Scott Simler's Radiant Realeyezations

 

Scott Simler’s Radiant Realeyezations 

By Tom Wachunas

“…Scott left deep and lasting impact on us here at BZTAT Studios. His smiles, his quiet diligence as an artist, his gentle soul – all are missed greatly. This exhibit is bittersweet. We are so thrilled to share the many works of this phenomenal artist, yet also sad that his presence and creativity are now spoken of in past tense. His art, however, allows his presence to be felt each and every day. We are honored to share it with his adoring fans.”  - Vicki Boatright/ BZTAT

“…So take a walk through Scott Simler’s re-imagined worlds and see how they challenge your notions about time, space, narrative, how beauty is created, and who it’s created by. I guarantee that the journey will be a delightful one - and that you’ll be changed by your travels.”  - Craig Joseph (2022)

EXHIBIT:  Scott Simler Retrospective Art Exhibition: Honoring the Art of a Friend / BZTAT Studios at Canton Creator Space, 730 Market Avenue S., Canton, OH / Through August 3, 2024 / Viewing hours Monday – Saturday Noon to 5pm / 330-371-3150

 http://bztatstudios.com/scott-simler-retrospective-art-exhibition-honoring-the-art-of-a-friend/

 

   I herewith offer my heartfelt THANK YOU to Vicki Boatright – the artist BZTAT – for her remarkable service to individuals with developmental disabilities, to those she has called “differently-abled” and undervalued artists. Her impassioned encouragement and mentoring of their capacities to create unique perspectives on being alive is a truly valuable enrichment of Canton’s cultural ethos.

   And so…here’s a history. His story. Scott Simler. Though he passed away on April 28, 2024, the engaging art of this prolific painter remains ever in our midst. This exhibit is an enthralling here-and-now witnessing of an indefatigable response to life. An electrifying testament, to be sure.

   You’ll find nothing too obtuse, too sinister, or too threatening, about Simler’s eye-popping paintings. In many of his works you might notice some stylistic nods to such modernist influencers as Van Gogh, Picasso, Gaughin, or hints of Matisse. But Simler’s pictures aren’t academic imitations or copies so much as appreciative conversations with inspiring legacies. Think of them perhaps as sympathetic, reverential dialogues that Simler has recontextualized into spatially playful personal moments, memories, scenes – a world, indeed a legacy of his own making.

    His is an uncomplicated yet immersive world, one all abuzz with bright colors, confident lines and lively shapes floating, bouncing, dancing with a radiant, unmitigated optimism. A welcome and courageous salve for our tormented times.

   Scott Simler lives among us with his art. It’s a fearless, joyous art. It’s art that simply asks us to remember our own ability to smile.

A Compelling Catharsis

 

A Compelling Catharsis 

 

By Tom Wachunas 

“I sat with my anger long enough until she told me her real name was grief.”  ― C.S. Lewis

   The sky fell, the earth bled. On December 21, 1988, 270 people from 21 countries died in the terrorist bombing of Pan American Flight 103 en route from London to New York. The explosion rained a torrent of human bodies and debris across many miles, including the city of Lockerbie, Scotland, where 11 of the dead were Lockerbie citizens on the ground.

   That’s the start of the story in Deborah Brevoort’s 2001 play, The Women of Lockerbie. It’s written as a modern form of classical Greek tragedy. This profoundly moving ode to mourning, anger and redemption, presented by Seat of the Pants Productions and directed by Craig Joseph, is as breath-giving as it is breathtaking.

   The combination of scenic design by Ron Newell and lighting by Micah Harvey is a potent one, creating a sensation of barren, haunted landscape. Abstract sculptural forms hover in the air, alternately suggesting plumes of smoke, mangled wreckage, or twisted bodies descending.  

   The play unfolds during the night of the winter solstice -  December 21, 1995 -  in the rolling hills of Lockerbie on the 7^th anniversary of the horrible crime. Wandering through the Lockerbie landscape is Madeline Livingston (Anjanette Hall), a New Jersey housewife who had spent every day of her life weeping since the bombing.

