Salon de l'ordinaire

Salon de l'ordinaire

By Tom Wachunas

   EXHIBIT: 75^th ANNUAL MAY SHOW, at The Little Art Gallery / 185 North Main Street, North Canton, Ohio / THROUGH MAY 31, 2017

    Déjà vu all over again. Time to vent. Guess I’m just an aging grouch with the same axe to grind every time another juried art show comes around. When are we really going to grow up and retire the tradition of juried art shows with tiered money awards as we continue to practice it!!?? The notion became a vapid ritual long ago, and something of a silly throwback to the 18^th - 19^th century French Royal Academy of Art and its Paris Salon exhibitions, which basically set in motion the commodification and marketing (not to mention career-building) of “officially approved” art for the bourgeoisie. 

    At this juncture, I respectfully direct your attentions to the latest post by artist and blogger, Judi Krew ,

at SnarkyArt,   http://snarkyart.blogspot.com/2017/05/75th-annual-may-show.html  

   She makes many points and observations with which I agree wholeheartedly. However, after submitting my comment to Krew’s site, I’m further suggesting the elimination of a prize hierarchy altogether. Forget “Best in Show,” and no more first, second, or third prizes. For that matter, take “Honorable Mention” out of the mix too. It smacks of an afterthought, the equivalent of almost-but-not-quite-good-enough, as if to suggest that  everything else in the show is insignificant, forgettable, or not honorable. 

    Instead, let jurors be simply choosers of what will be included in the exhibit and leave it at that. Too extreme? OK then, if we still insist on bestowing a reward beyond the distinction of inclusion, perhaps give each juror the option to designate personal favorites by labeling them “Juror’s Choice” or something to that effect. No cash, though. Just a shiny ribbon should do, thank you very much.

   That said, I hereby award my shiny ribbons for the Little Art Gallery’s 75^th Annual May Show to John Bruce Alexander for his mixed media “Sign Wave Swan Song,” a mad history of… everything, compressed into a rippling collage of colliding found texts and pictures;  Diane Belfiglio for her acrylic construction, “Pushing the Boundaries,” an elegant, playful paroxysm of brightly colored pattern, rhythm, and symmetry; Tina Meyers for her mixed media “Forest,” a wild, painterly feast of textures and luscious color; and Anna Rather (the only printmaker in the show) for her captivating relief print, “Spot Fish.” Interestingly enough, none of these received an award of any sort from the show’s jurors.  

   The title of this post (Salon de l’ordinaire) is certainly not intended to impugn the entire exhibit as such, even though it is a bit overloaded with formulaic representational imagery and otherwise ordinary content. I mean it to point out that this year’s edition of a revered annual event is no more and no less than a typical episode of business-as-usual in the context of juried art shows. If nothing else, it’s yet another reminder that the time to establish a more sensible paradigm for such exhibits is long overdue.

   PHOTOS, from top: Pushing the Boundaries, by Diane Belfiglio; Forest, by Tina Meyers; Spot Fish, by Anna Rather; Sign Wave  Swan Song, by John Bruce Alexander (thanks to Judi Krew for the photo)

Mom Likes It!

Mom Likes It!

    Here’s a very short notice, but good and important news nevertheless. Thanks very much for your attention. 

   It’s baaack! Gallery 6000, where I’ve been curator since 2009, is once again operational after a (long) facelift hiatus. The room has a bright new look.

  There will be an artists reception (more details below) THIS TUESDAY, MAY 9, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. IF YOU CAN ATTEND THE RECEPTION, PLEASE RSVP to Aleksandar Grahovac, Event Planning Coordinator, – Email:  agrahov1@kent.edu  

   

   Located in the Conference Center Dining Room on the Kent State University at Stark campus (6000 Frank Avenue NW, North Canton), Gallery 6000 is pleased to announce “Mom Likes It!” This exhibit, on view through Friday, June 9, 2017, features an eclectic gathering of new works by seven Kent Stark Fine Arts students working in Painting III and Painting IV. These artists have been developing their aesthetic concepts and techniques under the steady guidance of Associate Professor of Painting, Jack McWhorter, who writes:

