His and Hers, Separate Together

His and Hers, Separate Together

By Tom Wachunas

   “…I don’t know whether this has threatened our marriage or saved it, but Karen and I don’t collaborate in our art…In a marriage of two, we are very much artistic ones.”   - from the catalogue statement by  Bill Bogdan

    EXHIBIT: Fabrical & Digital – The Art of Karen and Bill Bogdan, at Little Art Gallery, THROUGH DECEMBER 4, 2016 / located inside the North Canton Library, 185 North Main Street, North Canton, Ohio

   Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keefe. Picasso and Gilot. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock. These are just some of the husband-wife artist couples that have spiced up the feast that is Modern art history.

   And now, with their current show at The Little Art Gallery (LAG), we can feast our eyes on the art by Karen and Bill Bogdan.  [By the way, if you’ve not yet visited the Stark County Artists Exhibition at Massillon Museum, please do. Both Karen and Bill have excellent pieces there.] Meanwhile, the LAG exhibit, curated by Elizabeth Blakemore, was timed to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of their engagement. Not that I’m comparing their works or marriage in any way to the aforementioned couples, but seeing this handsome and thoughtfully  mounted collection nonetheless has given me pause to wonder about what life in their household has wrought. Do their respective muses mingle or commiserate with impassioned dialogue or debate? Is the energy harmonious and nurturing, or is it volatile and stormy? Bliss, or blisters? 

   In his catalogue statement, Bill dispels any notions that life under their roof might be a festering hotbed of arguments about process or product. They make their art in separate rooms, allowing for a working atmosphere that’s probably more civil than contentious. “We seldom discuss our respective projects,” Bill writes, except, he notes, when one of them is having trouble with a formal problem, or questioning whether or not a work is “any good.” For the most part, Karen cuts and sews together lavish textile visions of nature. As Bill puts it in the catalogue statement, she “engineers” her art. Whereas she “builds,” he’s a storyteller - a composer of autobiographical impressions “…relentlessly wanting voice.” But, based on his pieces displayed here, I’m not so sure he’s any less an engineer of pictorial experiences than his wife.

   Karen’s works here constitute something of a mini-retrospective, beginning with Carousel, a spectacular piece from 1995. Unabashedly decorative and ornamental, it’s nonetheless a lustrous and lovingly crafted remembrance so dazzling that you can practically hear the OOM-pah-pah beat of the merry-go-round music.  

   Indeed, it’s a spirit of celebration – and reverence, really – that informs all her tactile idylls, replete with a variety of foliate shapes amidst undulating skies or rolling hills, vibrant colors, a wealth of textures, and surfaces that often seem to emit their own exuberant light. Whether densely layered, or dimensional like bas-relief sculptures, or flatter, open-air scenes, all of them exude an unbridled charm.

   Up to this point in time, I’ve been most familiar with Bill’s black-and-white woodcut prints. So it’s an intriguing revelation to see that while his pieces in this show are, technically speaking, prints, they began as one-of-a-kind drawings in color, executed with oil pastel on canvas board.

   The originals have been reincarnated and reproduced via digital enhancement. While he may have tweaked and otherwise filtered the originals to alter hue and saturation levels (they do effectively hold their own when seen next to Karen’s much larger color explorations), his overall manipulation process, which he charted in a meticulous schematic diagram included in the catalogue, successfully preserved the visceral immediacy of his drawing style and surfaces. Look closely and you can even make out the texture of the canvas ground under his thickly applied colors. The spontaneous energy in these loose renderings of local places is reminiscent of Impressionist croquis – quick plein air or on-site sketches. Unlike the overall brightness and optimism apparent in Karen’s crisp palette, however, Bill’s colors, despite (or because of?) their intensity, and combined with the rawness of their application, often seem to invoke a psychological gravitas.

   In the end, I don’t see this show necessarily as some sort of statement about, or metaphor for married life as such. That said, I keep coming back to the idea of celebration - a celebration of discrete aesthetic pursuits presented in a beautifully balanced way. If marriage can be seen on one level as two wearing one garment, I commend Karen and Bill for skillfully embroidering theirs through and through with complementary visions - each compelling in its own right - of being alive.

   PHOTOS, from top: City Flowers, by Karen Bogdan; Autumn Trees, by Karen Bogdan; Inception 2, by Karen Bogdan; It’s Spring Poem, by Karen Bogdan; Storm Warnings Come to Dalbury St., by Bill Bogdan; Sunday Afternoon on Train Trail, by Bill Bogdan; Gervasi – Piazza Dining, by Bill Bogdan     

Great...or Grate?

Great…or Grate?

By Tom Wachunas

    So I suppose it should come as no surprise to those of you familiar with  my art work over the past several years that the two most recent pieces I’ve made are about the disunited state of America. In both, my concerns are not political so much as they’re spiritual. Make of them what you will.