    Arriving in Lockerbie with her husband, Bill (Terence Cranendonk), for a memorial community mourning vigil, Madeline senses ghosts in the hills and immediately goes on an urgent search for the unrecovered remains of her 20 year-old son who had perished in the crash. Bill, knowing such a crazed hunt was futile, is powerless to assuage her misery. He questions Madeline’s sanity. He wonders if God even exists in this world. His own pent-up grief is all the more augmented when his wife says he doesn’t love their son at all.

    Bill connects with tender-hearted, feisty Lockerbie resident, Olive Allison (Anne McEvoy) and two of her friends (Woman 1, played by Charlene V. Smith, and Woman 2, played by Natalie Sander Kern). Each member of this lively ‘chorus’ suffered personal loss in the bombing. When Olive encounters Madeline’s whining self-pity, she breaks down, unleashing a furious, hateful tirade against America’s role in the bombing. The need for mutual healing was never more urgent.

   The women unite and embrace a mission of mercy to retrieve 11,000 pieces of clothing recovered from the crash so they can wash them in a stream - a symbolic action of purification meant to cleanse broken souls. The clothes had been sealed in bags (deemed “contaminated evidence” by the U.S. government), and stored in a warehouse guarded by a cold-hearted, disgruntled American bureaucrat, George Jones (Doug Sutherland). “Lockerbie is the Siberia of the State Department” is his blithe assessment. He refuses to release the clothing as it is scheduled to be burned up very soon. Eventually he will relent, proclaiming, “Hate won’t win in Lockerbie.”  Meanwhile, he accuses his Lockerbie employee, Hattie (Sabrina Maristela), of being a spy as she’s constantly at his office door busily sweeping up the dirt from his shoes. An amused Hatie denies the accusation, and then casually denies her denial in a welcome dose of sassy humor.

   In his program notes, director Craig Joseph wrote, “I’m grateful for the clear-minded, open-hearted, and full-bodied cast and design team who bravely explored these questions: What might a Greek drama look like in the 21st century?  How would it force us to work differently? What new skills would it invite us to develop?...”

    Open-hearted, full-bodied bravery. New skills indeed. The startling caliber of unflinching expressionism from all the performers in this heart-wrenching story of communal connection and healing is extraordinary. It’s an expressionism, certainly a poetry, at once terrifying and painful, sincere and credible. And ultimately inspiring.

    Sky falls. Earth bleeds. Alone we are broken. Together we heal. Catharsis is that simple, that complex. Come see. Listen (oh, those marvelous Scottish accents!). And be grateful.

  

 The Women of Lockerbie – photos by Aimee Lambes -  July 19, 20, 26, 27 at 7:30pm / July 21 and 26 at 2:30pm / at Founders Hall, Malone University, 425 25th Street NW Canton, OH / Tickets at

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-women-of-lockerbie-by-deborah-brevoort-tickets-685782894097?aff=oddtdtcreator&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR2j84eMZujTPU65O8dpAWt9OoBDG_R1hoIN8bVV2LHLnyJt8Si-Z2VZJYo_aem_BnxOlna74cJnN5o4_454og

Technique Domestique Unique

 

Technique Domestique Unique

Handkerchief

Chicago Tangelo

Somethin' Growing Here

It Was Miami

Regrowth (All Is Not Lost)

Bedroom Garden

Feral Mothers

By Tom Wachunas 

“In this exhibition you will see materials like my family’s discarded pizza lids, vintage handkerchiefs, furniture, IKEA curtains, yarn, and other household materials…I explore the relationship between domestic materials and abstraction. These paintings push the boundaries of what a painting can be, while using everyday objects with joy, playfulness, and all the messy, raw layers of domestic life…”  - excerpt from the artist statement by Katie Davis

EXHIBIT: Raw Material – work by Katie Davis, at Massillon Museum STUDIO M, through July 14, 2024 / 121 Lincoln Way East, downtown Massillon / Thursday, Friday, Saturday 9:30 am – 5:00 pm, Sunday 2:00-5:00 pm / 330.833.4061

https://www.katiekdavis.com/    https://www.instagram.com/kdavisstudio/

 

   A few days after seeing this exhibit, I chanced upon this curious statement posted on Facebook: ”Art is not meant to match your curtains. It’s meant to speak to your soul.” A snarky, snide, and silly dictate if ever there was one. And needlessly dismissive. As if curtains (or pizza boxes or couches or laundry piles) can’t possibly be art.

