A Seeworthy Dream

A Seeworthy Dream

By Tom Wachunas

    Nary a dull moment goes by in the electrifying new musical revue, directed and choreographed by Michael Lawrence Akers, that concludes this season’s mainstage offerings at Canton’s Players Guild Theatre. Performed by a vivacious cast of 20 (adults and children) and a superb 14-piece live orchestra, “Wishes…Just a Dream Away” is a brisk, joyously family-friendly compilation of 22 songs, gleaned from various movies and live musicals, that impresses on every level. That would include the imaginative incorporation of mesmerizing video imagery directed by James Waters II, and delightfully spectacular costumes by Susie Smith and Kathryn Finn.

    The production was co-created by Players Guild Artistic Director Joshua Erichsen, who also designed the scenery, and Steve Parsons, who directed and arranged the music. Joining them in stage development for this ambitious project were director Akers, and Carrie Alexander Spina.

    This is not a spoken, structured narrative, but rather the sung dream- voyage of a lonely boy with a vivid imagination. In songs from “Suessical,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King,” and “Toy Story 2,” to name only some, he encounters a pirate captain and his crew, a mermaid, an admiral, a villain, and a princess. As the boy, 11 year-old Drake Spina is nothing short of endearing in his wide-eyed wonderment, convincingly bemused by, and amused at, the proceedings transpiring around him. His singing is, understandably enough, often colored with boyish urgency. He’s disarmingly tender, crisp and sincere, particularly in his duet with the princess, played by Courtney Vignos-Rininger, in “Somewhere Out There” from “An American Tail”.  Rininger, a sweetly commanding singer, is equally moving in her performance of “A Change In Me,” from “Beauty and the Beast.”

    Amanda Medley, as the mermaid, is utterly riveting as she brings magical, soaring emotionality to the powerful ballads “Part of Your World” from “The Little Mermaid” and “When He Loved Me” from “Toy Story 2.” Kathy Boyd, in her character of the Admiral, is sassy and sultry in a thoroughly jazzed, percussive version of “Consider Yourself” from “Oliver!” Late in the second act she has all the infectious vigor of a fired-up gospel singer as she belts out “Dig a Little Deeper” from “The Princess and the Frog.”

    A veteran of Carnation City Players in Alliance, Matthew Horning, the Pirate Captain, sings with marvelously subtle authority. His silken tonal control and sometimes understated stage manner serve quite effectively here to imbue all his songs with palpable warmth.

     Worth the price of admission is the hilarious and raucous show-stopper “Under the Sea” from “The Little Mermaid.” Horning, sporting red lobster headgear and sounding like he was born in Trinidad, leads the cast, all costumed in fantastical sea garb, as they cavort calypso style around a bedazzled Drake Spina. From high above the audience, sprays of sparkling bubbles descend and hover in the air to complete a jovial dance through the deep. Like so much of this show, it’s an enthralling immersion in aural and visual effervescence.

    “Wishes…Just A Dream Away” runs THROUGH JUNE 24 at the Players Guild Theatre, 1001 Market Avenue North in Canton. Shows are Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $23 for adults, $21 for age 60 and older, $18 for ages 17 and under, and can be ordered at (330) 453 – 7617 or at  www.playersguildtheatre.com

    Photo by James Dreussi: (with some cast members) Drake Spina (left center, red shirt) and Matthew Horning (Pirate Captain)

  

One Man's Treasure...

One Man’s Treasure…

by Tom Wachunas

    “Determining the difference between lowbrow art and highbrow art is very often a matter of appreciating the difference between what people want and what people need.” – June Godwit –

    Folk Art. Naïve Art. Outsider Art. Kitsch. At its best, “The Creative Spirit” exhibit at the Canton Museum of Art is, in all of its distinctly quirky content, highly entertaining, serving up a spicy hot stew of delectable collectibles. At worst, it’s a gooey gumbo of regrettable forgettables.

    Specifically, the show points up the wild range of tastes displayed in the sprawling personal collection of Mark Chepp, an artist ( a remarkable painter reviewed here in my post dated Sept. 12, 2010) and retired director of the Springfield Museum of Art. Beyond that, and in as much as the show is surely a celebration of flea market/ antique emporium/ yard sale finds, it also celebrates the uniquely, intrinsically human activity of responding to life by making all manner of pictures and objects. More than simply wanting to make things, we are genetically wired, indeed compelled to do so.

     So here is a vast accumulation of stuff, made by passionate artisans with varying degrees of skill, as well as less refined hobbyists, known and unknown. Something for and from everyone, it would seem. The show is marvelously eclectic evidence of a wanderlust for things whimsical and primitive, simple and mystical. Speaking of mystical, most of you faithful readers won’t be surprised to know that the pieces most resonant for me are those that are spiritual or religious in character. There are enough of them to warrant their own niche in one of the smaller side galleries. Along with a strong showing of Christian iconography, there are other fascinating and strange visions of a more totemic or ritualistic nature.   

