Taryn Leigh and Jeanette Powers at The Beggar’s Table
One of the only new shows up this month was a two-person show at The Beggar’s Table Gallery, which was a combination of many small, quirky drawings by Taryn Leigh and a handful of large paintings by Jeanette Powers. Leigh’s work occupied the front of the gallery and was accented by collections of animal bones, feathers, a stuffed and mounted raccoon, and other odds and ends. The objects share a lot with Leigh’s work in that by themselves, each bone or feather may be somewhat interesting but not remarkable, but when it is part of a collection of similar items it is much more interesting than by itself.
Every drawing in Leigh’s show is very similar: they are all pen drawings, occasionally accented with a dash of color, on chipboard, in wooden thrift-store frames smaller than 8”x10” and painted green. Each image features a human figure with an animal head of some sort, and what really makes the show fun to look at is that it seems that no pose or animal was repeated. There is also a humorous element to most of the images. Together, these qualities make the viewer interested in moving through the whole show and taking each piece in.
Ordinarily the choice of materials might have bothered me, but the show was plain and simple on so many levels that it felt complete and worked well. Her drawing style is similar to doodling. It doesn’t appear that a lot of time or thought is spent on each drawing, but rather the focus is on getting the idea down with direct, simple lines using a ballpoint pen and quickly coming up with a new idea to draw. It is a fun show to see, but still, when I see work done on non-archival material I can’t help but think how decomposed it will look two years from now.
Jeanette Powers’ paintings are not as thematically unified as Leigh’s pieces, but share many qualities in common with her portion of the show. Some of the paintings attempt to approach the subject realistically, while most of them fall into the same day-dreamy realm of doodling. Caricatures of human figures are mixed with text, nonsensical objects such as flowers with eyeballs, and other figures. She clearly demonstrates the ability to realistically render the figure in three of the paintings, but in the others opts for a less-structured approach, resulting in what happen to be the more interesting images.
The “unrealistic” paintings lack refinement in color and rendering, but you can tell that some soul was put into making it. It is possible to feel a sense of the artist’s personality and emotions in the work, which can often be more valuable than the ability to render something cleanly. And I should clarify that in calling Powers’ paintings unrefined I’m only referring to the brushwork and the color choice, which is very bright. Using paint straight out of the tube can work in specific cases, but overdoing it gives the painting a gaudy look, similar to a child’s crayon drawing. The one element that keeps these works afloat for me is her inventiveness in creating the images. I noticed on one piece that showed five women gathered together that the pattern in the background was actually patterned paper collaged onto the surface. The lines of these shapes are then carried down through the figures, making the image much more thought-provoking to look at than if it lacked this element.
Leigh and Powers do not appear to be career artists that regularly show in galleries, and that is why I like First Fridays. The full spectrum of shows can be found, from high school artists to nationally established artists, and shows like this one provide something fun and different from the usual gallery show.
KCAI in 3D
KCAI in 3D has been on display at the Belger Arts Center for a while, and while I thought it had some quality work I avoided reviewing it because it is a group show. All of the artists in the show are graduates and/or faculty of the Kansas City Art Institute, and what I find nice about the show is that there are so many different approaches used in the sculptures. Some schools push a certain style or concept in the work that comes out of it, but that does not seem to be the case here.
The most attention-grabbing piece in the show is a bull sitting on a table strewn with broken china. What makes the work attention grabbing is that walking into the room all you see is the head of the bull mounted on a partition. Then as you walk back into the space you realize that the rest of the bull and the piece is on the other side. It is an interesting surprise, but I think the reference made is too straightforward. Bull in a china shop is a common expression, but what is the artist trying to say through this reference? Aside from the surprise factor, is there a reason why the bull is sticking its head through a wall? I can’t think up any good answers to these questions, and if the piece was displayed without the surprise of most of it being concealed it wouldn’t have many redeeming qualities.