   In her statement for this exhibit, Katie Davis wrote further that those “messy, raw layers of domestic life” embraced / implied in her art were born in the context of challenging stay-at-home motherhood. Her paintings/collages became a satisfying way of processing the endless demands of domestic labor. “These moments of revelry were pure abstraction, arrangement,” she muses, “and something that verged on design and madness.”

  Madness? Only of a sort. Maybe better to think of it as compelling wildness. There’s no morose insanity here. No hopeless or brooding darkness. Katie Davis invests her delightful accoutrements of domesticity with exquisite tactility, all suffused with bright, vibrant colors.

   I felt an ineffable presence of childlike songfulness. Rhythms and rhymes, delicate and bold, filling the air of a household now transported to an art gallery. In her ambitious installation work called “Somethin’ Growing Here,” Davis invites viewers to relax on the loveseat. It’s not just a piece of ordinary furniture. It’s a painting in itself.

   So go ahead and sit. Look out at all those tunes lining the gallery walls. Sing along with the pulsing, illuminated soul of an artist mother.

Fired Up

 

Fired Up

By Tom Wachunas 

“…We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed...”  2 Corinthians 4: 8-9

   Yes. I’m fired up. About my most recent artwork. It’s a meditation, a prayer of celebration, renewal and gratitude.

    This piece, this peace, which I have named “Holy Ground,” was inspired by Exodus chapter 3, wherein God says to Moses (who was perplexed by how a bush could be on fire yet not burn up), “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”  

   The high-relief forms here were made with paint-stiffened, repurposed clothing adhered to the gold- colored ground of the canvas. I wanted the somewhat twisted perspective of the wrinkled white figure - its open heart indwelt by the fiery glow of divinity - to simultaneously suggest a posture of kneeling and an ecstatic leap. A synchrony of groundedness and joyous levitation. Surrender and victory.

   Moses asked what specific name he should give to God. The red calligraphy at the top of my work is the Hebrew transcription of God’s answer: “I AM WHO I AM,” or simply, “I AM.”

   He is indeed. And I’m glad of it. This is my Happy Force of July.

In the light of gratitude

 

In the light of gratitude

My Bio, by Patricia Zinsmeister Parker

Sleep It Off, by Joe Ostrowske

Connections of Belonging, by Mary Crane Nutter

Untitled, by Susan Wilkof

Crying in the Light/Illuminated Distress, by Jo Westfall

Embers, by Heather Bullach

Eclipse, by Emily Orsich

By Tom Wachunas 

“The substance of painting is light.” – Andre Derain

“In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light.” – Hans Hofmann

“To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist.”  - Robert Schumann 

EXHIBIT: Exploring Light and Darkness – group show featuring work by Emily Orsich, Heather Bullach, Jo Westfall, Joe Ostrowske,Mary Crane Nutter, Patricia Zinsmeister Parker, and Susan Wilkof / at Strauss Studios, 236 Walnut Ave. NE, downtown Canton, Ohio/ Viewing hours: Mon – Fri 10am – 5pm, Sat 12 – 5pm – Closing reception on Friday June 7, 6-9pm

https://straussfurniture.com/

https://www.facebook.com/jsfurnituredesign/

   Let me cut to the chase. As of this writing, the closing reception for this provocative exhibit is just a few hours away - FRIDAY JUNE 7, 6 – 9p.m. (though I’ve been informed that unsold works will remain on view through June 14).

   With this way-too-late (and short) blog post, beyond commending the remarkable works by all seven artists in this exhibit (most of whom I’ve written about in the past, and some quite extensively), I simply want to go on record as thanking and praising Strauss Studios for the ever-consistent excellence of the contemporary art presented in all its exhibits.

