In the Path of Totality

 

In the Path of Totality

By Tom Wachunas 

   I made my most recent mixed media assemblage, In the Path of Totality, in response to an invitation from Vicki Boatright (aka the Artist BZTAT) to participate in the group exhibit she has organized at her new gallery space, BZTAT Studios in Canton Creator Space. The show is called CELESTIAL: EXPLORING COSMIC CURIOSITIES, and intended as a celebration of the much- heralded solar eclipse happening on April 8. The exhibit opens tonight, March 30, from 5:30 to 8:30.

EXHIBIT: March 30 - May 24, 2024, at Canton Creator Space, 730 Market Ave. South / Canton, Ohio /

Hours: Mon.-Fri. 11:00a.m.-5:00pm., Saturday 12:00-5:00p.m.

   I look now at the cosmos, the universe -   at least what very little of it I can actually see with my unaided eyes - as a created reality. Not a mind-boggling or science-baffling accident, not an inexplicable random event. But evidence, a glorious manifestation, of a wholly limitless, eternal power with a divine purpose and intent. A spiritual experience in itself. Call it a personal, gradual seeing of true light in its totality.

   So I painted on the slats of an ordinary functioning window blind to make simple images of both a darkened and a blazing sun, signifying a journey from light eclipsed into light fully realized. It’s a symbol of the cosmos, and meant as an iteration of conscious spirit, as well as a meditation on blindness and seeing.

   My piece is an interactive metaphor. I invite you as a viewer to gently twist the wand hanging on the left side of the blind to expose both states of the sun. As you do so, you’ll notice words written in red progressively coming into view on the board behind the slats. You might need to change your stance a bit, or adjust the angle of your gaze, or the tilt of your head as you read the words appearing between the slats. You could consider such adjustments a symbol in its own right too. What changes do any of us need to make in our efforts to clearly see a truth?

   Those red-written words - four verses, all taken from Scripture – are meant as a suggestion, if not an invitation: For the sun, read The Son.

There he was transformed before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as the light. -Matthew 17:2

In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. -John 1:4-5 

But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings…  - Malachi 4:2

For the Lord God is a sun and shield… -Psalm 4:11

Attitudes and Latitudes - An Alluring Equipoise

 

 Attitudes and Latitudes - An Alluring Equipoise

A Union - by Romy and Marcy

By Marcy Axelband

Marcy Axelband

Marcy Axelband

Color Response, By Romy Anderson

Class, by Romy Anderson

70 - by Romy Anderson

By Tom Wachunas 

It's those changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes /Nothing remains quite the same / With all of our running and all of our cunning / If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane.  – Jimmy Buffet

Ooh, spare your heart. Everything put together sooner or later falls apart.  -Paul Simon

EXHIBIT: All The Colors in the Crayon Box – works by Romy Anderson and Marcy Axelband / THROUGH APRIL 5, 2024 / at Cyrus Custom Framing and Art Gallery, 2645 Cleveland Ave. NW, Canton, Ohio / Viewing hours: Monday - Friday 10am – 6pm / Saturday 11am - 3pm /Closed first Saturday of the month and on Sundays / (330) 452-9787

From WIKIPEDIA: “In the manufacture of cloth, warp and weft are the two basic components in weaving to transform thread and yarn into textile fabrics. The vertical warp yarns are held stationary in tension on a loom (frame) while the horizontal weft… is drawn through (inserted over and under) the warp thread…” 

   Romy Anderson’s tantalizing woven wall pieces explore juxtapositions of very colorful grid configurations in varying scales, wherein warp and weft form intricate patterns and micro- textures. In her statement for the show, Anderson tells us that these works reflect her love for organization, mathematics, and creativity. She describes her methodology as “… working with double weave and introducing hand woven techniques such as supplementary weft in combination with a loom-controlled structure. The use of hand-woven techniques allows me to play with color interaction and disruptions in the pattern. When creating disruptions in the pattern I can keep the viewer intrigued in my work through the order and disorder of pattern.”

