Software Euphoria by the Numbers

Software Euphoria by the Numbers

By Tom Wachunas


Sometimes I wonder if there were any class-action suits brought against the Palmer Paint Company for false advertising in 1951. That’s the year when the company unleashed on the world its Craft Master paint-by-number kits, their box tops emblazoned with “Every man a Rembrandt!” I can just about imagine some infuriated wannabes wondering why their promised ‘masterpieces’ looked so much like, well,…paint-by-number.

Over the past several years I’ve noticed increasing numbers of art students cranking out the modern equivalent of paint-by-number compositions – pictures obviously generated through various photoshop and digital effects programs. My concern is that maybe too many studio painting curricula are abandoning the disciplines of careful, real-time observation of physical reality and developing muscle-memory for the hands, in favor of the wow factor delivered by quick-fix software. Still, and more important, the issue brings up deeper considerations about the very nature of the creative act, and the efficacy of artists’ decision-making processes as related to the tools at their disposal.

So it’s fascinating to weigh these considerations in light of the eight large portraits by Mark Chepp, currently on view at the Canton Museum of Art, in his exhibit called “Post Digital Figuration.” Yes, the wow factor is most definitely in the room. And yes, Chepp’s no Rembrandt. But who says he has to be? Even though his employment of computer software is intrinsic to the look of his canvases, there is abundant evidence here of intelligent and imaginative choices, a discerning eye, and highly skilled brush work on Chepp’s part.

In his posted artist’s statement, he tells us that his paintings grow out of “a high-to-low-tech trajectory.” Photo images are digitally broken down, progressively transformed into numbered fragments that are assigned colors by the software program, traced by the artist on to the painting surface (with an added rectilinear grid), which he then paints in. What he describes is a formula, to be sure, and he is very clear that his aesthetic is driven by process.

Such audacious interfacing with technology (Chepp calls the computer his “collaborator”) might stir the ire of traditionalists who question the creative integrity of the process, perhaps viewing it as ‘cheating’ of a kind. But the products of Chepp’s employment of technology are, in the end, arresting, indeed euphoric visual experiences. Both the end and the means are conjoined into a symbiotic entity. His electrifying pictures are grounded in relationships between regular geometric structures and wonderfully eccentric patterns, and the sumptuous physicality of the paint he so meticulously applies.

There is in most of the paintings an intriguing tension between industrial slickness of surface and visceral texture. “Emanate” is a wild celebration of controlled impasto abandon – a tactile oil paint tapestry - and “Emerge” is a tour-de-force of shiny technicolor chaos morphing into more defined organic shapes. While there’s no really emotional resonance to these faces in mid-melt, a human hand is nonetheless very much at work.

Ultimately these pieces bring to mind the overarching question of who or what is the actual art-making agent. Is artistic creativity to be evaluated solely on the basis of ‘classical’ working procedures and methods? The history of painting is rich with practices driven by all kinds of formulas, procedures, devices, and ‘tricks’ – all derived from the constant evolution of human ingenuity. Lest we forget, digital technology is a human invention intended to serve and enhance the experience of being human.

And so it is that in viewing Chepp’s creative decision to embrace the marvels of software, we are in effect invited to witness an eminently solid friendship.


Photo: “Dissolve,” (courtesy Canton Museum of Art) acrylic on canvas, by Mark Chepp, on view in his exhibit, “Post Digital Figuration,” through October 31 at the Canton Museum of Art, 1001 Market Ave. N., Canton, Ohio. For Museum hours and other info, call (330) 453 – 7666 or visit www.cantonart.org

Dream Whisperer

Dream Whisperer

By Tom Wachunas


If there’s such a thing as having the ability to artistically formalize the metaphysics of memory and dreams, Dr. Fredlee Votaw has it. Like some of the titles of Votaw’s works, my scribbled notes on his show of 25 mixed media pieces at The Canton Museum of Art, called “Restless Dreams”, seem like the beginnings of prose poems: inklings of faint certainties; distant, old melodies or memories perceived through vapors of the crowded present. The images here live on the cusp of revelation, the ethereal edge of familiarity, many of them imbued with a sepia patina of old wood, faded linen, tarnished metal.