   This venue is an inspiring and impactful resource, indeed a treasure, as it continues to provide vital formal and conceptual depth to Canton’s cultural profile. What resonates most personally for me is its ongoing affirmation of what I like to call the ethos of life enrichment through art. It’s an active continuum of call and response. Art calls us all – makers and viewers alike - to be engaged with the light of being alive. If Strauss Studios isn’t currently on your list of local must-see art destinations, cut to the chase and make it so.

Reading the insides out, below the betweens

 

Reading the insides out, below the betweens 

Growth

On Reflection

Calm

Ecstacy

Confidence

Fired Up

Beneath the Surface

Hope

By Tom Wachunas 

“…the layers of a painting challenge us to explore its depth and seek to understand the mystery — urging the hidden things to come forward and reveal themselves. What's beneath the layers, in our paintings or in our lives? What would we find hidden there, if only we could remove all that obscures it? That mystery is one I enjoy exploring and expressing in my work.”  -Tom Delameter

“Energy and motion made visible – memories arrested in space…The thing that interests me is that today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a different source, they work from within.  ― Jackson Pollock

https://www.tomdelamater.com/

 

   EXHIBIT: Depth of Feel - Paintings by Tom Delameter, resident artist at Patina Arts Centre/ 324 CEVELAND AVENUE NW, downtown Canton, Ohio / THROUGH JUNE 8, 2024 / Current Gallery viewing hours:  Thursdays 12 – 8p.m., Saturdays 5 – 9p.m., also 5 – 9p.m. on the last Friday of every month, plus every Canton First Friday 5 – 9p.m.

Palimpsest (noun):  a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain; something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface / something such as a work of art that has many levels of meaning, types of style, etc. that build on each other.

   On in his website (hyperllnk posted above), Canton painter Tom Delameter tells us, “I would say I'm a self-taught artist, but that's not totally accurate. More like life-taught. Which is okay. My artistic expression began to come out later in life…”  In the process, he was attracted to Abstract Expressionism. I’m sure he was lured by what he calls “…its emphasis on spontaneous, personal expression over traditional techniques or subject matter.”

   Which is to say that on one level, the subject matter claimed and embraced by many abstract expressionist painters, such as the mid-20^th century trailblazer, Jackson Pollock - and many other adherents to his aesthetic - is the process of making the painting itself. It’s painting about… painting. That process ceased being a traditional exercise in imitation of natural reality, or illusionism, becoming instead a discrete performative action. Call it an improvised confluence of intent, intuition, and chance. The old tyranny of representational imagery was usurped in favor of articulating a uniquely more personal energy.

   I don’t mean to imply that Delameter’s brand of abstraction looks a lot like Jackson Pollock’s sublime messes of drips and poured splatters. Far from it. For starters, Delameter’s acrylic works in his current series, which he collectively calls Depth of Feel, are on a scale considerably smaller than Pollock’s commanding enormities. That said, there’s still a kinship between the two. You could consider them maybe second or third cousins in terms of how they distribute an “all-over” variety of gestures and marks that cover the painting surface. That distribution, however, appears comparatively more structured and rhythmic in Delameter’s paintings, imbuing many of them with a distinct sense of verticality.

   The scale of his works is such that they aren’t intimidating environments that overwhelm your physical field of vision so much as they invite quiet meditation and introspection. They’re not dizzy dance floors where paint has been flung at high velocity (à la Pollock). Rather, in all their accumulated layerings and gesticulations of the painter’s hand, Delameter’s intimate canvases strike me as ornamented symbolic writings of a kind. Palimpsest metaphors, if you will. These are flows of consciousness, states of mind or conditions of heart which over time emerged, were altered, and/or covered up, and/or redefined.

   They’re not just paintings about painting as a performative act. They’re also about you, the viewer, and your own performative action of looking with intent as well as intuition. So look closely, look long. Read between the lines. Feel the depth.

