Captured in Cloth

 

Captured in Cloth 

Serenity

John

Watching U

Regrets

Still I Rise

Ophelia - Woman coming into her Confidence

Elements

By Tom Wachunas

 

…Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise… from “Still I rise” by Maya Angelou

   “Art is a form of experience of the person, the place, the history of the people, and as black people, we are different. We hail from Africa to America, so the culture is mixed, from the African to the American. We can't drop that. It's reflected in the music, the dance, the poetry, and the art.”  - Faith Ringgold

 

EXHIBIT: Eyes To The Soul: The Fiber Art of Margene May / at Canton Museum of Art, through October 27, 2024 / 1001 Market Avenue N., Canton, Ohio /  330.453.7666 /

The Canton Museum of Art is open Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 10 a.m. – 8 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., and Sundays 1-5 p.m. Admission is free on Thursdays and the first Friday of every month.

Background info:   https://www.cantonart.org/exhibits/eyes-soul-fiber-art-margene-may-august-27-2024-october-27-2024

 

   This captivating retrospective tribute to the work of Canton artist Margene May, who passed away unexpectedly in 2022, was curated by Lynda Tuttle Swintosky. Her downtown gallery, Lynda Tuttle’s Art Center, significantly contributed to the vital diversity of Canton’s burgeoning art scene with a large solo exhibit (31 pieces!) of May’s exquisite fiber portraits back in August of 2010.

   Margene May elevated the craft of fabric cut-and-paste to a riveting level of jewel-like intricacy. She composed portraits with pieces of cloth that often echoed traditional African-styled abstract designs, symbols and patterns. Moods, attitudes, postures. Her portraits exude a wondrous presence of palpable emotional expressivity and qualities of human character. They speak stories of vulnerability, strength, desire, anxiety, hope, doubt, confidence.

   Yes, stories. And also questions. As we watch, as we lock eyes and look at them, one of the pieces here called “Watching U” reminds me that they look at us too, perhaps asking what we feel, assume, or truly know about African Americans alive together with us in modern society.

   Margene May’s portraits are dynamic immersions, compelling contemplations and celebrations that still evoke beautiful connections to the ethos of African art and culture. One of the most powerful and poignant examples of that connectivity is especially present in her marvelous work called “Serenity.” A mother, her face aglow with intense, warm color, looks peacefully past our gaze, seemingly through us, into a time or place where her sleeping baby has yet to arrive. Mother’s hair seems windblown, electrified, alert. Her hand, resting on baby’s torso, is a cradling comfort. And a strong, ready shield.   

MuralFest Destinations - Part 2

 

MuralFest Destinations (Part 2 – more photos) 

by Timothy Smith

Timothy Smith

by Heidi Clifford and Ashley Palmer

by Kwesi Agyare

by Libby Doss with Canton Country Day School students

by Ashley Liptak (center figure by Stephen Ehret)

by Bethanie Steelman

Bethany Steelman

“Canton Mural Fest is a celebration of art, culture, and community in Downtown Canton as we transform blank walls into vibrant works of art that will captivate and inspire. We envision a collection of murals that together make an outdoor mural gallery designed to connect, reflect and celebrate our diverse communities through public art.” – Downtown Canton Partnership

 

https://www.downtowncanton.com/events/mural-fest/

 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DAXtwT-OeyS/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=5b7334f9-cedd-43ed-a31a-0c7fbd835bc3

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS/ Mural location:

Dirk Rozich and Tracy Dawn Brewer (221 Cherry Ave. NW)

Rafael Valdivieso (221 Cherry Ave. NW)

Ian Burleson (221 Cherry Ave. NW)

Derin Fletcher (221 Cherry Ave. NW)

Bethannie Steelman (335 Second St. NW)

Arlin Graff (236 Walnut Ave. NE)

Ron Copeland (300 Walnut Ave. NW)

Ashley Liptak (405 3d St. NW)