Aside from Votaw’s astonishing precision as a draftsman, and his uncanny feel for lusciously tactile surfaces (which is all certainly compelling enough), the wonder of these pieces is in their power to evoke. This is to say that in as much as these works represent what Votaw calls a visual diary – something intrinsically personal to him – they’re not so private or obtuse that they can’t evoke connections and associations every bit as personal to us, the viewers. And the essence of those connections and associations is centered in lovingly recollected people, places, and moments, whether joyous and tender, bittersweet, or melancholic.

One of the more intriguing and recurring (and enigmatic) motifs in Votaw’s assemblages are metallic passages he creates with what must be very painstakingly laid-in clusters of tiny nails, as in “Thinking About the Holocaust.” In the top half of the work is a large face - pale, hairless, haunted and haunting, with eyes that seem to peer into and beyond history itself. Beneath the face there is a wreath of sorts, made of intertwined pairs of human hands – some in prayer, some limp, some partially open in pain or supplication. Those tiny nails form a frame, or an aura around the wreath. So many of them! Like a procession gathered ‘round the cruel magnet of human tragedy.

Votaw’s graphite drawings here are utterly stunning in their meticulous, mesmerizing detail and subtle textures, as in “Wedding Ring Quilt Dreams,” or “She Dreamed of the Butterfly Her Soldier Boy Caught for Her.” Yet they aren’t cold and calculated exercises in photorealism. Rather, they seem to have real breath - simply, even magically appearing out of white mists.

The quality of the markings in these and so many other works in this show is such that you get the sense Votaw has not so much ‘drawn’ as somehow coaxed and whispered them on to his surfaces. They’re the kind of whispers that are the soundtracks of dreams, transformed into physical imprints of memories – never too loud or too deep, but always gently steady and quietly urgent.


Photo: “When We Gazed Up at the Night Sky, I Saw the Wonder of the Stars, While She Saw Only the Blackness In-between,” mixed media assemblage by Dr. Fredlee Votaw, on view in his exhibit, “Restless Dreams,” through October 31 at the Canton Museum of Art, 1001 Market Ave. N., Canton, Ohio. For Museum hours and other info, call (330) 453 – 7666 or visit www.cantonart.org

(Recon)Figuring the Fifties

(Recon)Figuring the Fifties

By Tom Wachunas


“It must have been a very magical time, the fifties,” Aegolius said, his voice cracking, a tear streaking his face. “People seemed so happy.”
Nyctea was taken aback by his weepy display. Gathering her thoughts, she looked deep into his eyes for a long time before answering. “But you were too young then, my love. How could you know?”
“Well, there are the magazines I saw at the museum, and those movies, and television and…”
His voice trailed off as Nyctea touched his shoulder gently and said, “Many people were unhappy and troubled, and they…”
Aegolius interrupted, “Who? What did they do?”
“They made the sixties,” she replied.

- from “Mournings of the Grebes” by June Godwit –


According to some, the 1950s in America was the best of times – a period of confidence and optimism, of vigorous renewal after the bloodbath of World War II. A time when societal roles and expectations were solidified. When men were breadwinners and women proud of it. When houses were built and bought and filled with babies. And stuff. Lots of stuff. Television was becoming an increasingly ubiquitous funhouse mirror. Therein we saw pristine likenesses of ourselves – a collective Narcissus with Pepsodent-Bright smile living happily amid our stuff in a stupor of conformity. Meanwhile, McCarthyism poisoned our hearts with atomic angst and Cold War paranoia. We built bomb shelters and blacklists. Yet through it all The Duke swaggered, Disney dazzled, Ol’ Blue eyes crooned, Marilyn seduced, and Elvis began his sultry swivel into pop immortality. But lest we forget the real hipsters, remember how Pollock splattered, Ginsberg howled, Dean rebelled just because, and Kerouac hit the American road to the beat of his band of very different drummers. The tides of change were swelling inexorably, and the undertow of discontent amid consumerist complacency was getting stronger.