   I was intrigued indeed by the confluence of apparent opposites. What Anderson calls “disruptions in the pattern” are subtle fusions of formulaic structures with unpredictable interruptions, or stasis counterbalanced with undulating movement. Formal visual harmony and symmetry are conditions most impactful when woven into a context of unexpected mutation. So here’s art as a metaphor, perhaps. Consider it an intricately constructed symbology of tactile lyrics, so to speak, about the warp and weft of …change. You might well think of them as evoking the shifting rhythms and rhymes, regular and interrupted, comprising the ethos of human life itself, sung with a truly tantalizing polychromatic effervescence.

   Complementing Anderson’s distinctive grid geometries are the riveting figural abstractions by Marcy Axelband. They too are invested with a compelling lyricism, as well as an attention to repeated, colorful rhythmic patterns of connected and free-floating shapes, sometimes suggestive of grid motifs. But it’s always human faces that are front and center here. In Axelband’s statement, we read, “Having always been enamored by faces, my work characterizes what they say, what they do not, how they portray their stories of joy and difficulty, peace and sadness, delight and thought. They are playful and serious. They fill me with wonder for the creative process…”

    I first encountered large paintings by Marcy Axelband more than 15 years ago and always admired the facile expressionism of her style. For this series of smaller-scaled pieces on raggedy-edged handmade paper, she chose to use markers, colored pencil, watercolor pencil, graphite, and pen, noting in her statement that “…paint is much more forgiving than markers – which was both frustrating and a challenge.”

   And now? Challenge met, with electrifying results. Her mixing and layering of different drawing media – all the colors in the crayon box, as it were – imbue her pictures with a variety of subtle patinas and saturations that make the surfaces seem to breathe and have a pulse.

   Axelband’s mark-making possesses all the vigorous immediacy and quirky simplicity you might find in a child’s drawing. Eschewing any refined artsy illusionism, it’s just this sort of robust, unfettered naïveté that has the uncanny effect of making her figures, ironically enough, all the more real and relatable.  

   So I read the faces as representing a sprawling diversity of people and their possible narratives, immersed in a stunning panoply of psychic and emotional states we associate with simply being alive.

   And those eyes. Their eyes. Some tranquil, others troubled, some mirthful, others melancholy, some wise, others dumbstruck. Wide or narrow or shadowed or bright. For as much as they look in at themselves or each other, they look out. At us. Or beyond. We look back at them. And see…us.

Insightful Incisions

 

Insightful Incisions 

Every Year They Grow From Nothing

When I Become A Tree

When I Become A Tree In Fall (detail)

When I Become A Tree / Taking Off

Lying In Red

When I Become A Tree Aflame

I Thought I Was Supporting You #3

By Tom Wachunas 

“… Woodcut is incredibly physical and energetic, but also requires a level of intimacy and care in carving each mark. The resulting work is subtle, careful and rash, reflecting my own state of being as the artist…”  - Meryl Engler

From Merriam-Webster: Catharsis (kə-ˈthär-səs)

a: purification or purgation of the emotions (such as pity and fear) primarily through art

b: a purification or purgation that brings about spiritual renewal or release from tension

 

EXHIBIT: I Had Been Young Vol. 2 – woodcut prints by Meryl Engler / THROUGH MARCH 1, 2024,  at The Lemmon Visiting Artist Gallery, in the Fine Arts Building at Kent State University at Stark, 6000 FRANK AVENUE NW, NORTH CANTON, OH / Gallery hours Monday – Friday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. 

About the artist: Meryl Engler grew up in Huntington Beach, California and moved to Akron, Ohio in fall 2019.  Meryl attended Syracuse University where she studied sculpture, printmaking, religious studies and history, while also competing on the women’s rowing team.  Next she went to graduate school at University of Nebraska-Lincoln for studio art with an emphasis in printmaking.  This is where she developed her love of colorful woodcut prints, often using pattern and repetition.  She is inspired by hidden landscapes in our environment and the relationships we form to it and each other. In 2022 she started working at the Morgan Conservatory and learned Eastern and Western papermaking techniques and now incorporates papermaking into her print work.  She has shown both nationally and internationally...

