Business As Usual

Business As Usual

By Tom Wachunas


“There is always a demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.” - Paul Gauguin –

“The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.” -John Stuart Mill –

“We modernists are far too willing to forsake the sublime in favor of celebrating crude dabbling. Know this: history has already given us all the standards we require. We are at our best when we accept that we cannot rise above the Masters. We can only stand beside them.” - June Godwit -


It’s never a good thing when the truly excellent works in a group show are the minority components, or when genuine depth is overshadowed by hodge-podge variety and hollow facades. The last annual juried Stark County Artists Exhibition at the Massillon Museum was ten months ago. Gee, a year goes by so quickly these days. It’s baaack. And just like the early 2010 edition, this month’s annual show of 71 works culled from 320 entries is, for the most part, an anemic affair that makes me wish I had been in the jurors’ room when they deliberated. I guess it’s all just another exercise in what-if hindsight that makes jurors such easy targets. How quickly we remember.

A considerable amount of space has been given here, once again, to rather bland photographic works, both straight and digitally affected (or infected). In either case, most of the entries can’t hold a flash bulb to Stephen McNulty’s lush and expansive “Valley of Shangri-La.” Behind the camera, he’s simply in a world-class league all his own.

Among the sculptural mixed media works, “Family Group” and “Interiors” by Clare Murray Adams are truly intriguing. The former is set of four long sticks set upright on the floor, leaning against the gallery wall. Each of these domestic totems is a codified portrait of sorts, wrapped with various fabrics and trinkets. The latter is a collection of fiberous and waxy “rocks” set on a mantle, with opened zippers, revealing “clothed” interiors.

“Woman with Orange Stripe” is a stark and utterly arresting portrait of a Black woman by Marcy A. Axelband. Her riveting eyes seem intensely focused, but are they probing us, or her own condition? The matte surface is like dried earth, thinly scarred and scratched. The broken vertical orange stripe – a metaphor for her suffering, perhaps - balances her stance which oddly seems both tentative and firmly planted.

Speaking of tentative firmness, the largest painting in this show is also the most delightfully unrefined in the traditional sense of stretched canvas and elegant frame. You’ll never see “Girl in Uggs” by Patricia Zinsmeister Parker in any slick ads for fancy footwear, though the artist’s signature, like a designer brand, is nearly as prominent a feature as the ruinously crude shoes. Paint by Parker. Call it postmodernist posh panache, maybe. And typical of some of postmodernism’s more subversive tendencies, this thing is quite ugly in a beautiful sort of way. Still, there’s a lot of chutzpah beneath this unstretched foray into painterly mark-making. Amid all the smudgings, erasings, and coverings-over, the shoes are really incidental to the true subject at hand – the painter’s decision-making process itself.

For sheer, unfettered fun, there’s the hilariously surreal oil painting, “The Ravens Drive Trucks” by Erin T. Mulligan –like an elaborately framed book jacket for a Twilight Zone children’s tale. And equally hilarious is Robert Gallick’s found-objects sculpture “Button-eyed Jack Muzzled and Hog-Tied.” I hope the artist realizes it’s a wonderful homage to Saul Steinberg.

Finally, I never stop looking for good, old- fashioned, unashamedly presented BEAUTY, painted or drawn. I’m certainly not dismissing abstraction and experimentation as such, particularly when such explorations are as engaging as the works here by Isabel Zaldivar, or Sherri Hornbrook. But the specific beauty I’m talking about is the kind found only in highly skilled, sensitive, and evocative representational renderings of natural or objective reality. There are examples of that here, though precious few. “Cranberries” by Jyodi Patel is a luscious, red oil gem of a still life done in the Flemish tradition. The gray-and-white graphite drawings by Carl Alessandro are notably soft and subtle while possessing astonishingly detailed sensuality. And Brian Robinson’s sumptuously colored pastel landscapes are masterful embodiments of light and texture - a pure joy to behold.

So OK, there are some very fine pieces here. But only some. Now, back to the easy targets. The jurors for this exhibition, perhaps over-zealous to present a diverse exhibit, have compiled a collection largely memorable for its spectacular mediocrity. Other than that, it’s a great show.