     Back to the regrettable forgettables for a moment - all those sock monkeys, bottle cap figures, goofy face jugs (to be fair, some of those are genuinely exciting), and garish Elvis busts (making me wonder if they’re more posthumous punishment than praise)… OK, so the operative intent here is probably something close to “let’s just get off our high horse for a bit and celebrate ‘low’ culture,” which makes for some innocent fun and can even be quite enchanting as far as it goes. And where is that, exactly?  Many of these artifacts do remind me of the chintzy shelf-stuffers I recently saw at a local Cracker Barrel Restaurant gift shop.

    Museum goers predisposed to expect classically spectacular or conventionally elevated aesthetics will find this exhibition decidedly raw and down to earth if not somewhat undignified. Keep in mind that thanks to the radical shifts in 20^th century Western thinking about what constitutes a work of fine art, and who determines such things, we’ve come to accept (for better or worse) ideologies far less stringent and exclusive than those that ruled our minds and hearts for so many previous centuries. Our populist democracy of ideas when it comes to defining and embracing art has soared to new heights and sunk to ludicrous lows, all in the name of righteous inclusivity. And it’s probably fair to say that many of the objects here were made by folks who couldn’t care less about intelligentsia philosophizing anyway.

    So, junk or jewels? You decide.

    Photos: “The Good Samaritan” carved, painted wood by R. Smith / “Man” welded steel by Kurt Fisher/

“Monkey and Snakes in a Chair” painted wood and found objects by Edd Lambdin (next to anonymous sock monkey)   ON VIEW THROUGH July 22 at the Canton Museum of Art  www.cantonart.org   

The Magnificent Miles Avenue Menagerieum

The Magnificent Miles Avenue Menagerieum (and other collected thoughts)

By Tom Wachunas

     Two current exhibits – “The Odditorium” at the Massillon Museum, and “The Creative Spirit” at the Canton Museum of Art – have each inspired a mood to have some fun with the notion of collecting. While I do plan to post something on both museum shows sometime soon, I’m lately on a vacation from “serious” critique writing, instead spending some down time ruminating (roominating?) on all the stuff stuffed into my studio over the past ten years and otherwise on to the walls of my modest but cozy Canton home.

    For ‘stuff’ here, read ‘my art works.’ One of the hats I where is that of Curator of Collections at The Miles Avenue Menagerieum, located in the spectacular Northern reaches of Perry Township, which boasts the world’s largest collection of Tom Wachunas originals. I suspect there are more than a few artists in our midst who hold similar positions related to their own accumulated works, no doubt situated in somewhat fancier locales.

     I also suspect that more than being disappointed owners of the unsold (or unsellable) labors of our passions, we are simply caretakers, unwilling to part with the lovingly wrought evidence of those passions. When pressed, some of us might admit the gushy but poignant cliché that these things which occupy the floors, shelves, or walls of our domiciles are somehow our ‘children.’ Other than stealthily abandoning any of them (with urgent “please give my child a good home” letter attached) at the entrance of a legitimate art museum, trashing them outright would be tantamount to murder. Looking at some of my more sordid practices of the 1980s, I guess that makes me something of a serial killer.

    Aside from the aforementioned artworks of the past ten years, the only other seriously collected objects in my life were vinyl recordings. Five thousand-plus of them. That was at last count, which was toward the end of 1991, when I sold the entire collection to a decidedly thrilled but stingy record dealer in Greenwich Village. I was jobless, recently divorced, in debt, on the verge of being homeless, and desperate for cash. Rows upon rows of meticulously organized rock, jazz, classical, and international folk recordings, amassed over 20 years, stacked majestically upright across long and sturdy wooden shelves, were gone in an instant, sold by the foot for a pittance. For a considerably long time I was heartbroken by the void of silence that ensued in my life. The music had always spoken to me in one fashion or another.

    No such void exists for me today. What I call my studio, ridiculously tiny by many standards, is really a haven for hearing what these strangely evolved aesthetic contrivances have to say to me. They spoke to me when I made them, telling me exactly what they wanted to be, and they continue to speak even as they gather dust. Sometimes I imagine them conversing among themselves, rehearsing the critiques and admonishments they will impart next time I’m in their presence. If they’re children, then I’m eternally grateful I don’t have to feed them. In fact they nourish me. And they often speak of how I should go about engineering the next generation of their siblings.

