Bass Notes, Grace Notes

Bass Notes, Grace Notes

By Tom Wachunas


The February 6 Canton Symphony Orchestra (CSO) concert at Umstattd Hall, with Gerhardt Zimmerman conducting, was a stunning demonstration of effective program pacing - a slow, simmering build-up through four works, into the full climactic boil of the evening’s finale. And remarkably, the musical linchpin through much of this lively and varied program was the double bass as solo instrument.

One delightful and informative feature of CSO concerts are the “Performance Preludes” – informal talks with the audience an hour prior to the concert that are designed to give background on the evening’s program selections. On this occasion, M.J. Albacete, executive director of the Canton Museum of Art, astutely presented a thoughtful selection of recorded excerpts wherein the double bass figured significantly in some composers’ works – Dragonetti and Beethoven, to name just a few. In similar fashion Albacete addressed the general notion of alternative transcriptions of composers’ original works by other composers or conductors, in anticipation of this night’s transcription of Dimitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No.7 in f sharp minor.

First on the program was “Last Round,” by contemporary Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov. This extraordinary eulogy to composer and bandoneon (the accordion-like instrument so central to Tango music) player Astor Piazzolla calls for two string quartets, with double bass player in the center, to perform while standing, reflecting Piazzolla’s own performing stance. To be sure, watching the musicians perform here in this fashion additionally conjured the intensity of Tango dancers locked in choreographed combat. While double bass is not a prominent solo presence in this work, it does provide a constant, pulsing stream of sonorous rhythms and punctuations that drive the relentless, menacing attacks and counter-attacks of the quartets during the first movement. The muscular playing by the quartets was notably true to the composer’s desire that they should suggest “the act of a violent compression of the instrument (bandoneon).” Their transition into the slow, far less acerbic second movement was a marvelous bent-note sigh, giving way to a moving, elegiac melody delivered with fine attention to its achingly sweet tonalities.

Thus the mood was set for the bittersweet “Moon Reflected in Er-Quan Spring,” by the legendary Chinese composer and erhu (2-string violin) player Hua Yanjun (A’bing). The piece, originally written for solo erhu, was quickly transcribed into arrangements for orchestra and various solo instruments after A’bing recorded it in 1950. For this concert, world-renowned double bassist DaXun Zhang was on hand to perform it with accompanying string orchestra. He too performed standing up. But unlike the aggressive posture of the previous work, the stance here possessed the quality of a warm caress. Zhang didn’t merely play his instrument well. He embraced it as he would a dance partner, firmly guiding her through deeply lyrical passages, dazzling in their range of scale and timbre. Against the delicately meditative, shimmering textures of the orchestra’s accompaniment, Zhang’s astonishing skill elicited from this most unlikely of instruments those alternately throaty and soaring wails so characteristic of the erhu.

By now the audience was thoroughly won over by Zhang’s charismatic virtuosity, and otherwise primed for the dizzying scale runs and melodic richness of Giovanni Bottesini’s Bass Concerto No. 2 in d minor. It is a work by a composer who was fondly called ‘the Paganini of the double bass,’ and embraces musical wit and whimsy in the first movement, gentle lyricism in the second, and a bouncing, dance-like ebullience in the finale. Fueled by Zhang’s thrilling showmanship, the orchestra in turn performed with crisp panache.

A somewhat jarring shift in mood followed with the Shostakovich String Quartet, transcribed here for full orchestra by Maestro Zimmerman. He explained to the audience that he felt the work was more than simply the composer’s remembrance of his wife, Nina, and their stormy marriage. His orchestral additions include double basses and three percussionists, and the overall arrangement is intended to reflect the composer’s tumultuous relationship with his government and fellow artists in a volatile era of Russian cultural persecution. Accordingly, Zimmerman’s transcription is explosive, bringing a fresh and startling – though never extraneous – urgency to a work already substantial in its dramatic impact. The orchestra rose to the occasion with searing, emotive clarity.