Is it any wonder that the sixties hit us like a sunami, immersing us once and for all in a catastrophic sludge of divisive sociopolitical and moral pluralisms? And is it any wonder that a thinking child of the eighties might on one hand be attracted to the superfluous accoutrements of fifties promise and stability, and on the other be suspicious of its rubber-stamped charm?

Ashley Barlow was born in the eighties, and sometime during her childhood a fascination with the fifties blossomed. Her one-woman show at Anderson Creative, “ON THE ROCKS: Re-imagining the 50s,” is a thematic installation immediately striking in its physical sparseness. There’s a lot of air here, leaving considerable room to negotiate mental connections. For all the text Barlow provides (via vintage game flash cards incorporated with her mixed media collages), the words and phrases are more cryptic than overtly informative, effectively challenging viewers to fill in the conceptual blanks. Her keen interest in the distinctive iconography and industrial/ consumer designs of the 1950s would seem to run much deeper than merely re-packaging their cosmetic appeal.

The authentic kitchen setting at the front end of the gallery effectively lays out the menu, as it were, for the entire show. Mint green dinnerware against faux red marbleized oval tabletop, and Philco refrigerator with its rounded corners, are reminders that overly-intense color contrasts and sharp edges just won’t do in the idyllic 50s. But check out the curtained window and the scene collaged on to the panes. In the ‘foreground’ is a well-dressed woman gazing into a space (time?) far past us, seemingly unaware of the free-falling figure in the sky – a distressed businessman tethered to a severed rope. Who in this scenario is really ignorant of, or guilty of something, or perhaps at a major crossroads? As the title says, “Indeed, I Haven’t the Slightest Idea.”

In the posted large- print interview with the artist, Barlow explains her youthful love of the 50s with references to “the crispness of that world,” and the “dependable” look of the pin-up girls. “It was a sexy decade without all the sex in your face,” she tells us. “It left something to be imagined.” And therein is perhaps the soul of this exhibit – the imagining, the tension between the apparent and implied, the said and unsaid, the façade and the things underneath that an entire decade so anxiously repressed and homogenized.

So there’s great irony here. Particularly with her mixed media collages on canvas, Barlow seems to be (arguably) not so much appreciating as questioning her original school-girl attraction to a distant time – its esthetics, its values - wondering now just how crisp and dependable the 50s really were. In “Upgrade Now,” a man wearing a white jacket is apparently ‘demonstrating’ a naked pin-up girl, tummy-down on a beach towel or sheet, to an enthralled group of nattily dressed women. Upgrade to what – aspiring to be the ideal woman? And in “To Be Quite Truthful, I Don’t Know Myself,” a disheveled (hung over?) man leans on his bathroom sink, peering at the floating hallucination of a Vegas showgirl. Haunted by another fantasy, or regretting last night’s debauchery?

Interestingly enough, after seeing this show, I can’t get Eddie Haskell out of my head. He’s the weasly, two-faced wise guy from “Leave it to Beaver,” the wildly popular sitcom that premiered on CBS in 1957. Hindsight being the better part of social wisdom, I appreciate him now more than I did then. Then, he earned our disdain, with his toady politeness. While he was the closest thing to a sycophant that television of the day could cheerfully portray, now I can see his hypocrisy as a necessary companion to the greater hypocrisies of his time. He was such an easy target for our ridicule because he diverted attention from our own shortcomings and insecurities, even as we touted the squeaky-clean values and smoothed edges of idealized suburbia.

