Thrilling Me Softly (and other eye tunes)
By Tom Wachunas
“Interestingly enough, the sheer emptiness
of the expansive gallery floor, combined with the generally neutral look and
feel of the walls, conjures an eerie impression of an empty ballroom, awaiting
the arrival of spectacularly attired guests. Ah well, maybe next year the dance
will be more grand.”
- from ARTWACH
post on October 18, 2014
EXHIBIT: Stark County
Artists Exhibition, at Massillon Museum, THROUGH JANUARY 10, 2016 / 121 Lincoln Way East, downtown
Massillon www.massillonmuseum.org
Quoting myself
above is simply a way to remind you of how miffed I was about the quality of
last year’s annual Stark County Artists exhibit, not that it’s anything of
great importance. Still, this year I’ve no axe to grind beyond my persistent concerns
about the efficacy of “juried” exhibits and assigning gradated awards (Best in
Show, Second Place, Third Place) along with a handful of Honorable Mentions,
which one might call “also-rans.”
In this postmodern era, there’s no universal
standard by which to measure and declare an artwork’s indisputable excellence
(much to the dismay, I’m sure, of some academic traditionalists). And
regardless of a juror’s credentials, the process of determining relative levels
of aesthetic quality is in the end a complex and mostly subjective one, fraught
with subtle biases, including multiple definitions of art. The practice has
become needlessly imperious and even a bit silly. Why can’t we simply have
“jurors” as guest curators who choose the entrants to be exhibited and leave it
at that? This is after all an art show, not a horse race. The designations of
win-place-show certainly mean something unarguable in the sport of kings, but
they have little if any truly meaningful function in the context of group art
exhibitions.
Meanwhile, back at
the track Massillon Museum, and to continue with the analogy of selected
works with attendees at a ball, this year’s guests are elegantly dressed to
thrill even if their aesthetic sensibilities are for the most part conservative
and familiar. If artworks were songs - 63 of them here, by 42 artists - most of them lie somewhere between easy
listening and contemporary pop. That said, here are a few of the more appealing
tunes that had me humming right along.
The sole
printmaker in this year’s show is William Bogdan, and his haunting
black-and-white woodcut, The Doe Lay Dead
in a Field of Asters: No, is as stark as it is poetic. The large-scale
verticality of the piece is compelling, giving it the resonance of a devotional
icon. There’s something angelic about how the subtly toned and textured animal,
with a cluster of floral shapes inscribed in its abdomen, seems to be
ascending. Death begets life.
Of the mixed media
entries, In Her Shoes, by Clare
Murray Adams, is especially fascinating. She’s particularly adept at distilling
elements of ordinary domesticity into extraordinary moments of poetic
materiality. There is an air of gentle mystique about this page from a dreamworld
scrapbook – a tactile montage of childhood musings and memories.
If there can be
such a thing as Romantic Minimalism, photographer Seth Adam may have hit upon
it with his crisp and bright image of a Pueblo structure in his Taos Shadows. While photographers don’t
overtly “invent” a pictorial composition in the way a painter might, the most
remarkable ones, such as Mr. Adam in this instance, know how to recognize and
reveal a magical moment when they see one.
Tina Meyers’
abstract acrylic painting, Living in the
Trees, is a remarkably muscular composition, tight in structure and loose
in gestural mark-making. The piece fuses figural with floral elements to create
an enchanting biomorph.
And there’s also
plenty of enchantment in Brian Robinson’s Simple
Waves. Robinson is a true master of the pastel medium. His stunning
landscape is replete with feathery, silken textures; saturated, luminous
colors; and sunlight rendered so lusciously you can almost feel the warmth on
your face.
Equally
accomplished in the pastel medium (oil pastel, to be precise) is Diane
Belfiglio, beautifully evident here in her glowing Fleeting Fall II. But her new sculpture, Repetitions II, is a surprising revelation. It’s a serious
departure from the naturalistic realism she’s been so meticulously exploring –
exhausting, really – for many years. The intriguing geometric abstraction of
this free-standing work is on one level a nod to painter Piet Mondrian, but in
airy 3D, with just a hint of Alexander Calder’s mobiles. Belfiglio is singing a
new song these days, so to speak. Call it adventuresome alternative
programming, and stay tuned for her future hits.
PHOTOS (from top):
The Doe Lay Dead in a Field of Asters:
No, woodcut by William Bogdan; Living
in the Trees, acrylic, by Tina Meyers; In
Her Shoes, mixed media, by Clare Murray Adams; Repetitions II (foreground, on white pedestal), pinewood and
chains, by Diane Belfiglio