And so it was as if unfettered joy itself, kept at bay to this point, burst triumphantly into the auditorium with the evening’s final performance - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s electrifying Capriccio espanol. This is a work of colossal color and sparkle, and the orchestra delivered it with its hallmark style of infectious effervescence, much to the delight of all present.


Photo: Double bassist DaXun Zhang, courtesy Canton Symphony Orchestra
www.cantonsymphony.org

Molecularities and Other Quarknesses

Molecularities and other Quarknesses

By Tom Wachunas


Recently, I finished reading – or more accurately, navigating - a ten year-old book entitled “The Elegant Universe” by Brian Greene. The experience was a dizzying one – an arduous voyage leaving me with only a feeble grasp of the thinking behind a “unified theory of everything”. At the end of the day I am the proud owner of a dandy glossary of terms that often defy use in everyday conversation with reasonable, socially well-adjusted people – terms like Calabi-Yau space, chirality, fermion, torus, weak gauge symmetry, and Z boson. Ahhh, but the pictures are fantastic.

No, not those dazzling, jaw-dropping digitalized panoramas of starry, deep space dramas or eerie planetscapes. I’m referring to the book’s fascinating illustrations, in lowly black-and-white, of scientists’ models for demonstrating hypotheses about such things as particle physics and multi-dimensional space, to name just a few. So while my general ignorance of hard science remains vast, exceeded only by my ceaseless curiosity, my appreciation of the esthetics of theoretical models is undiminished. That appreciation was recently enhanced by the current exhibition of oil paintings and works on paper by Jack McWhorter, at Malone University’s Johnson Center for the Arts.

The exhibit, called “Forces Constant,” is a gathering of six oil paintings on canvas and 12 framed oil works on paper. McWhorter is an associate professor who teaches painting at Kent Stark. If I read his statement for the show correctly (and it is fortunately written in language far less arcane than Greene’s book), he is inspired by, among other things, the interface of science with art, and the models that scientists employ to illustrate theories about various properties of the universe, or to describe ephemeral relationships within larger systems of interacting phenomena. Which all sounds quite cerebral and suspiciously obtuse, until you get to his phrase, “…formalization of intuition.” Now, the floodgates of imagination are opened, and the paintings begin to take on an efficacious logic of their own. And what abstract painter would have it any other way?

McWhorter’s images aren’t handily explainable as static pictures “of something” in the prosaic sense of capturing familiar superficialities as much as they are essences. For all of their recurring structures and symbols, they are nonetheless (to use one of those pesky cosmology terms) poetic singularities. Or perhaps they’re arrivals, carrying with them ample evidence of the sometimes circuitous paths that led to their current destination, their “look.” In that regard they also embody the sensibility that at any moment they could be moving on. Certainly on one level, then, these are painterly snapshots of structures and relationships in flux – portraits, as it were, of process.

You’d think that such heady (and certainly playful) forays into abstraction as these are - with their overall appearance of loose, gestural spontaneity - would generate highly tactile surfaces lush with paint. Surprisingly, these configurations are thinly rendered, yet still possessing a raw, even dense physicality. The paint isn’t so much laid on the surface as it is thoughtfully “written” into it, then often brushed over and re-written, to produce intricate, translucent matrices of lines and shapes that undulate in ambiguous space, at once shallow and infinite. Equally thoughtful is McWhorter’s rich palette that, whether earthy or ethereal, is easy on the eyes and certainly no less engaging than his energetic drawing.

Having said all of that, the question remains: what, exactly, are we looking at? For example, are the separate clusters in “Three Charged Bodies” variations of a single entity undergoing a metamorphosis? Biological? Chemical? Psychological? Astronomical? Oddly enough, they do bring me back to Greene’s discussion of the extra spatial dimensions that necessarily emerge from String Theory into something called ( I can’t begin to tell you how exciting it is to be able to finally use this term in a full sentence) Calabi-Yau space.