   Shortly after I heard the outcome of the Presidential election, I felt strangely compelled to make an A-to-Z inventory of…what?  A spontaneous eruption of possible responses, attitudes, feelings, behaviors, reactions, choices, decisions. Make of them what you will.

   Angry, arrogant, arrested, adoring, accepting, agog, aghast, amazed,  boastful, blushing, bashing, brave, bellicose,  bullying, benevolent, charitable, contemplative, content, conceited, cantankerous, calm, conquered, cool, childish, collected, criminal, cautious, cynical, catatonic, dreadful, decided, deceitful, damned, dubious, doubtful, defeated, enraged, excited, ebullient, ennobled, enjoined, engulfed, enlarged, eager, fretful, faithful, forgiving, foreboding, fatigued, fearful, grateful, giving, gracious, glorified, giddy, hateful, haughty, horrified, humbled, honest, heated, hysterical, inciting, insouciant, insightful, insipid, intelligent, inspired, irritated, impish, ill, jaded, joyful, jubilant, just, justified, kind, keen, kicking, knowing, kindled, kissing, loving, loathing, laughing, leaping, mortified, mollified, malicious, magnanimous, mitigated, mystified, mauled, murderous, nihilistic, nutty, numb, naughty, overcome, ornery, ostentatious, obtuse, oblivious, obstinate, powerless, prideful, prayerful, patient, patronizing, pitying, quiet, questioning, quarrelsome, quivering, queasy, quitting, quiescent, quixotic, resentful, rueful, riotous, raped, ranting, ruined, ravaged, raving, repenting, rejuvenated, righteous, satisfied, sane, serene, sorry, sore, saturated, scared, scarred, sagacious, skeptical, seared, surrendered,  thankful, tearful, torn, tormented, tortured, tender, truthful, taught, tickled, tamed, useful, used, unforgiving, unforgiven,  upset, unmoved, usurped, united, ugly, undaunted, vane, vicious, vanquished, vapid, valiant, verified, validated, vengeful, vociferous, willful, wanting, wasted, wild, wrong, xenophobic, xenial, yearning, yawning, yowling, yielding, yelling, youthful, zany, zipped, zapped, zesty…

   Zounds.  Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going?

   We’ve made our bed. As we sleep in it, I offer the following words in the hope that they inspire pleasant dreams. Make of them what God wills. Now, please.

     See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.  – Colossians 2:8

   Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.  – Romans 12:2

   It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes. – Proverbs 118: 8-9

   And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.  –Romans 8:28

    Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.  - Ephesians 4: 31-32

   PHOTOS from top: Broken English Readymade, mixed media, 2016; Supplication, mixed media, 2016; Supplication, detail

A Tool for the Living

 A Tool for the Living

by Tom Wachunas

   “Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.” – Robert F. Kennedy

   “Memory is the mother of all wisdom”  - Aeschylus

   “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  - George Santayana (1905)

   Program notes, ‘THE ACTION OF THE PLAY,’ provided by Players Guild Theatre: “By late summer, 1964, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy was a deeply wounded man. Still in shock and consumed with grief and guilt over the assassination of his older brother, President John F. Kennedy, on November 22^nd, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, he was at a crossroads. The 1964 presidential election was approaching and President Lyndon Johnson, who had been dangling the possibility of a vice-presidential role to RFK, finally called Kennedy over to the White House to tell him his decision. The result of that meeting and the subsequent direction for the next, and last, four years of Robert Kennedy’s life are the focus of this play.” 

   It can’t be mere serendipity that the first two productions of Canton’s Players Guild Theatre’s 2016-2017 season are such timely, gripping looks at things presidential. ‘Tis the season of our discontent. So let’s just call it sagacious programming on the part of the Players Guild. In September, the Assassins was a chilling exposition of our culture’s spiritual poverty. And now, on the cusp of a viciously divisive presidential election, we have RFK, a one-man play written by Jack Holmes (from 2005). It’s an even more searing examination of the sociopolitical malaise that defined not only our past, but our tumultuous present as well.

   I still vividly remember Robert Kennedy - the man, and his turbulent times. I was just mature enough (a high school junior) to study and admire him, even to the point of painting an oil portrait of him (which I still own and treasure, pictured above) within weeks after his assassination on June 5, 1968. So yes, this play is unabashedly nostalgic in its sensibilities, and yet never saccharine or cloying.

   The action flips back and forth – not unlike flashbacks in a documentary film - between Kennedy’s memories of both public and private episodes, taking us up to his victory in the Democratic presidential primary in California. In many ways we get a micro-history of his thoughts and actions that transpired through such pivotal and cathartic developments as The Bay of Pigs, the Civil Rights Movement, the assassinations of his brother in 1963 and Martin Luther King in 1968, and the war in Viet Nam, among others. 

