Of Tattooed Poodles and Atomic Love

Of Tattooed Poodles and Atomic Love

By Tom Wachunas

    EXHIBITION: Love Between the Atoms and New Drawings and Ceramics, works in clay by Eva Kwong and Kirk Mangus, Canton Museum of Art, 1001 Market Avenue North. SHOW ENDS ON SUNDAY, MARCH 10. www.cantonart.org

    This is the second in a series of shows featuring married couples who are professional clay artists (the first, Journey in Clay: The Colemans, presented last spring and reviewed at  http://artwach.blogspot.com/2012/06/marriage-made-in-earth.html ), and I apologize for this late review. But there are still four days left to see these remarkable ceramic works by Eva Kwong and Kirk Mangus.

    In her statement for this exhibit, Eva Kwong tells us of her fascination with forces of attraction between protons and electrons, and how those forces determine the workings of the universe, microscopically and macroscopically. Further, most of her works here are explorations of intertwined dualities – solids and voids, mass and air. In short, the attraction of opposites.

   There is certainly a kind of gravitas attached to the idea of energies that bind structures (spiritual as well as physical) together – the yin and yang of existence. But Kwong’s interpretations of dualities, whether cosmic or personal, aren’t overly ponderous or heavy-handed. Instead, they exude an elegant, light-hearted if not gently awkward gracefulness.

    Her vibrantly colored objects are juxtapositions of tapered, hollow tubular forms that suggest flared-out stems joined to bulbous spheroids which are decoratively patterned with dots. Seed pods, or clusters of atomic particles? While these biomorphic configurations could understandably be seen as whimsical vases waiting to receive long-stemmed blossoms, they also function quite well on a more poetic, abstract plane -  three-dimensional metaphors for the unifying tension between filled and unfilled entities.

   Kwong’s husband, Kirk Mangus, offers among other objects an intriguing collection of small seated ceramic poodles and pit bulls. He cites in his statement Argos, the astonishingly faithful dog immortalized in Homer’s The Odyssey. Argos waited for 20 years in Ithaca after the fall of Troy for the return of his hero master, Odysseus. Accordingly, Mangus named his clay sculptures after various characters from Homer’s epic.

    So on one level these pieces are a collective homage to canine character. But with all of them being rendered from the same mold, I don’t believe they’re meant to represent all poodles or pit bulls, but rather specific encounters with individual dogs. Episodic sculptures of a deeply personal nature.

   All of Mangus’s multi-colored dogs are glazed in a painterly, frenetic sort of graffiti (the artist likens his illustrative approach to tattooing), much like his ink and gouache drawings on handmade paper. These meandering figurations have a primal energy about them, like the automatic writing of the Surrealists. Are they intended to be viewed as free-associative, flow- of- consciousness gestures about the artist’s life with beloved pets?

    Perhaps it’s just as reasonable to see dogs as vessels of their own memories and/or longings, and to view these pieces as indicating the dogs’ “personal” perspectives on living with their masters: playful, curious, equal parts reliability and unpredictability. And always completely in the moment.

    PHOTOS, from top: Pisea (left side) and Snowflake Vase by Eva Kwong; Argos (upper left) and Proteus by Kirk Mangus; Agamemnon by Kirk Mangus

Whole Lotta Shakin'

Whole Lotta Shakin’

By Tom Wachunas

    Say what you will about ‘the King,’ but for those of us caught in the thrall of the mid-1960s British Invasion, Elvis Presley’s brand of rock-n-roll seemed like a silly anachronism. Come to think of it, though, I am duly grateful to have survived that drug-besotted flower-child era with my brain still somewhat intact (though some might argue to the contrary).

    Seeing the current Canton Players Guild production of All Shook Up (a “jukebox musical” inspired by the songs of Elvis Presley that premiered on Broadway in 2005), directed here by Frank J. Lucas, reminded me that the hip-swiveling crooner’s songs weren’t nearly as ‘silly’ as the conservative backlash they ignited if only for a short while during the Eisenhower years. I really did once know a few folks who labeled what Elvis did (along with many other like-minded entertainers) as “the Devil’s music.”

    Enter one Matilda Hyde, the very uptight, self-righteous mayor of a small midwestern town where this story unfolds in 1955. In that role, Teresa Houston brings a deliciously rabid energy and operatic panache to her relentless enforcement of public decency laws. One of the evening’s several show-stopping numbers is Devil in Disguise, wherein the mayor rallies a troupe of teetering senior citizen ladies on wheeled walkers through a hilarious dance

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   Matilda’s fury has been fueled by the arrival of the lascivious Chad, recently released from jail in the explosive opening number, Jailhouse Rock. He’s a guitar-toting roustabout biker whose every pelvic quiver or throaty utterance makes the womenfolk swoon and otherwise turns the sleepy town on its ear. Jayson Kolbicz’s captivating portrayal of the troublemaking troubadour is remarkably well crafted without being a rubber-stamp impersonation of Elvis. Yes, he can occasionally curl his lip or raise an eyebrow just so, but he’s nonetheless his own man and, quite frankly, a considerably more facile singer and engaging actor than Elvis.