Photo: “Girl with Orange Stripe,” mixed media by Marcy Axelband, on view in the Stark County Artists Exhibition at the Massillon Museum, through November 14.
121 Lincoln Way East, downtown Massillon/ (330) 833 – 4061
www.massillonmuseum.org

Strings Attached, Gloriously

Strings Attached, Gloriously

By Tom Wachunas




An air of anticipation has hugged the loyal audience of the Canton Symphony Orchestra (CSO) like a warm blanket for weeks now, and understandably so. October 10 marked the opening of the 2010-11 Masterworks Series at Umstattd Hall. But this is no ordinary season. As Maestro Gerhardt Zimmermann stepped up to the podium, he was greeted by an affectionate standing ovation, in acknowledgement of his 30th anniversary as CSO Music Director and conductor. Not that the audience had reason to expect anything less than an excellent concert, but when all was said and done, even the most seasoned listeners were, in the end, extraordinarily elated.

Credit, in large part, must admittedly go to Beethoven. Equally important,however, is the matter of Zimmermann’s stated personal and passionate identifying with the Seventh Symphony, which closed out the evening. The program prior to that, though - which included Inspiring Beethoven by American composer Kevin Puts, and Dvorak’s American Suite - was ingeniously selected to whet our appetites for soaring lyricism, melodic power, and unfettered rhythmic panache.

The title of the Puts work became all the more intriguing after Zimmermann explained its concept (also laid out by the composer in the program notes), citing its metaphorical image of Puts inviting and inspiring the spirit of Beethoven to come forth. And, it would seem, he did. Very early in this single-movement work, Puts quotes two measures of Beethoven’s pulsing rhythm from the first movement of his Seventh Symphony. Then, after a crescendo into an explosive exclamation from the percussion section – which was more audacious and crisp throughout the evening than I’ve ever heard it – the piece became an ocean of swelling emotional tides. Sometimes doleful, sometimes dream-like, we hear Beethoven negotiating his deafness and despair. Later the orchestra became a gathering storm of cacophony that seemed to miraculously resolve into a sustained, even light-filled quiet. Here then was the orchestra as collective aural poet and communal Muse.

In the CSO magazine-format program for the season (a delightfully new and substantive addition this year), Zimmermann speaks of his enthrallment with the sound of strings that inspired him to become a conductor. So the Dvorak work here was a fine vehicle for him to show his oft-demonstrated mastery at drawing out the single most compelling quality of this orchestra – its astonishingly skilled, lush and unified tapestry of string sounds. Dvorak’s American Suite has long stood in the shadow of its famous cousin, New World Symphony, but its comparative modesty seemed far from the minds of the musicians on this occasion. They played it with a palpable, celebratory energy that brought its nostalgic nobility and dramatic lyricism to refreshing life. Particularly notable throughout was the precision and warmth of the many pizzicato passages that imbue the work with so much charm.

“This piece literally saved my life…,” Zimmermann says in the program article about him. He was referring to the first time he heard a recording of Beethoven’s Seventh, just prior to beginning his college studies in 1963. And here, while Zimmermann’s typically relaxed conducting style was clearly evident, belying it was a subtly perceptible, quivering intensity just as clearly communicated to the artists in the orchestra. The Seventh is in his blood, the very life of it in the orchestra. The performance proceeded at a breathtaking pace, yet never once losing a lick of precision or thunderous snap, never once diluting the work’s awe-filled drama or its imperishable spirituality. The final movement – a veritable joy train gathering speed - was a roof-shaking celebration of pure, rollicking vivacity. Liszt is said to have called the Seventh “the apotheosis of rhythm,” and similarly, Wagner said it was “the apotheosis of the dance.” Either way, the immediate and ebullient response from the audience was ample proof that we had just undergone an experience of religious dimensions.


Photo: “Concert of Angels and Nativity (detail)” oil on wood, 1515, by Matthias Grunewald.

Right Times, Right Places

Right Times, Right Places

By Tom Wachunas


In the Canton Symphony Orchestra’s 2010 – 2011 Season brochure, Gerhardt Zimmermann is quoted, “This piece literally saved my life…” He was referring to his passion for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, one of the program selections that opens the season celebrating his 30 years with the orchestra. During a conversation over a leisurely lunch in downtown Canton last April, I asked him to elaborate.

He explained that prior to his studies at Bowling Green State University (begun in the fall of 1963, and where he earned a Bachelor of Music Education degree), he saw himself simply as a band conductor, had never listened to classical music per se, and didn’t even own a record player. “The music department chairman said that would be a nice Christmas present,” he recalled, “and so my parents went into a furniture store and bought me this little baby-blue Voice of America record player, and along with it came five free records.”