  “Building on the technical, formal, and conceptual abilities students have accumulated in previous classes, Painting III & IV aims to assist students in developing strategies required to begin making work independently. Students are expected to participate in an extremely ambitious and self-directed manner, working on projects outside of class more than they do during scheduled class times. Painting concepts are developed through the practice of consistently gathering source materials and recording personal observations.  This includes literal collection through sketchbooks, photographs, journals, and found objects in addition to less tangible resources such as dreams and memories.  Students are required to work longer on each project, allowing their ideas and interests to fully develop through the process of painting.”

   The participating artists are: Carol Blundell, Mitch Bonifay, Noah DiRuzza, Samuel Dorando, Joe Mayes, Kendall Roudebush, and Robert Shultz.

   PHOTOS, from top: Emulsion, by Noah DiRuzza; Asteroids, by Robert Shultz; Moths of Resurrection, by Mitch Bonifay

A Sublime Verdi Requiem from Canton Symphony

Canton Symphony Orchestra Offers Up a Sublime Verdi Requiem

By Tom Wachunas

   Composed in 1873-74, Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa Da Requiem (Requiem Mass) poses a wondrous irony. Verdi was openly disdainful of organized church worship. His wife, Giuseppina, once characterized him as, “…not an outright atheist, but a very doubtful believer.”  It might seem, then, counterintuitive that this acclaimed champion of worldly opera - who had not composed any conventional sacred music since his youth - would render a work of such profound religiosity. 

   But Verdi did worship the luminary Italian poet and novelist, Alessandro Manzoni, whose work was a galvanizing force in the movement for Italian unification and independence. Soon after Manzoni’s death on May 22, 1873, Verdi visited the grave and declared his intention to compose a requiem mass. The resulting creation, for all its structural adherence to Catholic liturgical rites and theological recitations, stands today as a masterpiece of deeply human expressivity. So, had Verdi given us a strictly religious work, or a new elaboration on the opera form? Critic and conductor Hans von Bülow was the first among many to accept this requiem’s dual nature, calling it, “…Verdi’s latest opera, though in ecclesiastical robes.”

    Articulating the right balance and clarity between orchestra, choirs, and soloists to navigate Verdi’s dizzying spectrum of spiritual, psychological, and aural dynamics is a particularly daunting endeavor. It is in fact a monumental challenge, and one beautifully met on April 29 by the Canton Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, along with Malone University Chorale and Faith United Methodist Church Schola Cantorum, all under the clearly impassioned baton of Maestro Gerhardt  Zimmermann. In full force was his sensitivity to instrumental timbres matched to human voices, delivering the uncanny sensation that brass and percussion can really talk, or that strings can actually sing. Choir and ensemble were consistently mesmerizing in their dialogue. 

   The operatic nature of the work is such that the choir can be regarded as witnesses to, or commentators on the soloists, who are in turn presented as  distinct characters on a journey to judgement day. All of the soloists –  Karen Foster (Soprano),  Kathryn Findlen (Mezzo-Soprano),  Tim Culver (Tenor), and Nathan Stark  (Bass) – were technically superb, and their singing was invested with heartrending, soaring urgency as well as palpable tenderness. There were only a few passages when the blending of the soprano and mezzo-soprano tonalities and harmonies seemed unsure or slightly out of sync. But such moments never diminished the visceral passion and reverence that both of those soloists poured into, and in turn drew out of the music.

   Punctuated by the bone-rattling cracks of bass drums, the recurring Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) interludes were a ferocious assault on psyche and soul. I’ve never heard the orchestra and chorus so piercing, so unashamedly loud. More than once I thought the walls of Umstattdt Performing Arts Hall were on the verge of collapse. Was this God speaking his judgement, or Verdi intoning his own inconsolable rage at human mortality? 