But really, these paintings are, in a larger sense, intriguing and visually thrilling metaphors for the relational thinking that is the heart of artistic intuition. I think. And one of these days I might tell you how they remind me of Laplacian determinism.


Photo: “Three Charged Bodies,” oil on canvas, by Jack McWhorter. On view through February 26, in his exhibition called “Forces Constant,” at the McFadden Gallery, located in the lower level of the Johnson Center for the Arts, Malone University, 2600 Cleveland Avenue NW, Canton

Thunder and Grace

Thunder and Grace

By Tom Wachunas



Modernism in much of 20th century orchestral music can often be identified in terms of its very deliberate explorations of atonality, astringent harmonies (if indeed there are harmonies in the traditional, Western sense), and daring rhythmic structures. Some works display a steely detachment from emotional content, rendering them fairly inaccessible to listeners ill-disposed to such intellectualism. Other “modern” works, though, while certainly challenging in their innovation, nonetheless deliver an edifying, even soaring lyricism. Such was the case in the latest chamber music program by members of the Canton Symphony Orchestra (CSO) in the third of this season’s Casual Friday concerts.

First on the program was Maurice Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello (1922). Marie-Thais Levesque Oliver, CSO principal cellist, introduced the work by reminding the audience that it marked a distinct turning point in Ravel’s career, adding that she was particularly fond of the work. Watching her perform it, I could see why, if for no other reason than that it showcased her formidable mastery in not only sheer technical skill, but her ability to draw out the music’s emotional subtleties as well.

No easy task, to be sure. For Ravel, this work was a fairly complex and austere departure from both traditional four-part sonata formats, and also from the impressionistic sensualities of his earlier compositions. Forsaking expansive harmonies in favor of an emphasis on melody, Ravel’s structure in this work is more linear – an ongoing, contrapuntal dialogue between cello and violin. Joining Oliver here in her interpretive reverie, with equally skilled poeticism, was violinist Nathan Olson, CSO Concertmaster. For all of the music’s separated music lines, they played with one mind, sounding out remarkable tonal unity with seamless, fluid energy.

In the second movement, Tres vif, Ravel’s eschewing of conventional harmony was more evident than in the first, as melodies were played simultaneously in different keys. But the effect was not as heavy or off-putting as one might expect from such experimentation, largely due to the performers’ delightfully executed synchronicity of pizzicato passages. The third movement has a distinctly more lyrical sensibility, initiated by a mournful cello song. The melodies quicken as the violin joins, and together the instruments here were singing with an ascending, emotive urgency. It was an urgency made all the more poignant by the resonant exuberance of the finale. In the end, it’s fair to say the work and its exhilarating performance was warmly received by the audience, and was an effective primer for what was to come.

In introducing the evening’s second selection, Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, CSO Principal Clarinetist, Randy Klein, explained that in World War II, Messiaen was interned at a German prison camp when he composed the quartet for the unusual (but there, the only available) combination of violin, cello, clarinet and piano, premiering it in 1941 before an assembly of 5,000 prisoners. Klein added that he hoped the audience would enjoy the work, while acknowledging that some might find it “uncomfortable.” Aside from the war-time atrocities one might associate with the era, the work does embody some of the aforementioned modernist musical astringencies. But arguably more than any other work of its day, it is unapologetic in its emotional thrust. Messiaen’s own program notes for the work’s eight movements, wisely provided on this occasion, attest to as much.

Beyond the work’s inspiration from the Book of Revelation, in which the “seventh angel” sounds the end of time, Messiaen’s employment of unorthodox rhythmic systems signaled an “end” to metered time as usually expressed in Western classical music. In that regard it is a notably challenging work to perform, and certainly more ethereal, or mystical than traditional in structure. Here, like Messiaen’s metaphorical descriptions of imminent eternity, the musicians rose to the spirit of the music with alternately apocalyptic power and gentle, inspiring grace.

