 12 collaged drawings in the show include four from earlier periods (1996, 2004 and 2005), two from 2010, and six from 2011, and they remain consistent throughout. Still, though I've known Simmons and his work for 30 years, I am still hard pressed to describe or explain it.

A pair of "self-portraits" (one is shown above at left) are somewhat revealing of the artist's thoughts, while containing elements of the other works. Altogether, they are crudely assembled with bits of Scotch tape, yet elegantly ethereal. Simmons incorporates scraps of his own work in various media to make these pieces, which represent a truly personal vocabulary that only a dedicated and quirky artist could possess.

Rating: Recommended

Vignette at the Arts Center

Also in Troy (through Mar. 20) and not to be missed is a very thoughtfully curated exhibition of five artists at The Arts Center of the Capital Region titled Vignette. Joel Griffith, Ingrid Ludt, GG Roberts, Rebecca Shepard, and Ann Wolf are a rather eclectic bunch who have been brought together by the ex-Metroland critic Nadine Wasserman, who wrote this statement:

For much of art history, narrative art functioned as a way to tell a story or to represent a religious, historical, or allegorical event. With the advent of modernism, however, direct story telling was derided and the narrative form was transformed by abstraction and non-linearity. With postmodernism the narrative remained suspect and artists created multifaceted work that further fractured the notion of “grand” narratives. But artists have never stopped creating narrative work. Even abstract and non-representational art can be narrative and can contain coded references to political, social, and personal issues. This exhibition presents five artists each working with narrative structure but each bringing to it a unique approach. Taken together these artists present a variety of styles encompassing abstraction, surrealism, seriality, realism, and fiction.

In quick capsules: Roberts' three paintings in the show are exuberantly kitschy - I wish there were more of them here to see; Ludt offers 18 works, in a group of 10 slightly larger ones and eight slightly smaller ones - they are gestural, intuitional, oddly colored, light; Wolf uses gouache in monochromatic swaths of expert rendering to evoke fairytale landscapes; Shepard's pencil drawings subtly seduce the eye with sad little tales, while paired drawings and patterned-paper collages nearly steal the show; and Griffith's masterfully painted streets are a blend of Maxfield Parrish and Gregory Crewdson - first noticed at the 2010 Mohawk Hudson Regional, he is a force to be reckoned with (the image below is titled Scism Road, Trailer).