Salon des Mentionables

Salon des Mentionables

By Tom Wachunas

…You like potato and I like potahto / You like tomato and I like tomahto/

Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto /Let's call the whole thing off…

- lyrics to “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” by George and Ira Gershwin

   EXHIBIT: 76^th Annual May Show / THROUGH JUNE 2, 2018, at The Little Art Gallery, 185 North Main Street, in the North Canton Public Library, North Canton, Ohio

(I do have a new piece in this show – something I’ll be writing about in my next post. Maybe.)

   Pity the jurors. Shouldn’t it be sufficient enough that we ask them to choose artworks they deem deserving of public attention? That challenge alone can be terrifically daunting. Why, then, do we further straddle them with the unreasonable task of deciding on a hierarchy of awards? 

   Consider this exhibit of 50 works, exquisitely arranged by Elizabeth Blakemore, comprising a veritable wonderland of media, techniques, and subjects. In what universe are there standards of artistic excellence so static and unswerving, so objective and unassailable, that a single work could be credibly declared Best In Show, while several others are acknowledged (Second Place, Third Place, Honorable Mention) as close-but-not-quite-so-superior? In the context of treating art exhibits as contests or competitions, we still hold fast to our silly, outdated traditions. 

   That said, this year’s winner has achieved something truly remarkable for one so young. Alexis Greer Armentrout, a senior at Lake High School, garnered Best In Show prize for her pencil drawing, Curtains. The portrait is a technical marvel (looking, from just a few feet away, like a black-and-white photograph), unquestionably stunning in its quiet sensuality of surface, its dramatic play of light and shadow. Thinking about that tired truism, “The eyes are the window of the soul,” one of the most surprising aspects of this portrait is that while we see no eyes, it embodies nonetheless an uncanny soulfulness.

   Elsewhere in the gallery is an equally compelling self-portrait. We can see the eyes in Heather Bullach’s watercolor, Pink. And in the eminently skillful manipulation of her medium, she too delivers an alluring, soulful, indeed beautiful essence.

   Here’s a juror comment on yet another self- portrait, Artist at 57, an oil painting by Michael Nutter: “Best portrait in the exhibit; it has the most personality.” Debatable, yes? Maybe you prefer edgier personalities. In that case, there’s the wild eccentricity of Tina Meyers’ acrylic painting, Femininity. Meanwhile, here’s another juror comment regarding Nutter’s oil landscape, Tate Hill, certainly a very fine display of expressive luminosity: “Best landscape in the exhibit. The color takes it out of the ordinary.”  Debatable still, particularly when compared with Heather Bullach’s sumptuous and spectacular Embers.  Her landscape was awarded Third Place, while both Nutter paintings were given an Honorable Mention. Hmmm. Both of his were deemed ‘best’ something. But evidently not THE Best. What are we to make of such genre mincing, such apparently conflicting arbitrations? Potato potahto? 

   Among the abstract entries, the geometric precision of David Kuntzman’s glowing grids in his acrylic painting, Newton (Second Place), is a dazzling tour de force of spatial illusionism. No less arresting are the elegant rhythms of shapes and colors floating on and in Earl Iselin’s much more painterly oil and paper on canvas, Deflections in a Morrill Field.

   And speaking of elegant rhythms of shapes and colors, there’s a spirit of unfettered, even musical euphoria about Karen Bogdan’s fabric work, The Audience. Yes, it’s unabashedly ornamental and decorative. But it’s also seriously engaging – this arena of small heads seemingly singing in a big way, lined up and bobbing amidst undulating waves of… applause. 

   On a less gleeful note, there’s William Bogdan’s (Karen’s husband) woodcut print, Portrait of Pharfossa Ami. It’s not really a personality per se that radiates from this portrait so much as a stark personal-ness. Bill Bogdan has always been a storyteller with his prints, this one being of a man and his dog. It’s an airy impression, a ghostly imprint levitating in a vast white field, a remembrance infused with a sense of mourning. The man is ungrounded, seated on air, one foot shoeless, his eyes shrouded in shadow, his massive dog seeming to fade from his grasp and sight. The ink has the look of rubbed charcoal. Ashes to ashes. Powerful stuff.

   In all the visual wealth that abounds in a juried exhibit such as this one, there are simply too many mitigating factors to consider in judging the nuances of absolute good, better, or best. Such an enterprise feels somehow irreverent, not to mention meaningless. Tomato tomahto? It’s a matter of personal-ness. Let’s just call the whole… Well, you get the picture.

   PHOTOS, from top: 1. Curtains, by Alexis Greer Armentrout / 2. Pink, by Heather Bullach / 3. Tate Hill, by Michael Nutter / 4.  Newton, by David Kuntzman / 5. Deflections in a Morrill Field, by Earl Iselin /  6. The Audience, by Karen Bogdan / 7. Portrait of Pharfossa Ami, by William Bogdan