**********************************************************

   In her statement for this exhibit, Engler writes that in this latest series of prints, “…I felt compelled to delve into my personal narrative…using self-portraiture, herons that symbolize messengers of change and transformation, quilts to portray nurture and caring, and one very peculiar tree…”

   That tree had been growing through a few seasons in, of all unlikely places, a parking lot - a location, she surmised, annoying to “most people” - near her Akron residence. Yet she came to see it as a unique symbol of her own growth and change.

   Mesmerizing in their complex patterns and linearities, Engler’s images are at once crowded and airy. Breathtaking and breath-giving. Lines of varying densities harmonize and seem to breathe as they rise and spread outward from tight clusters of foliate shapes. Her mark-making has a calligraphic sort of elegance about it, as if the imagery wasn’t carved so much as written in cursive style. Further, Engler’s incorporation of color imbues many of her images with a diaphanous light you might well call palpable magic. Nowhere is all this dazzling intimacy and intricacy more commanding than in the sheer ambitious scale of several monumental prints mounted on the gallery’s longest wall. They’re eight feet tall! Talk about wild grace…

   The marvelous fluidity and exactitude of these meticulous renderings is absolutely entrancing. Insightful. Insiteful. They’re incised with all the skilled precision of a surgeon’s scalpel.  And so they do indeed cut to the heart, as it were, of a beautiful personal catharsis.

Making a list, checking it twice - PART 2

 

Making a list, checking it twice…

What was...what could've been...now" by Christine Janson

Dream Crusher, by Emily Orsich

Cathedral, by Steve Ehret

Salt and Peppa, by Patricia Zinsmeister Parker

Polaron II, by David L. Kuntzman

Momma Remembers, by Judi Krew

Windows from the Ukraine, by Lou Camerato

PART 2

by Tom Wachunas

 

“Judging art is like caging a bird. Instead of seeing it soar, you can only watch it flutter.” — Ron Brackin

“Taste is the best judge. It is rare. Art only addresses itself to an excessively small number of individuals.” — Paul Cezanne

 

EXHIBIT: Stark County Artists Exhibition / at Massillon Museum Aultman Health Foundation Gallery, THROUGH JANUARY 14, 2024 / 121 Lincoln Way East, downtown Massillon, Ohio / Phone: 330-833-4061 / Tuesday through Saturday 9:30am - 5:00pm, Sunday 2:00pm - 5:00pm

https://www.massillonmuseum.org/home/exhibits/current-museum-exhibits

   Shall we make like jurors and play a game of favorites?

   I was a bit disappointed when I learned that the artworks I submitted for this annual contest – er, uhm, exhibition - were not accepted by the jurors. I didn’t make the team, as it were, of 52 artists who were selected, and I certainly congratulate them. As one of 91 rejects, I can only guess as to why exactly the jurors deemed my work unseeworthy.

   As it is, I never gave much if any credence to establishing a hierarchy of monetary awards in group shows such as this -  Best in Show, 2^nd place, 3d place, then down to a few “Honorable Mention” certificates. Why not simply consider having art chosen for exhibition as sufficient-enough award?

   To engage the practice of tiered prizes is to dive down a rabbit hole of questions and motives. As a society in the 21^st century, for better or worse, we have no indisputably true map or absolute rule book for navigating that most complex of human terrains we have come to call subjectivity. Or better yet, in this context, aesthetic taste.

   With only a few days left to see this show, here’s a reminder that Massillon Museum has provided ballots for viewers to cast a vote for the “People’s Choice Award.” It will be announced shortly after the exhibit ends. Meanwhile, I offer here some pics of works I found to be particularly compelling, and indeed honorable, as I fluttered through my rabbit hole of opinion.

Making a list, checking it twice...