Among the most impressive elements in this performance was the astonishing range of volume, tonal effects, and textures achieved by the musicians. Guest pianist Alicja Basinska played with both the force of angels wresting thunder from the clouds, and the delicacy of birds negotiating the thinnest of perches. Clarinetist Klein was particularly compelling in his third movement solo, executing several astounding feats of controlled breathing wherein excruciatingly slow crescendos rise from utter quiet into long, siren-like wails. Oliver’s cello in the fifth movement exuded plaintive love and melancholic calm without being overly ponderous. And Olson’s shimmering violin in the concluding moments of the last movement seemed to soar ever higher into stratospheric pitches that hovered, then dispersed, finally, into an achingly sweet silence. Like breeching the gates of Heaven.


Photo: “The Last Judgment,” (detail), Sistine Chapel fresco, 1541, by Michelangelo

A House On Fire

A House On Fire

By Tom Wachunas


I’m not sure when the word “dysfunctional” became the universal descriptor for damaged or destroyed human relationships, or socially aberrant behavior in our culture. But these days it seems like the term is ever on the tips of our tongues - an integral part of our social and medical vocabulary, and otherwise popularly if not reluctantly accepted as a given condition of modern life. Encountering the horrific interactions of dysfunctional families can be a bit like witnessing a house fire at too-close a distance. Morbid curiosity gets the better of us. Despite being singed by the heat, we just can’t seem to avert our gaze, mesmerized by the sheer scale of the devastation unfolding before us.

Tennessee Williams’ 1955 play, “Cat On a Hot Tin Roof,” has a similar effect. As stage literature, it is a searing, brilliant, and brutally honest examination of a dysfunctional Southern family. So honest, no doubt, to the producers of the 1958 film version, that they toned down the original language and content which they deemed too “controversial” for the movie-going public of the day. Measured by most of today’s entertainment standards and practices, though, Williams’ unedited script could be comfortably slotted into primetime television without remarkable fanfare or protest. Still, and interestingly enough, its themes remain both relevant and, to a considerable (though perhaps more palatable) degree, uncomfortable.

I can’t think of a more effective way to experience the full impact of this dramatic masterwork, however, than to see it performed live in a black-box theater context. So it is appropriate that the current Players Guild Theatre production of the work, directed by Jon Tisevich as one of the entries in this season’s Stripped Away series, is being performed in the intimacy of its William G. Fry Theatre. In that context, the explosive nature of the narrative, delivered here by a disarmingly credible and sharp ensemble cast, takes on a distinctly visceral, in-your-face urgency.

A troubled Southern family reunites to celebrate the 65th birthday of its dying patriarch, Big Daddy, a bitter and surly plantation owner who shamelessly flaunts disdain for his wife (Big Mama), and believes a false medical report that he doesn’t have terminal cancer. That’s just the first of many lies that fuel the frictions and hypocrisies dividing his sons, Brick (childless with wife Maggie, “The Cat”) and Gooper ( three children and a fourth on the way with wife Mae), vying for the family fortune. Brick, clearly Big Daddy’s favorite son, is an ex-pro football player who turns to alcohol after the suicide of his best friend and former teammate, Skipper. Suspecting Maggie of having an affair with Skipper, he refuses to have anything to do with her, and is completely numb to her passionate pleas for reconnecting on any level. As the story unfolds, it’s clear that brother Gooper, Mae, and Maggie have seriously questioned the depth and nature of Brick’s relationship with Skipper, stoking Brick’s drunken outrage at the very idea of homosexuality. Lies, innuendos, resentments, greed and jealousies smolder and eventually ignite into a thunderous confrontation of confessional rage between Brick and Big Daddy in Act II that in turn overruns the entire family in Act III.