One of the recordings, which Zimmermann still owns, was of Toscanini conducting Beethoven’s seventh symphony. Zimmermann was clearly moved by the memory as he spoke in slow, measured words, “And I took that sucker to bed with me every night for a month and played it. It was, ahhh… I mean the rhythm and the intensity and everything.” With an infectious, hearty laugh he added, “So when I sat in an orchestra after that I was primed and ready to bite the bullet, so to speak.”

What preceded – and certainly followed - such an inspiring epiphany is, on the face of it, a study in serendipity. Born and raised in Van Wert, Ohio, Zimmermann’s earliest aspirations were anything but musical. “My dream was always to be second baseman for the Cincinnati Reds, because I loved Johnny Temple,” he recalled. “I had Polio when I was seven, but I thought I could get over it all the way until I was in junior high school. I was stubborn about it, even though the doctors said I would never walk again.”

In the fourth grade, after satisfactorily learning to play the Tonette (at that time a requirement for all elementary school students), he was asked if he’d like to be in band. He was discouraged from taking up his first choice - drums. “You know, you should really take a real instrument first,” he remembered the band director telling him. And here came that infectious laugh again, with just a bit of mischief, as Zimmermann shared an afterthought, “Now, I use that against my percussionists when I need it.”

As it was, he chose the trumpet, and envisioned himself becoming a band director someday. Fast forward to his audition on second trumpet during a rehearsal with the Bowling Green orchestra. He had never previously heard an orchestra in a live setting – only a handful of recordings. “After that rehearsal, that did it,” he said. “All the colors that you hear with the strings and the winds. That was it. I didn’t want to be a band director anymore. I just fell in love with the string sound.”

From this point onward, the interview became something of an autobiographical marathon as Zimmermann recalled, with astonishing detail, all the faces and places (too numerous to list completely here) along the winding road that ultimately brought him to Canton. “I guess the reason I say all this,” he explained, “is that I tell my students that finding a conducting job is 90 percent luck. You need to be in the right place at the right time. Once you find that break, then you’d better have that extra ten percent to prove yourself.”

His college days were peppered with various teaching jobs in elementary and junior high school music programs. In one bewildering and unusual situation (student teaching), he was required to teach elementary school violin while learning it at the same time. “I had to sit on those silly little chairs that the fifth graders sit on. Well, you learn by fire.”

Zimmermann earned his MFA in Orchestral Conducting at the University of Iowa in May of 1972. Several months later he began teaching at Western Illinois University. In his first year there he tied for second place in a conductor competition in Chicago, overseen by Georg Solti of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He remembers Solti saying, “It is unfortunate that you are a conductor. You will not be able to get enough power out of the orchestra.” A year later, Zimmermann learned that Solti’s comment was meant to convey that his (Zimmermann’s) physical condition would undermine his ability to withstand the rigors of the conductor’s life. One need only peruse his bio on the Canton Symphony website to see vigorous evidence to the contrary. Reflecting on Solti’s assessment, Zimmermann said, “That’s when you learn about prejudices. Not skin-color prejudices, but other kinds of assumptions.”

During the summer after his first year at Western Illinois he actually turned down an offer to be assistant conductor of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. “I didn’t have the guts to go into the head of the music department at Western and say I’m resigning, since I was the fourth conductor in four years, and the school year would begin in six weeks” he mused. But several months later he was persuaded to reconsider. He went to St. Louis to hear a concert and discuss the job, accompanied by his fiancée, Sharon. The story prompted another observation about his life journey. “She’s still my wife, which is another unusual thing for a conductor,” he said proudly. “I’ve been married for 36 years to the same woman.”

Zimmerman’s eight-year tenure as assistant conductor of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra began in the summer season of 1974 and was comprised of one year under Walter Susskind, three years under Jerzy Semkow, and four years as associate conductor under Leonard Slatkin. During his seventh year, 1979, his manager found out that Canton was looking for a conductor and was interested in hiring Zimmermann. Reluctant at first, Zimmermann came here to hear the orchestra. After the concert he went out with Linda Morehouse and Bill Blair (who had gone to St. Louis to hear a concert that Zimmermann conducted), talked until 2 a.m., and accepted the job.