   In the end, soprano and chorus united in a quiet, bittersweet prayer, Libera Me (Deliver Me), a plea to be saved from eternal death. As the music faded into a suspended hush, the words of Immanuel Kant came to my mind: “Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt.” 

   Here, then, was the Canton Symphony Orchestra in all its exquisite sublimity.

   PHOTOS, from top: Verdi drawing by me; Karen Foster, soprano; Kathryn Findlen, mezzo-soprano; Tim Culver, tenor; Nathan Stark, bass

BIOTECTURES and ARCHISCAPES

BIOTECTURES and ARCHISCAPES

By Tom Wachunas

    EXHIBIT: Urban Biology – paintings by Betsy Cavalier-Casey and Lizzi Aronhalt  /  at Cyrus Custom Framing and Art Gallery, 2645 Cleveland Ave. NW, Canton, Ohio / THROUGH JUNE 2, 2017   http://cyruscustom.com/

  “Both science and art have to do with ordered complexity.”

— Lancelot Law Whyte

   “Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one’s sensations.”  - Paul Cezanne

   The last time I saw work by Betsy Cavalier-Casey was in 2013 at North Canton’s Little Art Gallery ( reviewed here at   http://artwach.blogspot.com/2013/09/celebrating-connectivity.html ). Her pieces in this current exhibit, curated by Erin Mulligan and with a few works from that 2013 show (including an updated version of her marvelous floating sculptural installation piece, “Out of Impulse”), are essentially a reiteration of her painterly explorations in the realm of interconnectivity within a given system of diverse components. More specifically, you could call any one of her paintings a kind of diagram, or an abstract anatomy of what might be  biological microsystems and processes.

   While I don’t have much more of great substance to add to what I wrote in my 2013 review, it’s worth re-noting the especially tactile nature of her painted surfaces. In some ways they source the legacy of Jackson Pollock’s “action paintings.” He manipulated all sorts of paints, in varying viscosities and thicknesses, in all sorts of unconventional ways (by 1940s and 1950s standards) – dripping and flinging, splattering and pouring, pooling and scraping. His pictures are compelling documents of choreographed gestures and motions that marry the material behavior of paint to the ephemeral effects of space, time, and gravity.

   That said, Cavalier-Casey’s paintings, despite their ostensibly abstract feel, are more intentionally managed entities. Hers are pictures of things drawn, albeit loosely, from the visible or accessible world, as opposed to Pollock’s substantially more dense and wholly non-objective content. Relatively speaking, Cavalier-Casey leaves lots of air in her pictures. And she often articulates passages wherein she outlines the contours of organic shapes with a sharpie. There’s a certain intimacy to making these thin lines in counterpoint to the less delicate action of, say, pouring a pool of color on to the surface and letting it dry as it will, producing a variety of textures such as wrinkles or cracks. Think of it as the difference between writing in long-hand script, and shouting out loud. Yet both of these mark-making methods function harmoniously enough in her paintings, generating an elegant symbiosis.

    Lizzi Aronhalt’s arresting cityscapes shout out loud too, with both a highly luminous palette (much like that of Cavalier-Casey) and the incorporation of strong linear elements, often drawn in black. While those elements can appear to be super-imposed outlines, they also act as skeletal underpinnings that reinforce the rhythms of all those bold architectural shapes. At times, Aronhalt’s thinner lines seem to float and meander in a scribbled manner, like microbursts of energy animating the objects and the air in her scenes. These pictures have a pulse. Listen. Hear their heartbeat? 

   Stylistic and iconographic differences aside, both of these artists, with remarkable panache, engage that elusive balance between spontaneity and planning, between lyrical intuition and conscious engineering. Whether micro or macro in scope, their works are intriguing testaments to an aesthetic truth embraced by such seminal modernists as Manet, Cezanne, Matisse, Pollock, and beyond: The painted surface is a life unto itself.

   PHOTOS, from top: Betsy Cavalier-Casey – Hyperactitivity; Pods; Super Frazzled / Lizzi Aronhalt – Pigeons Twice Removed; Mountains and Dishes; Ohrid