   To his wholly riveting portrayal of Robert Kennedy, Aaron Brown brings  new meaning to “becoming the character.” The process must surely have been a daunting one. But in the end, Brown has masterfully crafted an intensely expressive picture of Kennedy’s physical and psychological demeanors, including the distinctive affect of his Boston accent, his often tired gait, his propensity for righteous rage peppered with impish witticisms - all delivered with arresting, at times even startling credibility.

    Particularly engaging is how the written narrative assigns a role to us in the audience and constantly re-positions our place in the action. In some passages we’re citizens of another country, or a local American crowd on the campaign trail. In others we’re the patient producers of a challenging promotional TV ad, or contentious colleagues on the Senate floor. In still others we might be guests at a social gathering, beloved family members, or reporters interviewing him in his living room. 

    Interwoven with these contextual shifts, though, is an overarching sense that we might well be the pages, as it were, of a journal, or perhaps even Kennedy’s conscience. As such we’re privy to his most fragile and tender reminiscences, as well as his deepest philosophizing. We hear Kennedy quote the ancient Greek poet and playwright, Aeschylus, several times throughout the evening. And interestingly enough, Aeschylus is often referenced by scholars as the “father of tragedy.” This in turn makes for a bittersweet connecting to Kennedy’s returning, more than once, to his haunting thought, “Tragedy is a tool for the living…” 

  This production is much more than sentimental entertainment. It is eminently compelling art - a still relevant (heartbreakingly so) and urgent call to identify, nurture, and emulate what Abraham Lincoln once called "...our nature's better angels." Angels who, perhaps, fled our midst long ago. 

    RFK, at Canton Players Guild’s William G. Fry Theatre, 1001 Market Avenue N., Canton, Ohio / Shows THROUGH NOVEMBER 13 – Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m. / SINGLE TICKETS $17 / $13 for ages 17 and younger / Order at  www.playersguildtheatre.com   or call 330.453.7617

A Dazzling All-American Mélange from the Canton Symphony Orchestra

A Dazzling All-American Mélange from the Canton Symphony Orchestra

By Tom Wachunas

   www.cantonsymphony.org

    On the evening of October 29, while the Cleveland Indians were playing the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field in game four of the World Series, the Canton Symphony Orchestra (CSO) wasted no time setting a festive mood right here in Umstattd Hall. From the rear of the house, all the CSO members - many wearing Indians caps or jerseys - strutted happily down the aisles and up on to the stage, all to boisterous cheers from the audience. Then Maestro Gerhardt Zimmermann led orchestra and audience in a stirring   sing-along of Take Me Out to the Ball Game. 

   That Tin Pan Alley classic from 1908 – the national anthem of what was once affectionately called “America’s favorite pastime” - was a fitting lead-in to the first selection on a program of all-American music, Victor Herbert’s 1893 work, American Fantasy. The work was the Irish-born Herbert’s sparkling celebration of his adopted home of America, featuring an imaginatively varied medley of indigenous songs including Old Folks at Home, The Girl I Left Behind Me, Dixie, and Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean. The finale was a delightfully unpretentious arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner. From energetic romps with a down-home feel, to passages of a more solemn nature, Zimmermann’s sensitive reading of the material was readily apparent in his ensemble’s crisp, bright playing. What could have been merely a trudging through blasé nostalgia acquired a spirit of palpable reverence.

   Next up: Violin Concerto in D Major, composed by Erich Wolfgang Korngold in 1946. The Austrian-born Korngold was already an eminently successful composer of film scores by the time he became a U.S. citizen in 1943. This three-movement work was based largely on themes taken from four of his scores. Surprisingly, the concerto was met with a somewhat tepid response when first performed by Jascha Heifetz with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in 1947. But it has since gained well-deserved attention from contemporary violinists. 

   Korngold’s writing for the soloist called for a particularly daunting degree of bravura and technical virtuosity. Here, guest artist Jinjoo Cho met the challenge with superb expressivity, playing with a fervor so sublime, so riveting, that at times she seemed to be channeling supernatural forces. Cho must be something of a shaman, or a conjurer, who has taught her instrument to sing in a voice at once bold and delicate. Her intonation was consistently warm throughout a dazzling journey into lyrical radiance that often included ravishing flights into unearthly notes in the high register, and a finale that was a pyrotechnical phenomenon in its own right. 

   In both George Gershwin’s An American in Paris, and Leonard Bernstein’s On The Waterfront: Symphonic Suite, the CSO delivered, once again, truly compelling performances. The Gershwin was a fascinating gem of sultry melancholy balanced with jazzy swag. And the Bernstein was a masterpiece of steely intensity, replete with lush orchestral textures that superbly articulated pulsing dramatic tensions, all building to an explosive and exuberant final note. Like the proverbial loud crack of the bat that signals a grand slam.

   Sigh. Oh, would that the Indians had done as much.