Some other work in the show that immediately grabs your attention is a series of three-dimensional portraits by Paul Anthony Smith that poke their heads away from the wall and peer towards the viewer. Their “frame” is styled after the picture windows around the presidents on paper money, and indeed Abraham Lincoln, Obama, and other stately looking characters are the ones portrayed in the sculptures. The style works very well in creating a sense of these being old artifacts with a Victorian era feel to them.
The piece that brought the series together for me was an old, distressed version of one of the portraits that had been broken into pieces, the shards left falling on the floor beneath it. It moves the work beyond just creating an object to creating a scene that the viewer can experience, and also communicates an idea of history constantly being deconstructed and reconstructed that seems to be confirmed by the other pieces.
On the topic of construction, I really enjoy the four sculptures by Keith Whitecloud Simpson. His work is the most modestly-sized of the show with each piece standing not much higher than a wine bottle, but they are very intricately detailed works that juxtaposed the human form with construction scaffolding and armature. They could be interpreted as either a statement of building icons and identities for ourselves, the hollowness of cultural icons, the influence of modern society on the development of the human, or a number of other things. The exact meaning doesn’t really matter though, because Simpson has chosen imagery that is universally understood and executed it beautifully.
“Ruin” by Terry Karson interestingly follows a construction-related theme, but does it in monumental scale. Using discarded chipboard from beer packaging he constructed three ten to twelve foot tall pillars that, from a distance, appear to be only a tarnished white color. A closer inspection reveals what the forms are made of. The first thing it brings to mind is that alcohol is a cornerstone of society and the economy, yet also a major source for societal destabilization, leading to ruin.
There is also the fact that a commonly recycled material was used to make the work. Are we all recycling with the intention of saving the earth, but only perpetuating a system of production and consumption that will destroy the earth no matter how much we recycle? Possibly. The main thing that evokes the idea of referencing recycled material is that the forms themselves resemble compacted bales of recyclables. Perhaps he thinks that these are the best things that our society has to offer, and hopes that environmentalism will be the one legacy that will transcend us. At any rate, they are simple forms, but I find them interesting to inspect and think about.
From the Melting Pot into the Fire: Contemporary Ceramics in Israel
Ceramics are not typically the kind of work I find exciting. When I hear the word ‘ceramics’, I think of plates and coffee mugs. And when I hear the term ‘ceramic art’, I think of something that maybe my mom or grandmother might drag me to at some folk museum in central Missouri. If you have similar impressions of ceramics this show is a must see, because these Israeli artists do things with ceramics that I could never imagine.
A lot of the works dealt with water, and two of my favorite pieces were among these. One piece featured several house forms floating in a tank of water, freely suspended and able to be moved in any direction at any time. This is simply a clever idea that has a clear message. I knew that the artist was expressing an idea of home as a transitory place without even reading the statement. There is something about the houses being self contained but not permanently stationed that evokes this idea. Perhaps it’s because I have trouble staying put myself. It would be nice to see a work like this executed on a grander scale, maybe with a larger pool of water or with some currents being created, but nonetheless it is an interesting, inventive piece.
Perhaps my favorite piece of the show was “Moat” by Ronit Zor. From a distance of more than six feet, “Moat” appears to be nothing more than a set of ceramic panels mounted on the wall that descend slightly to the right. But up close you find that the panels are actually narrow, hollow vessels filled with water and enhanced with small structural-looking wires and sticks. In his statement, Zor says that “Moat” references the ancient aqueducts, and that while it delivers life-giving water it also creates a physical barrier between places. Dualities are always great sources for work, and Zor expresses his ideas in an elegant way.
Some of the other great pieces in the exhibit showcase the power of subtlety in visual art. Ceramic seems to be a great media for doing this because it is all one tone and relies on the lighting to create contrast. There are very few unexciting pieces in this show, and it’s pretty incredible to see so many diverse results come out of the same medium.