Libby Doss with Canton Country Day students (404 3d St. NW)

Kwesi Agyare (331 Cherry Ave. NW)

Heidi Clifford and Ashley Palmer (321 Cherry Ave. NW)

Timothy Smith (320 Walnut Ave. NW)

Kat Francis (320 Walnut Ave. NW)

Lisa Quine (328 Walnut Ave. NW)

   Sponsored by ArtsinStark, the Downtown Canton Partnership and Visit Canton, Mural Fest celebrates public art and features 13 new murals in the Cherry and Walnut Avenue area of downtown Canton. This entire project is an altogether extraordinary urban transformation. A truly thrilling facelift, if you will, and a significant augmentation of Canton’s cultural depth.

MuralFest Destinations (Part 1)

 

MuralFest Destinations (Part 1) 

by Lisa Quine

by Kat Francis

by Ron Copeland

 

by Arlin Graf

by Derin Fletcher

 

by Ian Burleson

by Rafael Valdivieso

by Dirk Rozich

“Canton Mural Fest is a celebration of art, culture, and community in Downtown Canton as we transform blank walls into vibrant works of art that will captivate and inspire. We envision a collection of murals that together make an outdoor mural gallery designed to connect, reflect and celebrate our diverse communities through public art.” – Downtown Canton Partnership

 

https://www.downtowncanton.com/events/mural-fest/

 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DAXtwT-OeyS/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=5b7334f9-cedd-43ed-a31a-0c7fbd835bc3

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS/ Mural location:

Dirk Rozich and Tracy Dawn Brewer (221 Cherry Ave. NW)

Rafael Valdivieso (221 Cherry Ave. NW)

Ian Burleson (221 Cherry Ave. NW)

Derin Fletcher (221 Cherry Ave. NW)

Bethannie Steelman (335 Second St. NW)

Arlin Graff (236 Walnut Ave. NE)

Ron Copeland (300 Walnut Ave. NW)

Ashley Liptak (405 3d St. NW)

Libby Doss with Canton Country Day students (404 3d St. NW)

Kwesi Agyare (331 Cherry Ave. NW)

Heidi Clifford and Ashley Palmer (321 Cherry Ave. NW)

Timothy Smith (320 Walnut Ave. NW)

Kat Francis (320 Walnut Ave. NW)

Lisa Quine (328 Walnut Ave. NW)

   Sponsored by ArtsinStark, the Downtown Canton Partnership and Visit Canton, Mural Fest celebrates public art and features 13 new murals in the Cherry and Walnut Avenue area of downtown Canton. This entire project is an altogether extraordinary urban transformation. A truly thrilling facelift, if you will, and a significant augmentation of Canton’s cultural depth. To accommodate my many photos of the spectacular artworks, I will post an ARTWACH ‘Part 2’ in another day or so.

Dressed To Express

 

Dressed to Express 

 

By Tom Wachunas

“To the young American, here or elsewhere, the paths to fortune are innumerable and all open; There is invitation in the air and success in all his wide horizon.”  - From The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today – an 1873 novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw perfume on the violet... is wasteful and ridiculous excess."  - William Shakespeare, from King John (Act IV)

"Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than to merely keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world's view of us."  - Virginia Woolf

 

EXHIBIT: Gilding Northeast Ohio: Fashion and Fortune 1870–1900,  on view THROUGH OCTOBER 13, 2024 in the Main Gallery at Massillon Museum, 121 Lincoln Way East in downtown Massillon, Ohio / Tuesday- Saturday 9:30 am – 5:00 pm, Sunday 2:00-5:00 pm / 330.833.4061

From Massillon Museum website:  https://www.massillonmuseum.org/

“Gilding Northeast Ohio… showcases fashion from the permanent collections of the Massillon Museum and the Western Reserve Historical Society and loans from various regional museums.  The garments and objects in the show tell the story of politicians, titans of industry, socialites, and the workers who helped gild Ohio… Exciting exhibition features include original costumes designed for the HBO series The Gilded Age.  The exhibition is guest-curated by Brian Centrone, who has long partnered with the Massillon Museum…”