     The plot borrows loosely from Shakespeare’s romantic comedy, Twelfth Night, and its farcical element of mistaken identities amid wooing intrigues. In this case, Natalie, a lonely tomboy-ish mechanic hopelessly smitten by Chad’s charms and desperate to be closer to him, disguises herself as a fellow male roustabout with startling results. As Natalie, Sarah Karam is an endearing mix of dreamy longing, vulnerability and spunky determination. Her singing is infused with a poignant warmth often punctuated with piercing sweetness.

    For that matter, all the core cast members are uniquely adept entertainers who bring a well-defined individuality to their roles both as characters and singers. Kudos to: Eva Ashawnti Roberson as Sylvia, the plain-talking, no-nonsense owner of the local honky-tonk; Ruby Marie Myers as Lorraine, Sylvia’s infectiously energetic teenage daughter involved in “forbidden love” with Dean, the mayor’s military academy son, played by Stephen Robert Carder; Connor Logan Reese as Dennis, Natalie’s lovably nerdy would-be suitor; Brittany Dolinar as Miss Sandra, the sultry, sensuous overseer of the local art museum; Scott Warner as the dutiful, silent Sheriff Earl (who boldly divulges a surprising secret in the end);  and Doug Downie, gentle and delightfully awkward in his efforts to be “cool,” as the widowed father of Natalie. 

  

    Whatever snarly edginess and/or uncomplicated musicality these Elvis songs might have had in their original incarnations is largely overshadowed here by the elaborate (at times Glee-full, so to speak) and impeccable ensemble harmonies you’d expect from a big giltzy Broadway production. But unless you’re an Elvis purist at heart, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. This show injects the material with fresh, soaring choral electricity, further generated by the thoroughly sizzling six-piece band under the direction of keyboardist Steve Parsons. Add to that the vitality of Michael Lawrence Akers’ clever, exhilarating choreography, and all the ingredients for a raucous song fest are solidly in place

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   That said, both the story line and the vocal arrangements do often drift into purely corny territory. Still, to the die-hard rockers among you I say hey, you, get offa my cloud. Viva la schmaltz.

    

    All Shook Up, Canton Players Guild Mainstage , 1001 Market Avenue N., Canton. Shows THROUGH MARCH 17, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00p.m., Sundays at 2:00p.m. Single tickets $25; 17 and younger $19; Seniors $23. Box Office (330) 453-7617  www.playersguildtheatre.com

PHOTOS by James Dreussi

Curious Cartography

Curious Cartography

By Tom Wachunas

    “Maps codify the miracle of existence.” – Nicholas Crane, from Mercator: The Man Who Mapped The Planet” - 

    EXHIBITION: Terra Imaginara: Mapping the Fantastic, recent work by Scott Alan Evans, Studio M at The Massillon Museum, 121 Lincoln Way East, downtown Massillon, THROUGH MARCH 10  (330) 833 – 4061  www.massillonmuseum.org

    Déjà vu all over again. For a moment, this solo exhibit by Mogadore artist Scott Alan Evans took me back to my 1968 high school days and a live book report I presented to my English Literature class. At the time, none of my classmates had heard of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. The 1937 novel was the subject of my report, and a book that ignited my life-long love affair with fantasy literature. 

    I presented my report dressed in a borrowed royal blue graduation gown along with a wizard’s hat fashioned from gold-colored poster board rolled into a cone and inscribed with runes copied from one of Tolkien’s illustrations. The piece de resistance of my report included using what was normally the classroom’s roll-down map of the world, but in this case revealing my very large watercolor copy of Tolkien’s map of Middle Earth, secretly attached before class time. My special effects netted me an ‘A’ and, come to think of it, I view the whole experience as my first foray into performance art. But I digress.

   One of Evans’ digital works here is a faithful replication of a map from The Hobbit, with some spiffy silver leaf enhancements, and accompanied by the artist’s written homage to Tolkien’s inspiring influence on this body of work.

    In media and content – visual and ideological - this is indeed an eclectic collection of 16 pieces that “map” places somewhere between the faintly familiar and the purely strange. Some are so simplistic and raw that you’d think this was an exhibit of children’s projects. Others are decidedly more refined – even playfully slick – such as the digital works Moon and Cloud Atlas. They have the “official” patina of legitimate, scientific documents of extraterrestrial territories and phenomena.

