Insiteful Immersions, Fusions, and Extractions
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| GLIDE |
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| SHIMMER |
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| ORDONNANCE |
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| Floating |
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| Presence of Water (detail) |
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| Presence of Water |
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| Falling Upwards |
By Tom Wachunas
APEIRON (ἄπειρον): a Greek word meaning (that which is) unlimited;
boundless; infinite; indefinite
“…I am unearthing the topographies created
from our extraction of natural resources and exploring their paradox. For they
are at once wondrous feats of human engineering, yet also emblematic of our
consumption and hubris…There is a terrible beauty in the resulting artworks
that balance the delicate and the brutal…” - John Sabraw
EXHIBIT: APEIRON – The Eco-Art of John Sabraw /
at Canton Museum Of
Art/ 1001 Market Ave. N., Canton, Ohio/ THROUGH JULY 27, 2025 / Open Tuesdays - Thursdays from 10 a.m. – 8
p.m., Fridays and Saturdays 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., Sundays 1-5 p.m.
https://www.cantonart.org/exhibits/apeiron-eco-art-john-sabraw-april-29-2025-july-27-2025
The sprawling collection of John Sabraw's eco-conscious
(and eco-conscience) works currently on view at the Canton Museum of Art
(CMA) is magnificent on every level. From their conceptual and spiritual
probity to the arresting epic scale of their riveting visual dynamics, they
constitute the most compelling exhibit
I’ve seen at this museum in many years.
John Sabraw
is a Professor of Art at Ohio University where he is Chair of the Painting + Drawing
program/ Digital Art + Technology Chair/
and a passionate environmental activist.
This impactful collaboration with CMA Curator of Exhibitions, Christy Davis, has given us a thoroughly provocative conflation of what Sabraw calls “the
delicate and the brutal.”
He tells us, “I am an artist who
collaborates with scientists and environmentalists to find solutions to issues
of sustainability – fusing art and science. The main focus of my research currently
is working with a team of engineers and watershed experts to remediate streams
polluted by acid mine drainage from abandoned coal mines.”
In a flowing mindfulness of underminings, if
you will, his paintings are remarkably immersive experiences that exude a
protean rawness. Along with generous applications of
actual Appalachian coal in finely pulverized form, they also incorporate transformed
sludge, i.e., iron oxide pigments developed from laboriously extracted toxic
acid mine drainage that had polluted many miles of streams in southeastern
Ohio, leaving once thriving waters devoid of life. While the paintings are
certainly jarring enough translations of fractured earth and broken habitats, I
find them haunting in another way.
Here is an invitation to see artist as
supplicant, making art as an earnest action of entreaty. A prayer? In this
context, Sabraw’s paintings are a dramatic calling out for rescue from
ruination.
I intend to very soon post Part 2 of my
commentary on Sabraw’s exhibit, specifically a closer examination of his
immense sculptural spectacle called Glide. Meanwhile, fond as I am of
wandering in wordplay, I can tell you that John Sabraw’s art has transported me
to somewhere beyond merely fascinated or mesmerized. So what comes after
awestruck and gobsmacked? Here in ἄπειρον, I’m… megamazed.
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