     I think it joyously ironic that the once long shadow cast by the loss of my beloved audio collection has progressively faded into the light of my current visual collection. Cluttered and disorganized to be sure, it is a collection that nonetheless teaches me how to listen.

    Photos: From the studio wing of the Miles Avenue Menagerieum

      

A Malone Melange

A Malone Melange

By Tom Wachunas

    While there’s no specific theme to the eclectic group show currently showing at the McFadden Gallery in Malone University’s Johnson Center, there is a unifying element among the five featured artists. Three are Malone Fine Arts program alumni, and two are Malone Fine Arts undergraduates. In a short statement accompanying the show, curator Rick Huggett (whose work is included in the exhibit) wants viewers to have some fun guessing which artists are the grads and which are the undergrads.

     I’ll never tell. And for those not acquainted with the artists, it wouldn’t necessarily be obvious in the looking. Along with Huggett’s pieces – some seen before, some new -  there are works by Heather Bullach, Amanda Gaumer, Emily Mills, and Angela Welch. All of the participants, ‘students’ or not, offer substantially engaging visual and conceptual experiences.

    Hopefully some of you might recall past ARTWACH commentaries on the work of Rick Huggett, as well as Heather Bullach. If not, there’s always Google. And Amanda Gaumer has here provided just enough of a teaser with her strongly accomplished ceramic vessels to make me want to see more. Likewise, it’s the arresting works by Emily Mills and Angela Welch that cause me to regard these two painters somewhat like diamonds in the rough and on the verge of sparkling futures.

    In some ways, the landscapes by Emily Mills demonstrate a painterly understanding of color and form that gives them the look of Monet/Cezanne hybrids (though her gutsy “Garden” brings to mind Thomas Kinkade on steroids). In some of them, she brings an intriguing dimensionality and tactile magic by attaching shiny colored wires to the surface, tracing the contours of the land forms. But it’s her ambitious and large oil, “Remnants,” that is most remarkable. This work is a marvelous interior anatomy of a cavernous, abandoned factory or warehouse, replete with earthen tones subtly illuminated by the diffuse daylight pouring through the white windows deep in the background. The contrasting angles and textures of upright pillars, ceiling girders, and planked ceiling make for a stunning, intricate perspective on linear rhythms.

    Angela Welch is more abstract in her pictorial language. She’s clearly fond of natural, organic structures and energies, and paints them with a calligraphic fluidity that brings an emotional intensity to her “scenes.”  Her “Deep Roots Cultivate Morals” is an intriguing visual counterpoint to Mills’ “Remnants,” equal in scale and, for all of its relatively eccentric, even decorative content, every bit as compelling in its own right.

    Here’s hoping both these young painters make their way on to the larger local exhibition scene soon, and with increasing regularity. They’re ready.

    Photos: Top -  “Deep Roots Cultivate Morals” by Angela Welch / “Remnants” by Emily Mills

Exquisite Ambiguities

Exquisite Ambiguities

By Tom Wachunas

    Sometimes I get the impression that Malone University’s Fine Arts Department wants to keep its exhibitions a secret. Even the department’s web page isn’t current at the moment. Were it not for the tip I received a few weeks ago from Malone graduate Rick Huggett (whose recent work at Gallery 6000 was reviewed here on April 27), I would not have visited the McFadden Gallery (lower level of the Johnson Center) to see the gem of a show he put together there for the summer. That’ll be the subject of the post following this one. After viewing it, I also saw the nearby exhibit in the Fountain Gallery and was completely stunned by its material and conceptual freshness – a freshness I don’t often encounter in these parts.

    “Interior Landscapes” is the name of this show of eight black and white pencil drawings on unbleached/unstretched muslin by Heather Bryson. At this point I can only guess that they’ll be on view for the duration of the summer. The captivating sound of falling water in the space’s fountain is the perfect complement to these contemplative works. Deceivingly simple, sometimes sparse in content, their substance nonetheless appears to breathe, literally and otherwise, as the air movement in the exhibition space makes their sheer surfaces flutter ever so gently against the wall.

    In her statement posted with the show, Bryson calls her drawings non-traditional self- portraits that began by imagining the insides of her physical body, and evolved into somehow linking the imagery up with - or drawing out – emotional energy or associations. The resulting configurations delineate symbolic, organic landscapes of a kind, or perhaps amorphous, surreal figures. In any case, they’re more lyrically suggestive than formally illustrative of specific structures or feelings.  Their spatial ambiguities add to their dichotomous nature: morphing yet permanent, airy yet dense, seen yet unseen.

    And for all of their delicate, tentative appearance, these are solidly, refreshingly hypnotic essences.

    Photo: pencil drawings on muslin by Heather Bryson, on view at Fountain Gallery, located in The Johnson Center, Malone University, 2600 Cleveland Ave. NW