   On the front page of Massillon Museum’s website, you’ll read, “…Our mission is to be a cultural hub where art and history come together.” With this ambitious and stunning installation, Massillon Museum has outdone itself, fulfilling its mission in a thoroughly absorbing, efficacious and educational manner. It’s a transportive and immersive experience, wherein the museum’s main gallery has been morphed into a sprawling, flaunt-it-if-you’ve-got-it soirée. Here’s a telltale mingling of mannequins standing in a movie set, or aboard a time machine. We’re on a captivating expedition into the late 19^th-century period of societal wealth and industrial/economic prosperity which historians called “The Gilded Age.”

    That designation was originally inspired by the title of an 1873 collaborative novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner – The Gilded Age: A Tale of Our Time. The novel was a satirical lampooning of the lust for influence and fortune that had emerged in post-Civil War America.

   Gilded. As guest curator Brian Centrone wrote in one of the many narrative text panels accompanying this exhibit, the word “…suggests a golden façade, hiding a harsh reality beneath. This exhibition showcases Northeast Ohio’s families, fashions, and frivolities while peeling back the gilt to reveal the workers and structures foundational to Northeast Ohio, and to America.”

   When you read those panels, notice how most of them are bordered at the bottom with a section under the heading of “Beneath The Gilding.” Candid peeks under the patinas. Amidst all this opulence, these superbly crafted accoutrements and elegant artifacts of affluence, underneath all this fancy, was a time nonetheless fraught with sociopolitical disparities, inequities, contentions and corruptions.

    Gilding. Sounds uncomfortably close to Guilting? In saying that, I don’t mean to in any way disparage or condemn the overall quality or content as such of this magnificent exhibition. Only that its impact evoked something far deeper in me than just appreciating the realities of a past era. I’m simply not convinced that we can categorically say “The Gilded Age” had an end-date at all. Consider this: For better or worse, what was once still is.

   Thousands of years ago, in a land far, far away, a ridiculously rich and wise king wrote, “…What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”  (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

Between the Lines: Waxing Coalescent

 

Between the Lines: Waxing Coalescent 

State of Mind

A New Perspective

Paradigm Shift

Kind (collaboration with Canton artist Steven Ehret)

Bit By Bit

Imagine

By Tom Wachunas

 

   “My belief is that all humans and every living thing in the universe are connected through an invisible force of energy, a shared Divine DNA. I set out to capture the rhythm and depth of this vast connection through my paintings, using colors, shapes, complexity, and layers with encaustic medium and collage. I then add lines that tie the paintings together, one to the next. The results…celebrate the inherent Divine essence present in all things.”  - Therese Cook, from her exhibition artist statement

EXHIBIT: CONNECTIONS: Encaustic Works by Therese Cook / at Strauss Studios, THROUGH October 11, 2024 [closing artist reception at 6pm on OCTOBER 4] / 236 Walnut Avenue NE, Canton, OH / Viewing Hours: Mon-Fri 10am to 5pm, Sat. 12noon to 5pm/ 330-456-0300

 

https://john-strauss-furniture.myshopify.com/ 

 

https://www.theresecookart.com/Art/IndexArt.php

 

 en·​caus·​tic (in-ˈkȯ-stik) – noun: a paint made from pigment mixed with melted beeswax and resin and after application fixed by heat / also, the method involving the use of encaustic or a work produced by this method

   At one point during the August 31 opening reception for this show of  encaustic works by Canton’s Therese Cook, viewers were encouraged to participate in a Q&A session with the artist. One woman asked Cook, “How do you know when a painting is finished?”