    On the surface, while most of the compositions here denote physical locales, I think a strong case can be made for viewing the show as a collective cartography of processed ideas. These are works perhaps more conceptual in nature than purely image-driven. And from the perspective of technically accomplished pictures per se, the show is an uneven mix of hits and misses.

    I agree with the assessment offered by my colleague in critique, Judi Krew (whose observations I’ve greatly missed lately), in her blog entry from February 1 at www.snarkyart.blogspot.com   Evans’ most visually compelling works include the mixed media The Great Bear – a marvelously tactile work that harkens to prehistoric rituals of defining the observed cosmos – and the acrylic painting The Painted Isle.

 

   The latter is composed of organically-shaped splotches of heavily accumulated paint adhered to an all-white ground, itself thick with brush strokes. Still, it’s a visual idea that I think begged for more subtlety and development, as in letting the image become a kind of map of painterly process. If it can be said that ideas can actually tell an artist how they “want” to be presented, maybe the collaged islands in this painting, rather than simply sitting on top of, want to appear as emerging from and/or disappearing into the white ground.

 

    That said, Judi Krew’s take on the piece is nonetheless appropriately poetic when she writes, “…these layers of paint are like civilizations that have occupied the same lands over centuries and left their marks, their monuments and their memories and upon which we keep building, living, and dying.” 

    Déjà vu all over again. Thanks, Judi. Write on.

    PHOTOS (from top): Archipelago, The Painted Isle, The Great Bear    

A Ravishing Anniversary Concert from the Canton Symphony

A Ravishing Anniversary Performance from the Canton Symphony

By Tom Wachunas

     On February 16, 1938, the newly formed Canton Symphony Orchestra (CSO), conducted by Richard W. Oppenheim, gave its first-ever concert at the Canton City Auditorium before a sold-out crowd of 3,300 listeners.  Seventy-five years to the day after that rousing debut, the CSO re-created the same program in Umstattd Hall with a clearly impassioned Maestro Gerhardt Zimmermann at the podium, conducting an equally inspired orchestra.

    The program consisted of Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, Haydn’s “Surprise” Symphony No. 94, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, and Tchaikovsky’s Marche Slave. So while this was a concert of very familiar works which have endured as international audience favorites, there was nothing “old hat” or phlegmatic about Zimmermann’s reading of the material. As always, he effectively ignited this orchestra’s riveting unity of purpose and youthful capacity for investing the familiar with startlingly fresh aural fire. What was old became new again, wholly meriting repeated jubilant ovations from an enthralled audience.

    Much of the CSO’s signature charisma is rooted in the astonishing string section, which on this occasion was as warmly sonorous, technically impeccable and powerfully emotive as I’ve ever heard, beginning with the Beethoven. It is no small feat to make the dramatic tensions and spirit of triumphal heroism of Egmont a palpable, heartfelt reality. And that is precisely what the orchestra achieved here with an edge-of-your-seat intensity.

    Though certainly less stormy in nature (and indeed lightweight by comparison), Haydn's Symphony No. 94 is nonetheless sweetly engaging in its overall lyricism and vigorous effervescence – qualities which the orchestra rendered with jaunty confidence. As for the so-called surprises in the work, I think that (excepting for those listeners who may have never before encountered the piece) the sudden fortissimo chord with accompanying drum whack in the lilting second movement, and the unexpectedly loud timpani roll in the spritely final movement, retain their appeal in much the same way a classic joke does. You know the punch line and when it’s coming, yet it still brings a smile every time.

    For the second half of the evening, everything that makes this musical body a true cultural treasure was in glorious form. From the precisely balanced aural dynamics of all sections working together and depth of color and texture, to the many flawless passages from soloists, the entire orchestra brought breathtaking thrust to the complex musicality of the exotic Scheherazade and the relentless, thundering panache of Marche Slave.

    Throughout Scheherazade, Concertmaster Lauren Roth poured an unforgettable and otherwise larger-than-life dimensionality into her soaring violin cadenzas. The intense sensuality of her bowing brought to mind a sorceress wielding her magic wand to entrance us with intriguing tales of love and adventure. Her playing often exuded a mournful urgency, at times beautifully echoed in the solo passages from principal cellist Erica Snowden. Roth’s inspiring virtuosity is a vital asset to this orchestra, already rich with unassailable artistry. 

    According to a recent article in The Repository, Canton’s daily newspaper, at one point during the original 1938 concert, the vice-chairman of the Canton Symphony Association said to the audience, “We have sown musical seeds in Canton. Now it is up to us to keep the soil fertile and cultivated.” Seventy-five years later, it is eminently clear that Canton has reaped a sumptuous, bountiful harvest.  

    www.cantonsymphony.org