If it isn’t already apparent to you by now, I think Barlow’s art brings much to our ideological table to chew on. Fifties nostalgia aside, I’m left wondering, when it comes to our ideals and ethics and social behaviors, if we’re really any better off now than we were then, with our formulas for clean and proper living, our plans for hopeful futures. More important, will we get it right in the decade(s) to come? To be quite truthful, I don’t know myself, Mrs. Cleaver. Like the stark, empty backgrounds in several of Barlow’s canvases, both the past and future remain fill-in-the-blank propositions.


Photo: “To Be Quite Truthful, I Don’t Know Myself,” mixed media collage by Ashley Barlow, on view in her exhibit. “ON THE ROCKS: Re-Imagining the 50s” at Anderson Creative, 331 Cleveland Avenue NW, Canton, Ohio – through September 25. Gallery hours Tuesday – Saturday 12:00 – 5:00.

Full Disclothiers

Full Disclothiers

By Tom Wachunas


Burlesque, in its classic sense, was any form of theatrical or literary parody that treated trivial, inconsequential events or behaviors as profound, serious drama. By the time Vaudeville came around, a night at “The Burlesque” meant rowdy audiences howling at slapstick comedy skits interspersed with striptease acts. Low-brow entertainment at its cheekiest, but nonetheless brow-raising. By the 1980s, stripping as entertainment was no longer the strict purview of female performers, as the Chippendales male dance revues became a world-wide club phenomenon.

The Full Monty, originally a 1997 British film which then premiered as a Broadway comedy hit in 2001, opens at The Players Guild Theatre in Canton on September 10. The musical could be called, to a limited extent, a burlesque with male strippers. But these “dancers” aren’t of the chiseled, lithe Chippendales variety. These are six unemployed Buffalo steelworkers with troubled lives, and who are, alternately, too fat, too skinny, too bald, too old, too dorky, or too shy. And so on another level, if you’re among those who worship flawless, glowing skin and the iconic superficialities of “beautiful” physiques, you might regard this production as something of a grotesque.

But if there’s any real ugliness here, it’s surely in the characters’ dire circumstances, personal and collective, and how not just their livelihoods, but their dignity and self-esteem have been terribly damaged. The central character, Jerry Lukowski, played here with genuine warmth by Michael Laymon, is desperate to find enough money to maintain child support payments to his ex-wife, else he’ll lose shared custody of his beloved son. Inspired by the popularity of a Chippendales act at the local night club, he masterminds a plan to form a male stripper troupe with five other equally desperate companions, all victims of the steel plant closing. The plan is to do one show only and share a hefty paycheck. Only very late in the action do they determine that just cavorting about in their shiny red G-strings won’t sell out the show. So they promise ticket-buyers “the full Monty” (a peculiar British slang for “the whole ball of wax,” as we learn in the program notes from director Jonathan Tisevich).

Speaking of director Tisevich, he’s done something remarkable in terms of casting not only Laymon, but also his five compatriots: Don Jones as Harold, Brian Sharfenberg as Malcolm, Daryl Robinson as ‘Horse,’ Dave Lapp as Dave, and Greg Rininger as Ethan. All are eminently delightful as actors, comedic and otherwise. One particularly electric scene/song – “Big Ass Rock” - transpires when Jerry and Dave stop Malcolm from committing suicide. Sharfenberg’s portrayal of the timid Malcolm here, and later in his solo “You Walk With Me,” is a perfect mix of awkward self-consciousness and heartrending sincerity. Lapp and Jones deliver one of the evening’s more poignant moments in their duet, “You Rule My World,” as does Laymon with a love song to his sleeping son, Nathan (played by Jacob Spina), in “Breeze off the River.” Throughout the evening, Rininger is gut-splittingly funny in his unsuccessful attempts to perfect running UP a wall. And in his portrayal of the character Noah ‘Horse’ Simmons, auditioning for a spot in the stripper line with “Big Black Man,” Daryl Robinson is a riveting, comical whirlwind of goofy kitsch moves.