Perceptions of Time: Examining the Past, Present, and Future at Arts Incubator
The Cocoon Gallery at the Arts Incubator has a small group show of works that examine the concept of time. Sarabeth Dunton-Diamond chose to approach this topic by creating works similar to a comic book or storyboard. Two of her pieces look as if they use illustrations from old instruction manuals for the source material. In one a woman installs a set of shelves on the wall, and in the other a man breaks apart a rock to extract some smaller, unidentifiable piece from it. These images consist of 5 picture cells each, and what makes them interesting is the amount of precision involved in creating them.
The 5 cells are borderless, with the negative space being filled in by short, repetitive marker strokes that create a striped pattern across the images. The figures and objects are drawn in ink and show a great amount of skill in drawing them. And these ink figures and marker-patterned background fill the space to create a perfectly clean square on the page. What is also nice about the marker strokes is that they create a visual rhythm that carries through the work, so it is almost possible to feel a passage of time through the images with each stroke of the marker representing a moment in time.
This marker pattern is also present in her main contribution to the show, a series of more than 75 roughly 5”x5” drawings depicting three different series of alterations of the same starting image. On the far left of each progression is a single rock form in the middle of the paper. The first one is slowly eroded by other geometric forms, which then becomes smaller to the point of almost vanishing in the final frame. In the second progression the rock becomes smaller as other small pebbles appear around it, until the large rock is finally gone and the frame is completely filled with small pebbles. In the third the rock sprouts crystal formations around it before eventually being reduced to a small pile of dust.
There are several things that work well in these drawings: the idea of several different outcomes from a single starting point, the progressions change reference very universal principles such as growth, erosion, and destruction, and these progressions create a good rhythm by not heading in only one direction. The second series where the rock turns into many pebbles is the most linear, but in the other to there is a climax of growth or change somewhere in the middle, at which point the change moves towards the fading out of the objects. These, too, are very nicely drawn, and in two of the progressions the marker lines take on a new role by creating patterns towards the end. In all it is an interesting piece to look at that makes you want to see every panel in it.
Another artist in the show, Diane Henk, has some pieces that are hard to engage with. They are primarily made of drafting film, which is a thin, frosted-looking sheet of vellum, and most of them consist of several layers of this material with subtle marks and sewing incorporated into them, stapled directly onto the wall. If these pieces were framed it could be a little easier to enjoy them, but with their appearance being so naked on the wall they are not much more interesting than stapling a plain sheet of paper to the wall.
In some portions a small rectangle roughly the size of a single line of text is cut out to reveal a layer of plain drafting film beneath, and through the top layer there are lines that seem to indicate text. I can imagine that the idea is something related to history and information being lost in the modern world, with these nearly blank documents that are void of information except for faint reminders of what was once recorded remaining, but that’s really straining my imagination to come up with that. The overwhelming sense of the work is that it looks and feels like something that would be encountered in an office, not the most thought-provoking environment to reference, and because the pieces appear to be so plain and minimal it is easier to pass by them than to contemplate them.
She also has a larger installation consisting of several small square pouches of the same drafting film that have shredded paper in them. This goes along with the idea of losing information in a modern business environment by displaying destroyed information, but again, the presentation does not invite the viewer to think about what it means. It is arranged in a grid with all the same sized pouches, all appearing to have relatively the same contents. Including some color into the contents of the pouches might have made it more intriguing, but they are as minimalistic and bland as the smaller pieces.
Ana Maria Hernando at the Kemper Gallery
One artist who knows how to use paper well is Ana Maria Hernando. Her show has been on display for a few months, and I don’t have much to say about it other than it is amazing. She has many framed works that resemble mandalas or flowers, and they include many patterned cut paper forms that rise away from the piece adding a third dimension to the work. However, the main attraction of the show is a large installation in the middle of the floor with fabric flower forms among glass discs with floral imagery on them. There is a strong sense of spirituality and nature in the work. I makes me think of Buddhism a lot by using similar devices, with the floor installation resembling a pond or stream with lotus flowers in it, and the framed images looking like mandalas that also incorporate lotus images. I doubt that Buddhism is the source of inspiration for the work because it is not a popular religion among Spanish speakers, but regardless of the source the work is great and should not be missed.