Looking back at that time, Zimmermann observed, “I needed to make the next step from being an associate. I needed to have an orchestra of my own. They wanted the best orchestra they could have and I felt there wasn’t any of the board politics that can muddy up the works. It was a good fit. I think this orchestra, like the North Carolina orchestra when I went there in 1982 (where, concurrent with his position in Canton, he was Music Director and Conductor for 21 years), was hungry. They were hungry to play well and they wanted someone to demand that they play well.”

Is there a philosophy behind the chemistry between conductor and orchestra? Zimmermann has told every orchestra he’s ever worked with, “The better you get, the more I’m going to demand from you. There’s only one sound I have in mind, and that’s the sound of the Cleveland Orchestra, the sound of the Vienna Philharmonic… I don’t care whether you’re students or not. That’s the ideal you should always work toward.”

The Maestro acknowledges that in pure technique, there are orchestras that give “cleaner performances” than he might offer. But he’s not willing to settle for technical excellence alone. “I would hope my performances at least bring some excitement to the table,” he said. “So most of the time in rehearsal, I work a lot on musical ideas – the sound. I have found that if you start there, fifty percent of the technical problems will take care of themselves, instead of wasting too much of your time on just that (technique), and then you don’t bring it up to that higher level.”

He added that beyond the remarkably disciplined and gifted individuals who actually perform the music, there is another vital component to the healthy working atmosphere of the Canton Symphony Orchestra. “It’s amazing how much an orchestra depends not only on who’s sitting in those chairs, but the leadership from the board and the management.”

So, really, how is it that a boy with Polio goes from dreaming of playing professional baseball in Cincinnati to showering Canton with the glorious music of the masters for 30 years? Only serendipity? Just the random vagaries of luck? Or something of a higher order? Late in our talk, Zimmermann at one point paused and, with a look of genuine wonderment, said, “My career has been very unorthodox. Someone somewhere helped me, was taking care of me.” And for all of that, we’re blessed that he had his extra ten percent well in hand, proved and multiplied now beyond measure, as he continues to regale us with the rhythm and the intensity and…everything.


Photo of Gerhardt Zimmermann courtesy www.cantonsymphony.org Visit that website for information on the orchestra’s 2010-11 season.

This Time It's Personal

This Time It’s Personal

By Tom Wachunas


Last night I heard a grown man cry fire in a crowded theater. He incited the attending throng of opinions, dispositions, biases, and moral stances within the confines of my assumed solid frames of reference about art and artists to rush wildly hither and yon, and they’re still smoldering. A riot of thinking broke out.

The man in question is Craig Joseph, who played the lead in Lee Blessing’s stage satire about government arts funding practices, “Chesapeake,” now showing at the Kathleen Howland Theatre in downtown Canton. Did I say ‘played the lead’? Mr. Joseph IS the play, as it’s a one-man affair. So it would be a hollow compliment to say you can’t take your eyes off him. There’s nothing else to look at in this production – no set, no props (other than the startlingly real fidelity of off-stage dog barks), no lighting changes. This nearly two-hour (with an intermission) monologue is delivered in a black box. And yet it explodes with all the complicated colors and textures of clashing ideas and personalities. Joseph is a proverbial and otherwise riveting man of a thousand faces (and voices to match) who, under the direction of Ingrid DeSanctis, brings Blessing’s tale – maddeningly compelling and preposterous – to cantankerous and hilarious life.

“Chesapeake” is the story of performance artist Kerr (pronounced cur) who has been stripped of his NEA grant through the machinations of a powerful conservative homophobic congressman from Virginia, Therm Pooley. Kerr decides to turn his plight into his finest performance piece ever by kidnapping the Senator’s beloved Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Lucky (aka ‘Rat’), and turning the nationally popular pet against his master. By the end of act one, Kerr’s plot backfires and results in tragedy. Act two is an unexpected romp into surreal if not magical transformations for both Pooley and his nemesis.