 

Making a list, checking it twice…

bare feet, by Jessica Morton

Bad Believer,  by Alex Strader

Under Siege, by Sally Priscilla Lytle

The Last Cowboy, by Todd Bergert

Nap-caftan, by Judi Krew

Empty Table, Filtered Light, by Bruce Stebner

(PART 1)

By Tom Wachunas 

“All aesthetic judgment is really cultural evaluation.” – Susan Sontag

“Any great art work… revives and re-adapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world – the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.” – Leonard Bernstein

“Judging art is like caging a bird. Instead of seeing it soar, you can only watch it flutter.” — Ron Brackin

“Taste is the best judge. It is rare. Art only addresses itself to an excessively small number of individuals.” — Paul Cezanne

 

EXHIBIT: Stark County Artists Exhibition / at Massillon Museum Aultman Health Foundation Gallery, THROUGH JANUARY 14, 2024 / 121 Lincoln Way East, downtown Massillon, Ohio / Phone: 330-833-4061 / Tuesday through Saturday 9:30am - 5:00pm, Sunday 2:00pm - 5:00pm

   After attending the November 30 opening reception for this hallowed annual rite, my initial take-away left me feeling just a bit more naughty than nice. Despite the show’s giddy diversity of styles, content, and media, and its sheer number of pieces (very crowded with 74 works, selected from 221 entries submitted by 91 artists), there was something uneven if not mediocre about the overall quality of the exhibit.

   What was I missing? What was I really doing there anyway? Was I a humbugging critic once again looking for stuff to complain about? Guilt raised its nagging voice and left me to ponder how my first observations of the show were perhaps too cursory.

   Long story short: I returned to the gallery two more times for a much slower, closer look. Of course there are indeed some truly remarkable pieces in this exhibit, and certainly well beyond just the works chosen by the jury to receive awards (as questionable as they may be to some of us).

   Consider this ARTWACH post as Part 1 of 2. So for this first part, here’s a look the jurors’ award winners. I’ll be posting Part 2 before the New Year begins.

Best in Show: bare feet - mixed media by Jessica Morton

Second Place: Nap-caftan – muslin, paper napkins, Sharpie, buttons – by Judi Krew

Third Place: Empty Table, Filtered Light – oil, by Bruce Stebner

Honorable Mentions: The Last Cowboy, oil on board by Todd Bergert / Under Siege, mixed media, by Sally Priscilla Lytle / Bad Believer, Digital, by Alex Strader

[This year’s jurors were Cleveland artist Davon Brantley; Melissa Stallard, Associate Professor, Photography Area Coordinator, The University of Akron; and Steve Mountz, artist/art instructor, Salem, Ohio.]

The 52 Stark County artists exhibited here are: Claire Murray Adams, Rosemary Anderson, Rodney Atwood, Alexia Avdelas, Todd Bergert, Charles Bonakoski, Chris Borello, Lou Camerato, Peter Castillo, Paul B. Codispoti, Therese Cook, Ron Copeland, David L. Dingwell, Laura Donnelly, Tim Eakin, Steve Ehret, Linda Faulkner, Shea Flaherty, Robert Gallik, Timothy Hirst, Bruce Humbert, Christine Janson, David Jentgen, Erika Katherine, Annabelle Kim, Judi Krew, David L. Kuntzman, Susan Kurtz, Ted Lawson, Sam Lilenfield, Amy V. Lindenberger, Sally Priscilla Lytle, Miranda Marsh, Sharon Frank Mazgaj, Susan McClelland, Mal McCrea, Daniel McLaughlin, Jessica Morton, Emily Orsich, Natividad Lopez Ortiz, Patricia Zinsmeister Parker, Mark V. Pitocco, Brian Robinson, Priscilla Roggenkamp, Kathryn Skidmore, Sari Sponhour, Bruce Stebner, Alex Strader, Chad Troyer, Pat Mather Waltz, Jo Westfall, and Gail Wetherell-Sack.

GOOD NEWS

 

GOOD NEWS

 

   Here is my 2023 Christmas painting/card to all of you. It’s called, simply, Good News. And with it, I pray always that the seeds of God’s Word - His Promise, Hope, and Peace - sown into the heart of the earth – all of humanity – take root and flourish into abundant Good Fruit. Be Blessed.