The performances offered by the cast here are, in general, so crisply defined and genuine that they take on nearly operatic proportions. As Maggie, Tiffani Hilton turns in a largely seamless, powerful, and authentic portrait of a witty, sensual woman - lonely, and desperate for loving attention, while consumed by longing, envy, and suspicion. Both Jennifer Davies as Mae, and Daryl Robinson as her husband Gooper, are well matched to their roles that at first seem understated and inconsequential. But as the story unfolds, their skillful display of feigned affection for Big Daddy is really an effective burlesque - a subtle (and very integral to the story) masking of their cocky airs and egocentric sense of entitlement. And Carrie Alexander Spina as Big Mama delivers a convincing presentation of the doting matriarch whose stubborn denial of the realities around her turns from bubbly, delusional naivete to a torrent of tearful, very real frustration and anger.

But it is the marvelously crafted volcanic crescendo of unguarded emotional tensions between Big Daddy, played by Christopher Gales, and Brick, played by Aaron Brown, that sears this story into our memory. Gales is a monumental force to be reckoned with, both as his character and in his riveting presence as an actor. Equally, Brown has immersed himself in his role with astonishing, even scary intensity.

Tisevich’s choice to cast two black men in this production – Gales and Robinson - would seem, at the very least, curious. But in so much as the play addresses the decaying dynastic system of Southern society and its attendant moral flaws, the casting points unapologetically to the play’s larger indictment of dysfunctional behavior in general. So as audience, we are effectively absorbed into sordid truths of the human condition regardless of historic or geographical setting. “Mendacity is the system in which we live,” Brick reminds his father. Moral turpitude respects no boundaries - neither chronological nor demographic. Mendacity. A system of lies.

The play ends on an exhausted yet subtly hopeful, perhaps even redemptive note. Catharsis is necessarily painful, and born only out of confession. Call this production an eminently successful exercise in honesty and courage.


Photo, courtesy Jon Tisevich: Christopher Gales (left) and Aaron Brown in a scene from “Cat On a Hot Tin Roof,” at the Players Guild Theatre, 1001 Market Avenue N., Canton, Through February 7. Shows at 8p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2:30p.m. Sunday. Box Office (330) 453- 7617 or visit www.playersguildtheatre.com

The Curious Allure of War

The Curious Allure of War

By Tom Wachunas


Even a sidelong glance at human history will reveal that among the most appalling qualities of earth people is our apparently indefatigable capacity to hurt each other. But that same glance will also bring to light our outrage at such atrocious shortcomings, coupled with our ceaseless pursuit of justice, healing, and hope. Clearly, we are a maddeningly dichotomous, unreasonable species. Capable of spawning soaring, inspiring geniuses the likes of da Vinci, Michelangelo, Handel, or Beethoven, we also birth misanthropic scourges like Hitler and bin Laden. There is to this day abundant evidence that we continue to make our world a place where beauty and beast are entwined, wrestling and inseparable…where with one hand we hungrily grasp at sweet, ephemeral delights, and with the bloodied other, wield unspeakable cruelties.

And yet we do speak of them – with jarring clarity as well as subtle eloquence - in our art. There are numerous romantic depictions of war throughout art history that would seem to glorify some causes as noble and justifiable, presenting bloody conflicts as intrinsically heroic. The images that continue to resonate with me, however, are those I regard as compelling attempts to exorcise the demon by presenting it for what it is – murderous, devouring, ugly. Two examples come immediately to mind: Francisco Goya’s gripping masterpiece, “The Third of May, 1808,” and Pablo Picasso’s monumental and explosive protest, “Guernica.”

On the left side of the 1937 Picasso work we see a mother, her screaming face raised skyward as she cradles her lifeless infant. Six years after that painting was completed, and during the Nazi occupation of France, Picasso unveiled another masterpiece, this one full of a distinctly more tender angst, “First Steps.” Here, a clearly apprehensive mother, in a moment of bittersweet release, gingerly loosens her hold on her child, who looks straight ahead with wide-eyed anticipation, seeming to step right out of the canvas into a world turned upside down by war.