The content here is eloquently – even poetically – written, and is unmistakably drawn from the volatile 1980s when Senator Jesse Helms waged his war against the ‘curs’ of the art world who used NEA funding to foist their ‘despicable’ and ‘immoral’ art on the outraged masses (who at the time, by the way, were paying 88 cents a year, per capita, for the privilege). This prompted a bevy of guerilla art attacks on the conservative, big-money art establishments of the day – translated here into Kerr’s attack on Pooley. Blessing presents a picture of the issues that in some ways undermines what would appear to be his overarching support for uncensored government subsidizing of the arts – a sabotage of sorts. On the one hand, his “hero” Kerr unapologetically celebrates deliberately inflammatory and vapid art content, with the self-important, fiery declaration, “even failed art is better than no art at all.” So then on the other hand, Kerr’s teary-eyed, loving prayer (to a God whose existence he doubts) for embracing the healing power of art to enlarge and enrich us comes off slightly more as insipid moralizing than real heroism. He’s an adult who claims his sacred right to be forever the incarnation of neoteny – a permanent juvenile, a perpetual puppy. If nothing else, the play brings to light our societal confusion of rights with capacities.

Amid all the personal, philosophical, and religious tensions entwined in this topical ‘fiction’ that still cry for resolution, Craig Joseph has completely invested himself in the intricate, often beautiful verbiage, and the succinct portraits of the characters that surround Kerr. Joseph does so with memorable panache, and an astonishingly keen ability to balance both comedic absurdities and searing drama with startling credibility. He’s the real hero of the evening.


Photo: Craig Joseph, who plays Kerr in Lee Blessing’s “Chesapeake.” At the Kathleen Howland Theatre, located in the lower level of Second April Galerie, 324 Cleveland Ave. NW in downtown Canton. Performances run Oct. 8 – 17, Friday and Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 2:30 PM. Admission $10 at the door. www.secondapril.org/theater

Hot Licks, Crazy Chops, and All That Jazz

Hot Licks, Crazy Chops, and All That Jazz

By Tom Wachunas


Aegolius could stand it no longer. They had been walking in silence for what felt like too long since the music ended, and he simply had to know. “So then,” he asked Nyctea, “did you like the concert?”
She stopped walking and, still looking straight ahead, answered slowly, “I think…it was very…cool. Isn’t that the word you use for this kind of music?”
“Oohh yes, YESSS,” Aegolius gushed. “Very cool indeed! And that axe man! Crazy chops!”
“Crazy chops?”
“Uhmm…he is an excellent guitar player.”
“Ahhh,” Nyctea nodded, a gleam forming in her eyes. “Now I remember. Supermurgitroid!”

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


While some of the slang indigenous to the jazz music of the 1940s and 50s is not commonly used anymore, it is nonetheless a language as unique as the music it described. My own appreciation of language often compels me to find, or invent, descriptors appropriate to the art I encounter. And so it is that the art of Elizabeth Babb presents something of a challenge, albeit a delightful one. Her oil and water media paintings, along with woodcut prints, are currently on view through October 30 in the Main Hall Gallery at Kent State University Stark, in a show called “Jazz Zounds.”

I’ve often gone to the world of music to get at defining the spirit of various artists’ visual explorations, and it’s apropos here, given, for starters, the show’s title. Babb is clearly enamored of jazz – here the kind of jazz with wildly variable rhythms, textures, and shifting, organic thematic structures.

When I spoke with her, the word ‘intuitive’ crept into our discussion, which was understandable enough. But she’s somewhat reticent in latching on to the term, seeing it as too suggestive of generic associations with femininity. Fair enough. Improvisatory, then. Ahh, now we begin to get at how her pictures seem to formalize the energy of musicians exchanging free-form, spontaneous solos that thread through and around a melody.

Beyond musical metaphors, there are clearly other influences afoot. Several of Babb’s paintings have a distinctly, though not strictly Cubist esthetic at work – mostly in how the picture plane has been fractured and fragmented, its ‘space’ pushed forward into flat shapes of varying size and character. Those shapes, in turn, are often embellished with ornamental flourishes of brushy arcs, dots, and stripes, and always painted with confident, expressive fluidity. This, combined with an electric palette reminiscent of the Fauves from early in the 20th century, as well as a design sensibility sympathetic to Art Deco configurations, makes for a hybrid body of work (these pieces are from 2005-2007) that is at once visually busy and intricate, and unashamedly decorative.

“World on a String” is a marvelous example, with its staccato arrangements of hot and cool accents, improvised and into an architectural and figurative landscape of sorts. And the stunning black-and-white woodcuts (three called “Jazz Man”) are intimate, playful nods to Picasso-like portraiture.