   Yikes. I’m embarrassed to tell you that I don’t recall Cook’s exact answer beyond hearing that all-important word, intuition. The question, while certainly understandable and not uncommon - particularly in the context of making abstract art - stirs me to share a bit of personal philosophy.

    I believe a work of visual art is never “finished” until someone other than the artist actively looks at it. That’s your/our mission here. And even that moment, that decision, is not an end, but only a first step in an encounter, a discovering, of indeterminate duration. It is we, the viewers, who keep art alive and speaking long after the artist’s actions have ceased. And so perhaps the most enlivening empirical value of making and looking at art rests in our apprehending the entire process as a type of collaborative social contract. It’s a connection, a communication, between artist, source of inspiration, and viewer(s). Call it a mutually engaging reconciliation of form, content, and meaning.

    What, then, is being reconciled in the savory, tactile abstractions of Therese Cook? Think of her compositions – constructions, really – as complex, transitory, playful, and dramatic...journeys. Each work has a   structure of sorts, comprised of many diverse formal elements. On their own, those elements could seem to be haphazard and randomly scattered on or floating within the picture plane. But it is Cook’s astutely dynamic distribution of gently luminous, enticing colors that unify, balance and harmonize them into rhythms, rhymes, and counterpoints that keep your eyes (and mind) traveling. The repeated configurations of regular and irregular shapes (geometric and organic) are juxtaposed with embedded patches of words, or variably textured patterns, with lots of lines looking sometimes like scrawled signatures, wandering doodles, or the boundaries and borders on sprawling street maps. These paintings are eloquent metaphorical illustrations, intimating a spirituality both architectonic and ethereal.

   Here, matter and spirit don’t collide. They coalesce. Symbolically, and with palpable joy. Art with a heartbeat. And how does Cook account for the energy, the force, the inspiration behind it all? She had me at “…a shared Divine DNA.”

Curious Curvitudes

 

Curious Curvitudes 

Roseine

Holding

Backslide

Kick Off

Tresspassing

Isolation

Echoes

By Tom Wachunas

 

“…I invite viewers outside of themselves for a short period of time, offering a break from the bombardment of distractions, notifications, and news encountered on a daily basis.”  - Emily Bartolone, from her exhibition artist statement

“There is a poetic nature to minimalism that is about striking a balance between full and empty.”  - Jennie C. Jones

 

EXHIBIT: On Its Head – paintings by Emily Bartolone / THROUGH SEPTEMBER 8, 2024, at Massillon Museum Studio M / 121 Lincoln Way East, downtown Massillon / Tuesday- Saturday 9:30 am – 5:00 pm, Sunday 2:00-5:00 pm / 330.833.4061

                                                           https://www.emilybartolone.com/ 

 

Click on this link to the Massillon Museum podcast talk with the artist:

https://www.massillonmuseum.org/home/programs/massmusings-musem-podcast

 

   The acrylic paintings by Massillon-based artist Emily Bartolone are a collectively playful deconstruction of Minimalism and its often austere, grid-and-bear-it formal structuring. The elegant simplicity of Bartolone’s works is a gentle interrogation, if not an interruption, of Minimalism’s typically rigid, stoical aesthetic.

   As she puts it in her statement, “…The introduction of curved shapes allows me to push back against the bravado of minimalism and geometric abstraction.” She tosses curve-balls, so to speak, across the plane of the playing field.

    Not illusionistic in an outright representational way, these works are nonetheless fascinating in their suggestibility. The curvaceously contoured shapes are subtly textured, biomorphic forms rendered in beautifully nuanced hues -  what Bartolone calls “anthropomorphized.” They bring to mind floating body parts in varying attitudes, positions, profiles.

   These are little paintings – usually around 12” x 9”. Yet even on this small scale, there is an uncanny largeness in the way they exude an immersive  intimacy, a poetic personal narrative. Their intimacy is often punctuated, indeed augmented, by a single tiny colored dot or circle situated at a particular spot in the field of the painting. Maybe think of these focal points as rest stops on your journey as viewer. They remind me of looking at maps of locations that include a flashing arrow indicating, “You are HERE.”