It is, I think, a similar spirit of wartime angst that is at the heart of the work by Erica A. Meuser, in her show titled “In America’s Wake,” now on view at Studio M in the Massillon Museum. But these works – black and white monotype prints with charcoal- are not outright renderings of military confrontations per se. Rather, they address the subtle, emotionally complicated – even insidious - domestic issues that grip our own warring society. Specifically, as we learn in Meuser’s statement for the show, the images initially rose from her feelings about the Iraqui War. Additionally, she acknowledges the further influence of related literature, history, and music, adding, “With their voices in my head - in a highly charged emotional moment – all my worlds collide, and I create my floating, ghostly compositions where my figures act and play out their role in my tale about mothers and sons lying and dying in the wake of America’s Wars.”

Emotionally charged moments indeed. All 14 of the large works here are executed in a mannered but fluid style not as much “drawn” in the traditional sense as they are exposed, or rubbed into view, as if excavated from deeply embedded memories and dreams. These are images that breathe a desperate urgency. Their surfaces are richly varied terrains of texture and tonality from ponderous, dense, blacks to wispy flourishes of velvety grays that hang like so much dispersing smoke. Sometimes Meuser’s figures are distorted and exaggerated, yet even at their most grotesque, they embody a searing, unforgettable pathos.

In “Day Four – Canoe Over Water and Graves,” the woman (mother?) appears lost in a somber trance as she holds the oars of her canoe floating over the face-down corpses beneath her. “The Battle” is a startling vision of a naked boy wresting one of the three arrows from the talons of a monstrous eagle.

In the heartrending, raw portrait, “Mothers and Sons II,” the central figure (of a mother?) clutches the limp body of a boy, her shoulders amply covered by the hands of the figure hovering behind. The hands of both figures, with their fingers splayed apart just so, are a grim ensemble of white shapes that bring to mind teeth bared in anguish.

After seeing that particular piece, I keep coming back to the hope embodied in Picasso’s “First Step,” even with its bitter irony of a mother releasing her child into a war-ravaged future. Is it so unreasonable to dream that either a single artwork, or collection of works, could ever move us to finally eradicate the horrors those works address? Probably. Maybe even certainly.

But remember our sidelong glance at history, and its cloying revelation of our unreasonableness as a species? Dream on, then. Powerful art, like Meuser’s, has a way of compelling us to do just that.


Photo: “Mothers and Sons II,” ink monotype with charcoal, by Erica A. Meuser, from her exhibition, “In America’s Wake,” on view in Studio M at the Massillon Museum, through February 21, 121 Lincoln Way East, downtown Massillon www.massillonmuseum.org

This is a touring exhibit. Next stop: Kent State University, Bowman Hall, April 1- May 21, 2010.

Beyond the Canton Pale

Beyond the Canton Pale

By Tom Wachunas

For the better part of the 14 years I resided in New York City, I was sure that despite the fact that being a painter was an unreasonable pursuit by modern, “real world” terms, I had nonetheless found a place that welcomed and even nourished that unreasonableness. New York is, after all, famous (or infamous) for such sympathies. For me it was a safe place where even the most unusual, unorthodox visions and voices could thrive.

Since coming to Canton some 18 years ago, my sense of our city remains one of stubborn optimism in the face of a sociocultural milieu resistant to fully -or at least consistently- embracing and supporting (both commercially and intellectually) the level of artistic energy and daring that I experienced in New York. Having said that, I am thrilled that there are artists residing here who continue to hone skills and visions that are, in varying degrees, bold, challenging, and genuinely refreshing. In that realm, I offer for your consideration the work of four painters – Gene Barber, Martin Bertman, Aaron Hubbard, and Isabel Zaldivar- in the exhibition, “Abstractitudes,” now on view at Gallery 6000.

Much of the raw physicality in the acrylic canvases by Gene Barber, such as “Life Before Man,” comes, simply enough, from his technique. His bare-hands application of paint imbues the works with a gestural immediacy and certainly a resonating emotional intensity, all rendered in bright, saturated colors. Forms seem to rise and fall like so many gaseous clouds and liquid streams, conjuring, perhaps, ghosts of a volatile, primordial soup.