A Hearkening of Mythicals and Mysticals

 

A Hearkening of Mythicals and Mysticals

 

Divine Union, by Kimberly Blankenship

Devouring the Sun, by Crystal Robinson

Eclipse from the Other Side of the Moon, by Tom Delameter

Penumbra, by Tim Eakin

You're Only Made of Moonlight, by Bella Feliciano

Celestial Masquerade, by Carri Cleveland

Lacuna, by Alaska Thompson

By Tom Wachunas 

“The reappearance of the crescent moon after the new moon; the return of the Sun after a total eclipse, the rising of the Sun in the morning after its troublesome absence at night were noted by people around the world; these phenomena spoke to our ancestors of the possibility of surviving death. Up there in the skies was also a metaphor of immortality.”  - Carl Sagan

EXHIBIT: UMBRA – a collective perspective / at PATINA ARTS CENTRE, 324 Cleveland Avenue NW, Canton, Ohio / THROUGH APRIL 27, 2024 / Gallery Hours: Final viewing on Saturday April 27, 5pm – 9pm

Featured Artists include Kat Francis, Peyton Hopp, and David B. Martin, as well as work by Chris Cook, Erika Katherine, Sam Lilenfield, Zach Finn, Tom Delamater, Tim Eakin, Bella Feliciano, Maizy Jade, Rylee Lovelace, Melissa Goff, Dr. Demon, Carri Cleveland, Heidi Fawver, Monte Arreguin, Ben Sandy, Tessa LeBaron, Kimberly Blankenship, Justin Randall, Chrystal Robinson, Julianne Nipple, Alaska Thompson, Andy Tokarsky, Carri Cleveland, Kaley Weaver, Madi Miller

Umbra (noun) – 1 (a): a conical shadow excluding all light from a given source - specifically : the conical part of the shadow of a celestial body excluding all light from the primary source. (b): the central dark part of a sunspot.  / 2: a shaded area

                    _____________________________________

   Where did I leave off? My time and memory were temporarily…eclipsed… by events not of my making. Ahhh… yes, in my April 15 post here, about that other eclipse on April 8, with these closing thoughts: “…Art allows the events that befall us, whether common or rare, whether of our own making or not, to be ever-present, well beyond their time and place of origin.”

   Once again, art has been ‘allowing’ - this time at Patina Arts Centre. With sincere apologies for this literally last-minute commentary, the current show ends today, on Saturday, April 27.

   The total solar eclipse we witnessed on April 8 reminded me of how often I’ve embraced the megacosm as a grand, created allegory – the ultimate artwork - symbolizing an eternal theatre production, or a dance, unfolding across the stage of infinity. Think of our solar system as a small component of a cosmic dance/theatre troupe numbering countless performers. In this scenario, our earth and moon are in effect tiny dancers - a duet - constantly moving in and out of the spotlight we call our sun. But as April 8 so powerfully demonstrated, what a spectacular and mesmerizing pas de deux! Let me be so bold as to suggest that the playwright/choreographer of this celestial performance is a singularly supernatural being with limitless power.

   It's certainly not a new idea. Many ancient peoples theorized that the heavens were dwelling places of multiple spirits - deities and demons - and their offspring, the planets and stars, where the fates of us mere humans were written and carried out.

    This marvelous exhibit is a diverse, celebratory collection of illustrated insights, intuitions, and fantasies, all at once mythical and mystical.  Here the beatific and the beastly collide or coalesce, passing from light into darkness, or darkness to light. From the delightfully sparkling rhinestone rumination of Alaska Thompson’s Lacuna, to the electrifying fusion of laughter and tears in Carri Cleveland’s Celestial Masquerade; from the elegant balance and harmony of Kimberly Blankenship’s Divine Union, to the devilish strangeness of Bella Feliciano’s You’re only made of Moonlight; from the searing gaze of the turbulent sun flanked by icy blue Zodiac critters in Tim Eakins’ Penumbra, to the eerie gray quiet of Tom Delameter’s ghostly Eclipse from the Other Side of the Moon. And there are more, many more.

   The same Spirit who staged the aforementioned, most perfect mixed-media performance artwork ever conceived and unsurpassable in its sheer magnificence – namely The Universe – left a piece, a spark, of himself in every human being. In those we perceive as artists, we call that spark creativity, or inspiration. I sense that the exhibitors here weren’t just making art only about an outer space event so much as probing their own inner spaces. In the process, they effectively invited us viewers to do the same.