Strictly speaking, not one of these performers is a virtuoso singer. Each in his own way sings David Yazbek’s lyrics, both mischievous and tender, in a clipped, Randy Newman-ish fashion, even to the point where some moments are slightly off-key. Yet despite such shortfalls in technical finesse, it is precisely this kind of disarmingly raw, workman-like delivery that makes these characters so completely credible and endearing. Blue-collar chic, to be sure. We’ve all probably known folks like these, and in our current real-life season of national economic distress, their performances here drip with authentic urgency, even as raucous hilarity runs throughout.

In that regard, Melissa Brobeck, playing Harold’s wife Vicki, has an electrifying singing voice to go along with her uncanny and well-honed comedic sensibility. Kudos, too, to Teresa Houston for her schmoozy-boozy rendering of Jeanette, the troupe’s matronly and sardonic piano accompanist. Additionally, the seven-piece orchestra led by Steve Parsons provides as professional and sonorous a reading of a Broadway score as you’ll ever hear in these parts.

Some prudes and purists might balk at such ‘adult’ theatrics, or question the efficacy of its frickin’ language. But the lewdness and irreverence in this case aren’t tacked-on or superfluous sensationalism. What resonates most vigorously here is the story of love and commitment that binds and heals amid gritty turmoil. As Tisevich reminds us with the Latin motto in his program notes, “Aude aliquid dignum!” Dare something worthy!

So in the end, do they really do the Full Monty? Gee, let me string you along a bit further. The climax, triumphal and flashy, is dazzling.


Players Guild Theatre of Canton presents The Full Monty, opening Friday September 10 and running through September 26. Performances Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Tickets $22 for adults, $17 for those 17 and younger. Tickets may be purchased at the Box Office or by calling (330) 453 – 7617, and are also available online 24 hours a day at www.playersguildtheatre.com


Photo courtesy Players Guild Theatre

Anima Humana

Anima Humana

By Tom Wachunas


“The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.” - Johann Wolgang von Goethe –

“Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art.” - Leonardo da Vinci –

“You don’t have a Soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” - C.S. Lewis –


When we strip away all our rhetoric about contexts and definitions, making art has always, essentially, been about giving physical form to those things that by their very nature would seem to defy the effort. At its most fundamental level, the glorious miracle of us is that we exist at all. Our awareness of this fact has always clamored for – even demanded - our attention. Toward that end, art can be a powerful vehicle, a conduit for communicating our response to being. Beyond our very bodies, our art is the story of spirit-inhabited flesh. Further, our most potent and efficacious art transcends the merely formal delights (or assaults) for eye and mind, and speaks eloquently to and about the state of our souls.

There’s plenty of such eloquence – vibrant and pithy - on view in two shows at the Summit Art Space building in Akron. One is called “Fire and Ice,” a two-person show in the Big Box Gallery on the 3d floor, featuring the work of Karen Pierson and Terry Klausman, both members of Artists of Rubber City. The other, called “My Spirit Rises,” is a much larger group show in the main-floor gallery. I visited “Fire and Ice” first.

Karen Pierson makes objects that, as jewelry, would certainly be daring fashion choices. Beyond that, though, these are fascinating small sculptures in their own right, each one a marvel of metalsmithing. Particularly dramatic are “Point d’ebullition – Boiling Over,” and “Dichotomie.” The former is a ‘Volcano Brooch’ and the latter a ‘Fire and Ice Brooch.’ Both brooches are mounted on an 8”x10” oil painting – each brooch a removable 3D pictorial ingredient intrinsic to the tiny, elegant landscape. This isn’t jewelry destined for stashing in a box. “Dichotomie” is a fantastical union of a miniature campfire glowing against a night sky, with an underside of crystalline ‘ice’ forms that hang down against the painted streaks of the aurora borealis. All of her pieces are imbued with a primal, elemental intrigue impeccably crafted.