The acrylic ink paintings by Isabel Zaldivar have a similar overall sensibility, though the loose forms in her pictures have a more concentrated, tactile appearance. Indeed, her paintings revel in intricate pictorial textures that are comparatively “down to earth,” suggesting mysterious, sometimes turbulent landscapes. Amid the many amorphous, churning pools of color that make up the compositions, there are judiciously placed oases for our eyes to rest – shapes that could be a patch of sky, a small field, or calm bodies of water. Subtly hidden throughout the rich depths of “Sanctuary,” for example, several birds are nestled.

The ambitious canvases in the “Cartographicalanarchic” series by Aaron Hubbard are clustered meanderings of dots and puddles that float in cloudy seas of “background” color. Large “islands” of poured paint are surrounded by smaller groupings of drips and spatters, many of those in turn emphasized with surrounding circles or irregular outlines rendered in marker. The overall effect is reminiscent of aerial views, or maps of archipelagos. But these delightfully strange pictures - at once abstruse and intriguing – are suggestive of far more than superficial geographies, I think. On one level they could very well be metaphors for the human pursuit of relational community, or even the pursuit of meaning itself.

The enigmatic spirit of the paintings by Martin Bertman, on the other hand, seems relatively more accessible, if only because in this group, they exhibit a pictorial content somewhat closer to what I would call representational reality. But it is a content nonetheless abstract at heart. Bertman’s images are compelling arrangements of decidedly personal symbols, executed with fluid painterly confidence. All of his paintings here are executed with a keen eye for compositional elegance along with, as I’ve noted in the past, an enthralling color sensibility, as in “Interior,” or “Entwined.”

I’ve also noted in the past that I have no axe to grind with purely representational painting. Canton has an abundance of remarkably talented, practicing traditionalists, many of them to one degree or another successful in finding a local market for their work. But Canton is far from a hotbed of abstractionist expression, and I’ve tended to view the local public at large as somewhere between tepid and nonresponsive in its embrace of abstract art in general. So I think shows like this one send an important message. The work being done by artists such as these, while often seen as outside the comfortable pleasantries of “normal” or “popular” art, deserves our undivided attention and respect.

What always fascinates me about the kind of abstract painters we see in this show is their fundamental surrender to the substance, the physicality of paint itself. Such painters have evolved distinct visual languages. Those languages are free from the constraints of manipulating paint to merely recapitulate visible reality. They are in fact languages exquisitely endowed to articulate the drama of being alive, languages that define things spiritual and metaphysical. Things on the fringe of our perceptions. Things that need to be illuminated.


Photo: “Life Before Man,” acrylic on canvas, by Gene Barber, on view in “Abstractitudes,” at Gallery 6000, located in the University Center of Kent State University Stark Campus, 6000 Frank Avenue NW in Jackson Township, through May 14. EXHIBIT OPENS WITH A RECEPTION FOR THE ARTISTS ON TUESDAY, JANUARY 26, 5:30- 7:30pm. Pleas RSVP TO REBECCA DeHART at (330) 244 – 3518 or rdehart@kent.edu

Killing Us Softly

Killing Us Softly

By Tom Wachunas


After attending this year’s opening of the Stark County Artists’ Exhibition at the Massillon Museum, I couldn’t get the lyrics, “Killing me softly with his words…,”out of my head for the rest of the evening. Some of you may have read Dan Kane’s revelatory piece in the January 15 Repository Ticket section wherein several artists in the show talked about their entries. Bili Kribbs said that his painting, “Zombunny to Love,” (depicting a young man in a bunny suit, holding a red balloon on a string, and bleeding from the garden clippers sticking out of his chest) was simply a portrait of a friend in a Halloween costume, albeit an unsettling one. So the cat was out of the bag, or more precisely, the bunny out of his hole. What was interesting to me was watching how viewers looked at the piece, trying to decipher its “meaning”. Many of them clearly hadn’t read the article, and were genuinely puzzled if not mortified in their reaction to the work.