So, Expressocubideco is one possible assignation. Then again, I can just as easily defer to…supermurgitroid. Crazy chops, man.

Photo – courtesy Jack McWhorter: “World on a String,” oil, by Elizabeth Babb, on view in “Jazz Zounds” at Main Hall Gallery, Kent State University Stark, through October 30. Gallery hours are Monday – Friday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday 10 a.m. to noon.

Sense and Censorability

Sense and Censorability

By Tom Wachunas


“Censorship is advertising paid by the government.” – Federico Fellini –

“Censorship is the height of vanity.” - Martha Graham –

“Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art.” - Pablo Picasso –


There’s a wealth of implications and questions folded into that last quote. On one level, the artist is promulgating censorship of art. On another, we’re confronted with the task of defining just who or what is innocent, chaste, and sufficiently prepared. And in this era of moral relativism and giddy tolerance for ideological pluralism – an era that many discern as “the last days” – the task itself seems to be a futile exercise. Lincoln had it right, even though he wasn’t talking about art: You can’t please all the people all the time.

And so it is to be expected that not everyone who sees “Uncensored,” the national juried exhibition currently on view at Anderson Creative, will be pleased. In fact I recommend that even the most free-thinking adults think twice before having “ignorant innocents” in tow – be they children or, for that matter, colleagues who are easily incited to fits of mortification and outrage over “objectionable” content, conceptual and otherwise.

The show is one project among several upcoming in Canton acknowledging National Anti-Censorship Month. Culled from more than 80 submissions from across the nation, there are works here by 25 artists, with a healthy dose of locals in the mix. The selected works – each with an accompanying artist’s statement – present an eclectic range of messages that embrace politics, war, religion, and sexuality. It’s a celebration of not-so-strange bedfellows, really, and somewhat to my surprise (relief?), on the whole rather tame compared to the “censorable” art that caused so much iconoclastic furor in the late 1980s. Even the uniformly gray gallery walls have a calming effect that sets off the work quite handsomely, and in the process, intended or not, act as a metaphor for the gray areas that surround what we might consider to be inflammatory or obscene. It’s often a very thin line between “good taste” and what tastes good.

Some of the artists here, according to their statements, have experienced censorship of their work directly, others indirectly, and still others have made works that knowingly deal with potentially “controversial” issues. It’s hard to take offense at the charmingly executed collage, incorporating very sketchy renderings of seven nude women, by Gail Wetherell-Sack, called “You Go, Girl!” Still, she explains that she was asked by a local presenter (who shall here remain nameless - I censor myself), mounting a First Friday display of her work, to not show any nudes, as Christians would be in attendance. Never mind that in these times, “Christian” as a term is, unfortunately, open to interpretation, as is “obscenity.” So I can well imagine the same presenters being utterly horrified by Kim Truesdale’s jarring but well-painted oil of a fully frontal, spread-legged nude “virgin,”- part of her exploration of Islamic promises to martyrs.

Elsewhere in matters of religion, “Religious Flight,” a mixed-media work by Laurie Fife Harbert, is a gripping admission of her stuggles to come to terms with her own spirituality amid societal promptings, pressures, and legalistic definitions. Gripping too, literally and metaphorically, is the painting “First Love” by Lisa Jackson Wood. It’s an unabashedly beautiful and honest testament of faith in and affection for Jesus, which is itself, ironically enough in our volatile era, an act of courage.

One question that comes to mind throughout this show is what we define as truly obscene in our culture. Vicki Boatright offers her angry but poignant “Government Whitewash,” an explosively tactile mixed media indictment of administration complacency and denial in the face of Katrina’s devastation. I’ve never seen a more emotionally potent and visceral piece by her –surely her best in this mode of working. Then there’s another kind of complacency and denial addressed in Shawn Wood’s photograph that speaks to the rising Neo-Nazi ideology in Europe (and here, for that matter), “History Repeats Itself.” It’s a close-cropped portrait of a Hitlerian face, his index finger drawn up to his pursed lips in a haunting shhhhh.

The small oil on mylar paintings by Jim Boden are reminiscent of the 1970s mangled Polaroid self-portraits of Lucas Samaras. Boden’s images of smeared, distorted anatomies have a deceivingly earthy beauty that belies their subject matter – government practices of war-time torture glossed over as “enhanced interrogation.” Don Parsisson’s “State of the (Dis)Union” is a pair of giant (9’ high) back-to-back chairs, curved to lean away from each other, painted Republican red and Democrat blue, each with an upside-down American flag attached. Distress signal indeed. Unreachable by us little folk, this is the social climate of our time: Would-be political leaders seated on their thrones, incapable of seeing eye-to-eye, spewing their venomous dogma into the wind.