That same spirit is even more viscerally evident in Terry Klausman’s thoroughly unique mixed media works. Most of his wall hangings combine hand-carved and varnished natural wood “frames” draped with irregularly-shaped pieces of canvas – like stretched skins - generously lathered with waves of acrylic spatters and swirls. Some are about fire, as in, perhaps, eruptions of hot emotions. Others, like “Icicles,” seem cold and frozen hard, yet strangely liquid. Bold, haunting, and intensely tactile, they suggest exotic artifacts a modern shaman might use in purification or exorcism rituals.

While it was purely by chance that I saw “Fire and Ice” at all, I’m delighted to report that it’s a remarkably fine exhibit that also, interestingly enough, seems cut from the same conceptual cloth as “My Spirit Rises.” In that show there are more than 70 works by six artists: Jean Evans, John Herring, Ted Maringer, Carole Pollard, Judith Salamon, and Bob Yost. For rich variety of media and depth of engaging visual and emotional content, this is surely among the most breathtaking group shows I’ve seen this year. My spirit rises indeed.

What comes to mind, then, is a stunningly expanded sense of what I saw in “Fire and Ice” - something the classical Greeks would have called ‘pneuma.’ It’s a marvelous word that, depending upon context, can refer to breath, wind, life-force, rational soul, or the principle essence of human existence. All of those applications, in varying degrees, are at work here. Of course in a show this large, some works understandably resonate longer and more deeply than others.

Among those are Bob Yost’s raku pieces, particularly his eerily beautiful masks – charred and charged gems of human drama . Ted Maringer’s mixed media hangings that use fiberglass mesh as shimmering ‘cloth’ are riveting in their simplicity and elegance. There’s a timeless potency in their suggestion of priests’ vestments, or ceremonial kimono. The mixed media “Spirit Dress” paintings by Judith Salamon are similarly endowed with an archetypal energy. These softly colored and patterned surfaces are hypnotic, codified ‘garments’ that clothe both the deeply personal and cosmic.

The quilts by Carole Pollard are nothing short of astonishing. The thread work alone in “Awakening,” for example, is a journey unto itself. A road map to infinity? Combined with myriad colors and intertwined patterns upon intricate patterns, it’s an explosive celebration, perhaps, of celebration itself. And for sheer electrifying muscularity of form – literally and symbolically – there is her trio of wall pieces, “Melville’s Angel (I, II, III).” The work was inspired by a Herman Melville poem built around the image of Jacob wrestling with an angel, in this case art. The third quilt in the set, called “Triumph,” is an utterly arresting embodiment of this show’s pneuma (or a Latin companion, ‘anima humana’), as it were.

This victory icon, with its silvery central gauntlet clutching red feathers beneath a lusciously blazing sun, is on one level a compelling symbol of the good fight that all artists engage. It is a timeless struggle, at once unreasonable and joyous. Still, to think that we humans could wrest from heaven the capacity to create is only half the story.

And so it is that in the end, I think that our victory isn’t so much in ‘winning’ anything from God or his angels. Rather, it lies in our grasping of what was freely given in the first place. This show is a thrilling reminder that art is where body and spirit unite in gratitude for an eternal gift.

Photo: “Melville’s Angel III: Triumph,” quilt plus 3D mailed/armed gauntlet, by Carole Pollard, on view in “My Spirit Rises.” This exhibit, along with “Fire and Ice” is on view through September 18 at Summit Art Space, 140 East Market Street, Akron, Ohio. Free Admission and Parking. Gallery hours for “My Spirit Rises” are Thursday – Saturday, 12 to 5 p.m. (330) 376 – 8480. Hours for “Fire and Ice” in the 3’d floor Big Box Gallery are Friday and Saturday 12 to 5 p.m.

www.SummitArtspace.org

Picturing Language

Picturing Language

By Tom Wachunas


A few posts ago I shared a recollection, from my college years, of Professor Hoyt Sherman. Here’s another. On more than a few occasions of our discussions about what I thought I was doing with my art, he would seemingly change the subject and tell me that I should pursue a college teaching career because I’d be really good at it. For reasons too many and complicated to share here, I didn’t. At least not right away.