But even with knowing beforehand what was on the artist’s mind (which unfortunately killed any sense of mystery or surprise for me), the painting still exudes a daring, raw, even courageous energy. It is an energy that is sadly missing from this show as a whole. So yet another song began to invade my head, “Is That All There Is?”

For at least the previous seven or eight years, I have left this annual exhibition fairly well satisfied that I had seen a substantial – at times spectacular - cross-section of the rich, varied, and bold artistic talents to be found in Stark County. Not so this year. In fact, this show is distinctly lethargic in comparison. Call it handsome but toothless. How can this be?

Any juried show has the built-in problem, or challenge, of jurors overcoming their personal agendas and tastes in an effort to select the best material available for an exciting exhibition. And in light of 264 entries submitted for consideration, one would think we were in for a blockbuster show. Here, Mary Gray, director of the Riffe Gallery in Columbus, and Susan Vincent of SPACES in Cleveland, selected 53 works by 43 artists. While second-guessing jurors’ criteria is generally an exercise in futility, I nonetheless wonder about it anyway. Honestly, there have been occasions when I envisioned myself grabbing jurors by the shoulders and shaking them just short of an assault charge, desperately pleading, “What on God’s good earth were you thinking?!” Case in point here: awarding Second Place to Michael Nutter’s unimpressively impressionistic oil painting, “Song of Chikadee.”

If, on the other hand, the goal here was to assemble a show that would be, in the aggregate, academic, safe, and pretty, then this is a gloriously successful celebration of the unremarkable. With some notable exceptions, to be sure.

Kristine Wyler’s spectacular oil, “Grand Finale,” makes another appearance in a group show and, short of being in the presence of the real thing, remains among the most stunningly executed sunsets I’ve ever seen. Stunning, too, is the pastel work by Brian Robinson, “A Twelve Dollar Balloon,” in good company with the masterful oil pastel work by Diane Belfiglio, “Potomac Patterns IV”. For impeccably designed pictorial structure and vibrant color, there is the large and marvelous still-life oil, “Braeburns and High Biskets” by Cleo Clark-Williams, along with the Third Place-winning watercolor, “Target on Times Square,” by Ted Lawson. With all due respect to Mr. Lawson (and he is due much), the decision to include three of his works in this show was glaringly indulgent. Any one of them would have been sufficient enough evidence of his particular esthetic.

And speaking of over-indulgence, more than a quarter of the works here are in the medium of photography (or digital enhancements), and most of those are irritatingly ordinary. Michele Waalkes’ “The Unknown,” which took Best in Show honors, is not a photograph in the strictest sense, but rather a photographic transfer on to sheer fibers. Still, it’s refreshingly elegant, original, and mesmerizing to behold.

The show is decidedly lacking in sculpture and very thin on abstraction. In the former category, Tom Wentling’s wood construction, “The Inevitable,” is a gem of pure mystery and dark charm. In the latter realm, the two large ink and pastel drawings by Becky Breckenridge are a surprising and needed blast of fresh air, even though they owe some debt, perhaps, to the “automatic drawings” of mid-20th century Surrealists.

In the end, it’s difficult to believe that the very limited presence of Stark County’s “cutting edge” contingent in this show is a result of those artists not submitting work for consideration. Short of taking a poll of both artists and jurors, however, we may never really know why they’re not here. In any event, their absence this year makes for a comparatively lackluster show that is ultimately a disservice to both the artist community and the public at large. Better luck next year.


Photo: “Zombunny to Love,” mixed media painting by Bili Kribbs, on view in the Stark County Artists’ Exhibition at the Massillon Museum through February 28, 121 Lincoln Way East, Massillon (330) 833 – 4061 www.massillonmuseum.org