Judi Krew’s engaging “Porcelain for the Paranoid” collage features a pristine white toilet against a cosmetic populace - a backdrop of faces with a vast diversity of pasted-on expressions. Her statement addresses a fascination with waste elimination. I’m reminded that when it comes down to determining what is most edifying about the art we digest, only time (sooner than later?) will tell whether or not we see the more excretory practices and expressions of our day for what they are. Then all will, as it were, come out fine in the end.

Photo: “No Art,” by June Godwit/Group Scud, New York City, circa 1987.


“Uncensored” at Anderson Creative, through October 31, Tuesdays- Saturdays 12-5,
331 Cleveland Avenue NW, Canton. www.andersoncreativestudio.com

In Praise of the Divine Duvet

In Praise of the Divine Duvet

By Tom Wachunas


Aegolius marveled at the beautiful jeweled garment displayed in one of the museum’s glass showcases. After he read the plaque that explained its history, he was puzzled. “It only says that it illustrates the Legend of the Mishamu,” he said to Nyctea. “But what then is the Legend?”
Nyctea stepped closer to the display, searching it carefully, her eyes glistening with delight. Then she giggled and said, “Well right you are. Maybe I should tell the curator the story too! The Mishamu were an ancient migratory people, ashamed of their plain appearance. They believed they could win favor with The Creator, and stand once again in his presence, if only they could clothe themselves in robes like the one he made for Lucifer. It was a magnificent robe, as large as the earth, and made of precious stones. When Lucifer was cast down to earth, his robe shattered into millions of tiny pieces. The Mishamu spent all their days wandering, looking for pieces to make their robes.”

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


Some of you might recall my mention of Carole Pollard’s work in my August 28 post, “Anima Humana,” which was about a group show at Summit Art Space in Akron called “My Spirit Rises.” Therein I fairly raved about two of Pollard’s quilts – “Awakening” and her triptych, “Melville’s Angel (I, II, III).” Fortunately for Canton viewers who missed the Akron show, those works plus eight other of her quilts are now on display through November 4 at Stark State College, in the second floor gallery of the Student Center.

Maybe a new word needs to be coined for this show, to circumvent tired clichés like ‘stunning,’ ‘breathtaking,’ or ‘astonishing.’ Let’s for now just call it Pollardian. The bar she has set in the realm of quilting (or fiber arts, if you prefer) is a lofty one indeed.

While there are some pieces here that are relatively rudimentary in structure and design, even the simplest (‘earlier’ works, perhaps) are exciting in their own right – particularly for their color. But the quilts that break the picture plane, as it were, with their astoundingly complex print and dye patterns, as well as delightfully eccentric rhythms of stitch and patch work, are certainly the most compelling. In that area, “Things Fall Apart” is a good (and humorous) example for starters, with its deliberately frayed edges and tangles of loose thread that punctuate its interior intricacies. Speaking of punctuation, when you look at “Chi,” don’t miss the tiny yellow and light blue triangles right in the center of the black-and-white Yin-Yang motif. They bring the rainbow periphery of the quilt into a vibrant counterpoint, like going from a whisper to a shout.

And once again I was drawn to “Awakening.” Not that I’m lazy or at a loss for words, but I think I got it right in my first assessment of the work when I saw it in Akron. So I’ll quote myself: “The thread work alone… 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.” Additionally, the contour of the piece suggests a butterfly, or maybe a symmetrical universe unfolding in all its sumptuous textures and minute visual configurations.

There is about these Pollardian miracles of fiber a distinct spirituality – a visual and tactile magic at once archetypal and very contemporary. They conjure things both deeply personal and downright cosmic. Micro- and macroscopic. They might even be the raiment of angels.


Photo, courtesy Stark State College: “Awakening,” quilt by Carole Pollard, on view through November 4 at Stark State College Student Center. RECEPTION FOR THE ARTIST in Room 204 on WEDNESDAY, Sept. 29, 5 to 7 p.m. Gallery viewing hours 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday – Thursday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, and 8 a.m. to noon Saturday