So here I am about to embark upon my fourth year as adjunct faculty in the Fine Arts Dept. at Kent State University Stark. And as the Fall semester quickly approaches, I’m reminded, every time I go to my campus desk to prepare my lecture notes and powerpoint presentation, of how much I truly love this work. It’s a marvelous sensation – this love of one’s work – and it invariably overcomes my self-loathing for having delayed my professional entry into the Hallowed Halls of Academe for 30 years. Mea maxima culpa.

When people ask me what I teach, I have often replied simply, but in all seriousness, “passion.” Passion for observing and seeing. Passion for searching. Passion for the language of art. The course is officially called Art Survey. In my mind, though, it will always be Passion 101. My purpose, then, is a daunting one. But if I can impart to my students even the smallest glowing ember of the fire that burns inside me for ALL the arts, then I’ve earned my paycheck. My best days in the classroom are those when I see at least one pair of eyes widen with a realization, a connection, a challenging question, or a thrilling discovery. Even more, a beautiful mystery fully accepted can be just as enthralling as the one skillfully solved. That’s the power of art.

Speaking of Hallowed Halls, I’ve walked the same corridor to my classroom in the Fine Arts building hundreds of times during the past three years and am only now getting around to talking about the remarkable art there. The north wall of the corridor (just inside the south entrance of the Fine Arts Building, marked 30S) is adorned with six massive panels, painted in oil and cold wax on plaster wall board by Jack McWhorter (Associate Professor of Art at Kent State University Stark)in 2004, each measuring 7’x16’. These aren’t just very big paintings hung on the wall. In large part, they ARE the wall, forming a permanent interior architectural feature of the building. I admit that for my first few weeks on campus back in 2007, the paintings seemed to be an obtuse curiosity, a decorative mystery indeed. After reading the accompanying information about the installation many times (mounted near the drinking fountain on the wall opposite the first panel), seeing the work has become an increasingly mesmerizing experience that I find continually inspiring.

That’s because they remind me of why I’m in the building in the first place: to teach about seeing art. And to do that, I need to use language. Many years ago, impetuous youth being what it is, I used to think that needing and searching for language to ‘explain’ visual art was antithetical to the art experience and thus a little arrogant. The reality is that language is intrinsically connected and necessary to how we extrapolate and communicate (or, translate) the meaning or value of our art.

McWhorter’s work here is called “Stele Forest: A Typographical Fairy Tale.” The panels do in fact bring to mind ancient steles – engraved stone slabs or columns. These are inspired by the alphabets and writing systems of several ancient cultures (Mayan, Sumerian, Egyptian, Indian, Greek, and Chinese) and the possibilities they present for organizing pictorial abstractions. I’m not sure exactly what the fairy tale is (is there a hero, a wizard, a damsel, a villain?) beyond an intuition that with this work we are presented with a quest, a search. As pure painting goes, the work is monumentally enthralling. Against earthy grounds that look layered and scraped, each panel is a matrix comprised of intricate calligraphies and pictographs rendered with great confidence and precision, yet never losing the sense that these “letters” are painted with a brush . Within each themed panel there are separate ‘highlighted’ rectangles and corridors of varying dimensions –like rooms within the larger structure. To see the paintings you must walk the length of the narrow hall, all the while gazing up to the frosted skylights, and then going (via stairs or elevator) to the second floor mezzanine hallway to gaze down. This tale can’t be read straight-on at eye level, but from many angles, calling our attentions to things beyond the confines of its painted surface. Seeing art can be challenging that way. So maybe these paintings are a story about making art. A story about the language of looking.