   For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. – Isaiah 9: 6-8

   But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control… -Galatians 5:22-23

   Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. -Hebrews 11:1

Making Paint Sing

 

Making Paint Sing 

by Tom Wachunas

                                                             Dark Was The Night

                                                      1,000 Miles From Nowhere
 

Woman 1

La Muerte de la Madre 

                                                                             

                                                              On a Sea of Forgotten Teardrops

                                                      

                                                                               

                                                                            Conversations

   

                                                                              

                                                                       Exit from Eden

                                                                             

                                                                 Cinderella Sleeping It Off

“Take me for what I am / A star newly emerging / Long simmering explodes / Inside the self is reeling / In the pocket of the heart, in the rushing of the blood / In the muscle of my sex, in the mindful mindless love / I accept the new found man / And I set the twilight reeling…”  Lyrics from “Set the Twilight Reeling” - by Lou Reed

“I use the human form, in all its complexities and abilities – through gesture, expression, and energy, to interpret the relationship between us and our emotions. Ultimately my intention is to make the viewers aware of their existence and how they fit into the collective experience that is life, where they came from, why they’re here, and what it means to be human.” – John W. Carlson

EXHIBIT: Set the Twilight Reeling – Paintings, prints, drawings, videos and objects by John W. Carlson / at Massillon Museum’s  Aultman Health Foundation Gallery, THROUGH November 12, 2023 / 121 Lincoln Way East, downtown Massillon, Ohio / Phone: 330-833-4061 / Tuesday through Saturday 9:30am - 5:00pm, Sunday 2:00pm - 5:00pm

https://johnwcarlsonstudios.com/about

https://johnwcarlsonstudios.com/blues-exhibition

https://obits.cleveland.com/us/obituaries/cleveland/name/john-carlson-obituary?id=7820645

   Have you ever heard a painting sing? Impossible, you say?

   As absurd as it might be to consider, have you ever had the uncanny sense of a picture evoking – maybe even actualizing - a human voice caught in the throes of grieving? Have you listened to an urgent vibrato seeking respite from anger or painful loss? Or felt its tremulous probing of tragedy in a courageous search for serenity and hope, harmony and healing? Can the physical materiality of a painting make tangible the impassioned lyricism of, say, a Blues song?  

   I’ve always been an avid believer in the agency of a painter’s hand to make empathy a visceral, empirical reality. To make immediacy palpable. It’s an agency in jaw-dropping abundance at the wonderful exhibition, or concert, if you will, still happening right now at Massillon Museum - a posthumous, thoroughly loving homage to the work of John W. Carlson (1954-2020).

    For this (unfortunately) late blog post, I’m taking off my formal critic’s hat. No arcane techno-speak from me here. Instead, for those of you who may not be able to see the show before it ends on November 12, I’m appealing to your open-hearted time and willingness to do some exploratory homework. Accordingly, you can read about Carlson’s life, motivations and prolific aesthetic pursuits by clicking on the hyperlinks above.

   Vital in embracing the overall spirit of the exhibit is this important  background information wisely provided by the Massillon Museum: “John Carlson collaborated with his partner, artist Shari Wilkins, on the project titled American Emotionalism founded in 2015. A manifesto of artistic intention was created for this movement, revealing some of the ways that Carlson and Wilkins challenged themselves in their work. Spanning a wide variety of mediums—from photography and music to painting and collage—American Emotionalism was a reaction against the over-explanation of visceral work. Carlson and Wilkins’ intention was to create work that elicits emotions that arise from instinctive, intuitive feelings, leaving space for viewers’ interpretation with little to no explicit explanation.”

   Carlson’s own words are generously evident throughout the exhibit, including these: “Viewing a painting with a strong presence asks us to stop and be present with it. It reawakens us, and we remember we are alive and that things matter.”

   Matter indeed. With this stunning show, Massillon Museum has outdone itself in gifting us with such a prodigious tribute to the mind and heart of a superb artist. John W. Carlson was, and remains, an évocateur of the most consummate sort. He told us, “…I’m…trying to conjure an image almost like a spell.”  Let me add, like a song.

   Simmering, exploding, rushing from the pocket of the heart…Come look and sing. Empathy, anyone?