    Where’s here? A memory, an emotion, a friendly encounter, a dilemma, a funny moment? Bartolone’s titles – such as Blues, Holding, Tresspassing, Isolation, Kick Off – are delightfully curious invitations. From passive resting to active looking somewhere just around the next bend, can you…relate?

   Enjoy your trip.

Deep See Risings

 

Deep See Risings 

Living in the Past

Behind the Veil

Unmasked

Transference

Portrait of a Dream

Waiting

Metamorphosis

By Tom Wachunas

“Look at any inspired painting. It’s like a gong sounding. It puts you in a state of reverberation.”  - Philip Guston

“Painting is the frozen evidence of a performance.”  - Chuck Close

“The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.”  - Jackson Pollock

“Painting is by nature a luminous language.”  - Robert Delaunay

EXHIBIT: SUBCONSCIOUS COMMUNICATION – Paintings and ink drawings by Christopher Duncan / at The Little Art Gallery - located in the North Canton Public Library, 185 North Main Street, North Canton, OH / through August 31, 2024 / Viewing hours are Mon.-Thurs. 10am to 8pm, Fri. 10am to 6pm, Sat. 10am to 4pm, Sun. 1pm to 5pm

https://studioduncan.com/?fbclid=IwY2xjawEUgSdleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHVq6GX4gY9fNulffF0xzA6_reVBTtYyqonplrKvClbeA2eidNxPDj-aU6g_aem_h6pxk3HZdKeqA0bkr-V  

 

alchemy (noun) / 1.   a medieval chemical science and speculative philosophy aiming to achieve the transmutation of physical materials /  2.  a power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious or impressive way / 3. an inexplicable or mysterious transmuting .

[please note: while this exhibit includes several  arresting pen and ink drawings, my focus in this post is on the artist’s paintings]

   And here’s a wondrous alchemy from Beloit, Ohio - the abracadabrisms of Christopher Duncan. He turns canvases coated with acrylic paint into compelling eureka meditations. More than just exquisite abstract images executed with mesmerizing panache, his uniquely spectacular paintings are metaphysical portals into supernatural realizations.

   In his artist statement for this exhibit, Duncan has written that those realizations have sprung from his navigating the abundance of images that flow through his mind “…like a raging river.”  In navigating that raging river, he engages “…the act of remembering while swimming against the current of conscious thought.”  In doing so, he tells us that his paintings “… render their own realities. They are worlds in and of themselves. They are self contained microcosms which openly defy the drone of collective thought and run wild through the fields of possibility.”

     In these INTUITive close encounters of the subconscious kind -  into-ITnesses, if you will –  there is often a surreal propinquity of cerebral thresholds in constant motion and flux, straddling and sauntering through liquid, folded boundaries between empirical facts and mystical secrets, between the mundane and the spiritual. Transportive and transfixing traces of seemingly familiar phenomena are layered, entwined, and otherwise swirled into both earthbound and cosmic dimensionalities. Contractions and expansions. Blossomings and metamorphoses. Here’s the changeable weather, the stunning chromatic acrobatics, and the diaphanous luminosity of profound contemplations.

    Contemplations of what, exactly? The ineffable beauty of these paintings – their soulfulness  - is all the more meaningful when we look at them in light of Duncan’s own words: “Like everyone, I have struggles. But I find meaning and purpose in every aspect of creating. One footstep followed by the next… It is a continuum – a work in the hands of one greater than me…”

   Think perhaps of that one greater than the artist as the ultimate inspiration, the perfect alchemist, the hand of a super-collaborator. And what greater collaborator is there than the Creator of creativity itself?  From his so-called subconscious, the artist rises step- by -step  to an invigorated and edified consciousness of sensual ethereality.

   With that in mind, look into these paintings, these continuums, and be…blessed.