And so it is that every time I pass these impressive monoliths on my way into room 142, I think about what I can say to widen some eyes and open some ears as we speak sincerely about that language. I love this job.


Photo: partial view of “Stele Forest: A Typographical Fairy Tale,” 2004, 6 panels by Jack McWhorter, oil and cold wax on plaster wall board, each panel 7’ x 16’, located in the Fine Arts Building at Kant State University Stark.

Weightless in Canton

Weightless in Canton

By Tom Wachunas


Aegolius was pacing about, nervous and anxious. He couldn’t wait to talk to Nyctea after her visit to the city. When he saw her approaching, he ran right up to her and nearly knocked her down.
“Well, so now you have to tell me,” he blurted, out of breath, “what… did you think… of Pavo’s… new work? Everyone’s… talking about it!”
“Yes, I know,” Nyctea replied wearily. She was very tired and didn’t feel like talking, but Aegolius pressed her harder.
“C’mon then, what did – “
Agitated now, Nyctea interrupted, “It’s not a new work at all,” she snapped. “Pavo’s been making the same piece for 50 years.”

- from “Mournings of the Grebes” by June Godwit -


He has enamored himself to a dramatically growing number of fans and purveyors of public art in recent years, garnering such affectionate monikers as ‘The Grizzled Wizard of Recycling’ and ‘The Junkyard Pied Piper’. P.R. Miller is baaaack.

If Miller’s life is ever made into a movie, some weisenheimer filmmaker just might insert a scene parodying the classic 1940 film of John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.” I can see it now. Like Henry Fonda’s Tom Joad in his farewell scene, the character of P.R. Miller peers into eternity and intones, “I’ll be around in the dark. I’ll be everywhere, wherever you can look. Wherever there’s scraps ‘o trash no one wants, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a town that wants junk art, I’ll be there.” And he’s here again in downtown Canton with yet another of his critters made from recycled stuff, this one called “Shutterbug,” located in the parking lot across the street (the 500 block of Cleveland Avenue NW) from the Joseph Saxton Gallery of Photography.

Based on comments I’ve heard from Miller in the past, he doesn’t seem to care deeply for art history or academically-couched assessments of his art. Such disdain notwithstanding, I’ve always viewed his work as heavily indebted to Picasso’s more playful assemblages of found materials. It’s an esthetic with a ‘distinguished’ history, though in the vast compendium of modernist content and methods, a fairly toothless one in terms of truly remarkable art.

That said, I don’t want to come off as too venomous, or dismissive of Miller’s work per se. In all its colorful gaiety and variety of textures, it does possess, as the cliché goes, a “certain je ne sais qua.” And at times, its formulaic, low-brow charm might well be an inviting introduction for casual viewers to embrace sculpture at a rudimentary, ‘entertaining’ level.

Still, in all the hooplah about art made from recycled materials, I wonder why going green seems to result far too often in art that looks so downright chincy, so…green. As in simplistic, predictable, and cerebrally lightweight? This kind of sculpture (with the exception, perhaps, of Pat Buckohr’s thrilling Rhino made from tires) has sufficiently dotted the arts district in the past.

Aside from its name and proximity to the Saxton Gallery, Miller’s concoction has no clear relationship with photography, though it was funded by Saxton owner Tim Belden. “Shutterbug” is a 15 foot-high, 4-legged metal creature fashioned after a bee. Its abdomen is streaked with paint applied in a slap-dash manner. Arguably its most clever attribute can be seen in the wings that flutter in the breeze. Alas, I think it won’t be flying away soon. Yes, it’s somewhat cute, and whimsical, and fun. And there’s certainly something to be said for decorative art that brings a smile. For all of its imposing scale, this creature is harmless, but nonetheless one pest among others in the downtown landscape. So call me a humbug, but enough already.


Photo: “Shutterbug” by P.R. Miller, sculpture from recycled materials, located at the corner of Fifth Street and Cleveland Avenue NW, downtown Canton.