COSMECLIPSETUDES

 

 Cosmeclipsetudes

Ladders to the Sky, by Emily Vigil

Starlight, by Iszy Ucker

Rare December Moon, by Clare Murray Adams

Just a Phase, by Tom Delameter

Eclipse, by Orenda Meraky

My Big Night Sky, By BZTAT

Celestial Totality, By Bztat

We are Stardust, by Sally Lytle

By Tom Wachunas

“…Art moves us to experience nature and scientific phenomena with emotional depth in a way that reaches beyond its scientific narrative. Through art, we are moved to engage with nature and scientific phenomena on a level that transcends mere facts, reaching into the realms of heartfelt connections and emotional resonance…” – from the artist/curator statement by Vicki Boatright (AKA the artist BZTAT)

EXHIBIT: CELESTIAL- Exploring Cosmic Curiosities in Art / at Canton Creator  Space/ BZTAT Studios Gallery, 730 Market Avenue S., Canton, Ohio / THROUGH MAY 24, 2024 / Hours: Mon.-Fri. 11:00a.m.-5:00pm., Saturday 12:00-5:00p.m.

Participating artists: Clare Murray Adams, BZTAT, Brenda Case, Tom Delameter, Laura Hollis, Sally Priscilla Lytle, Iszy Rucker, Keeli Serri, Sarah Shumaker, Scott Simler, Emily Vigil, Tom Wachunas, Chris Wurst.

   You may recall my post here from March 30, regarding my newest artwork.  I made it specifically for inclusion in this engaging group show which was in turn originally motivated by a truly cosmic drama – the total solar eclipse that riveted our regional attentions on April 8. In case you missed reading my thoughts, feel free to click on this link:

https://artwach.blogspot.com/2024/03/in-path-of-totality.html

   Meanwhile, here’s an invitation to re-direct your attentions to the other artworks on view at Canton Creator Space. Forging their own paths of totality, so to speak, the participating artists have delivered a delightful and  impressively eclectic range of appreciations for things celestial.

   One of BZTAT’s paintings, called My Big Night Sky, looks something like a birthday cake, decorated with icing in rainbow colors and textures of candied curls and clusters, floating like so many stars amidst a scripted message: My Night Sky You are So Big and I am so small. I look up at you. All seems Quiet and Still. I paint you as though you are Noisy. Are You Real? Am I? A child’s sweet meditation? Yumm. Tasting the universe with awe and wonder.  

   A black(s)- and- white acrylic painting by Tom Delameter, called Just a Phase,” is imbued with all the stark, documentary matter-of-factness of a satellite photo. Yet in all of its dark simplicity, the picture is nevertheless dramatic, powerful in its compositional elegance, and alluring in its capture of a stunning, splintered arc of blazing light.  

   What I find especially compelling (and beautiful, in its strange way) about Clare Murray Adams’ mixed media painting and collage, Rare December Moon, is its enigmatic nature. I’m moonstruck by its mystery. Here’s an all-at-onceness of things in the process of becoming both revealed and hidden, present and covered over, of materials seemingly sewn together, then disintegrating. Maybe this isn’t so much an illustration or picture as such, but more a codified visual poem about answers as well as unanswerable questions.

   The ambitious, hovering sculpture by Iszy Ucker, called Starlight, is a monstrous blossom that hangs down from the ceiling. A glittery flying conTRAPtion. Ucker tells us in her statement that she was inspired by carnivorous plants such as Venus Fly Traps and their ability to lure prey. She compares the position of viewers standing under it and looking upward to that of stargazers. ”Once in position,” she writes, “they will be in the mouth of the beast and will soon be consumed.”  Consumed, we can certainly hope, by our insatiable curiosity.

   Sally Lytle’s arresting abstraction, We are Stardust, is, like the solar eclipse itself, a dramatic, ephemeral moment loaded with magical lyricism. Here’s a human form and face, fused with, but then emerging from, a celestial occurrence of light obscured by darkness and shadow. I read Lytle’s  painting as a symbolic declaration of hope for ”the human condition.” Our light can be temporarily dimmed, but never wholly extinguished by circumstance. The light. Always the light.

   Considering the overall theme of this exhibit, Emily Vigil’s painting, Ladders to the Sky, is surprisingly small – about 4” x 2” I’m guessing. Call it microcosmic. So grid and bear it – this palm-sized snapshot, this tiny totem.  In the grand panoply of astral phenomena across the known universe, what we saw in the sky here on April 8 was, comparatively speaking, a miniscule, albeit mesmerizing, episode.

   In its distinctive smallness, Vigil’s piece remains after all a large reminder, as is this show in general. We make art for its wondrous potential to let us remember and savor everything about our very aliveness. What we see, what we feel, what we touch, and what touches us. 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.