REVIEW: "In the Zone" at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center

By Stephen Orloske

There are nine artists displayed in The Brattleboro Museum and Art Center's third triennial In The Zone, a juried show of local artists, selected this year by Christine Temin. Nine artists makes for a lot of art, of course, so this post will not be about them all, but rather just one. I suggest stopping by; you will assuredly encounter something interesting. Of note: an immense, nine-foot ink painting by Leonard Ragouzeos; a wheelchair that serves as screen and silhouette for a projection by Le Xi; wool spun into eviscerated, cocoon like bodies and hung from meathooks by Nancy Winship Milliken.

All the Trappings: The Best Laid Plans by Angela Zammarelli is a cardboard domicile occupied by a character who is connected gas mask like to headphones. The room is lit an ill green. The walls are cacophonous. Everything is comfy, everything looks miserable.

When you approach the window, like Robert Burns you overturn a mouse's nest. The world of this character is bared by you, the viewer. Is it asleep? Well, who just stares? How can it live with that wallpaper? What if it put on those headphones? Inquiry is like the plow, it alters the whole landscape. A truth you might arrive at: if this tableaux were unpaused then no telling what might happen. Sure, you look in and feel anxious, depressed, but personifying this character leads you astray. This is a world distant as you to a mouse and the worlds of mice are lightless fecal stank holes that we would sooner call graves than the breeding grounds they are.

All the Trappings means this work is talking about inauthenticity and The Best Laid Plans of mice and men gang aft agley, and leave us nought but grief and pain, for promised joy! This leads to common wisdom: live a lie and you'll be miserable. But Zammarelli goes elsewhere. She explores that misery, finds the depressions and neuroses that arise, embodies them in a character, then entombs them in art. Of course, neurosis is particular, which is why we are at a loss when attempting to explain what's seen. But the mood is relatable, visceral the way want and repulsion emanates through the window. What is captured is how neuroses exist as irrational nests within the mind. Like mice they squirrel in, eat of our food, run across our rooms and drive us bonkers.

Most striking is the way everything looks comfortable, though. I would get ill in this nest, be anxious in this character's company, grow depressed in the claustrophobic reality, but all the while I feel I'd be comforted. This captures a truth about neurosis: despite its irrational, inexplicable thoughts and behavior there is comfort in the repetition of its needs (and same can be said of trappings, of the irrational signs of status and need of them). Neurosis erases time, it takes away the trouble of considering past and future and renders us animal, a creature concerned only with immediacy. Even if the subject of that immediacy is something anxious or depressive it relieves the weightiness of being human. Look in the window, upon this character, overturn this nest and think:

Still, thou art blest, compar'd wi' me!

The present only toucheth thee:

But Och! I backward cast my e'e,

On prospects drear!

An' forward tho' I canna see,

I guess an' fear!

In the Zone III is on display until July 3^rd.

REVIEW: Frances Wells and Kate Emlen at BigTown Gallery in Rochester

This review was first published in the March 24 issue of the Randolph Herald.

Maine Coast to the Hudson River to Rochester, Vermont

by Dian Parker

Landscape painting in oils has a long tradition in America. One of the most famous groups is the Hudson River School, a mid-19th century American art movement of landscape painters whose vision was influenced by romanticism. Their zeitgeist was to emphasize aesthetics, an appreciation of beauty and emotions – a reaction contrary to the celebration of the machine in their day, at the tail end of the Industrial Revolution. These artists lived and worked alongside the grand Hudson, attempting to replicate the beauty and majesty of this river.

Today, we have Frances Wells painting the Hudson River in all its glory, as represented by her work currently showing at the Big Town Gallery. Her palette is more subdued than the old painters, displaying an impressionistic view in muted tones. Painting on panel board, she dispenses with the heavy gold ornate frames of yore and chooses to outline each painting with a delicate gold trim which serves as an understated border for her work. The result is a mysterious blend of realism and impressionism. Moody woodlands, dreamy marshes, or a lush autumn afternoon. Her paintings are peaceful and graceful meditations, slowing the viewer down to appreciate the beauty and grand scope of the river, mountains, a barn, or a pasture at dusk.

One painting, Grove of Trees (pictured), 20" x 36", portrays a field with a line of trees in the distance. The light is tranquil, perhaps a sunset, glowing in the distance. The grass is long and flowing. Perhaps the day is humid, as is so often the case during summer in the Hudson River valley. Hook Mountain, Tappan Zee, 14 3/4" x 23 3/4" has the quality of a dream: the mountain casting a misty reflection in the river, the soft turquoise of the water with the dusky chalk-like look of pastels. Even though her paintings are small, these are big landscapes. Wells said of her work, “Painting navigates me with myself.” It is an inward journey of outer beauty, reflecting her generous and loving view of nature, which takes us inside her view.

The second artist in the current show at Big Town is Kate Emlen, another landscape oil painter, altogether different in feeling, color and tone. Her paintings come out to you, bold and forceful, full of movement. Emlen paints the Maine Coast. Big trees, rivers and glens. She doesn’t try to realistically paint the landscape; instead she manages to get you to live inside it, to feel the light on your skin, the texture of the bark, the sweep of the sea. One painting, Spring Woods II, oil on canvas, 20" x 16", shows a grove of small trees with sunlight angling through the trees. Try looking at the painting from afar, at an angle, and see how expertly she slants the light onto the blue forest floor. Another is Spring Thaw (pictured), 36" x 36", also showing trees in a forest, except you aren’t certain if it is mist hovering around the base of the trees or if it is late winter snow. Emlen’s landscapes evoke the sensation of being right there, on the soggy soil, feeling the cool air and smelling the sap on the rise.

Morning, 42" x 47", is a large landscape that greets you when you first enter the gallery. It is a view from the sea looking at the distinctive rocks of Maine along the shore, the great stones reflecting in the water, a mirage of color. A pine tree towers above and the sky is a delicate blue. Emlen said, “I like painting large. It is a physical activity, like running a mile.” She also likes painting the same subject over and over to “get it in my bones”. Her paintings get into our bones too. They sweep and curl, filled with movement and light.

The current show of these two dynamic painters runs through May 1. Their pairing is wonderful -- Wells’ meditative and subtle; Emlen’s dashing and active. What rich ways to capture the changing seasons in such diverse ways. This show is a perfect springtime excursion.

Images:
Frances Wells, Grove of Trees, 2010, oil on panel, 20" x 36"
Kate Emlen, Spring Thaw, 2006, 36" x 36", oil on canvas

REVIEW: Holly Walker and Bhakti Ziek at the Chandler Gallery in Randolph

by Dian Parker

Making art and viewing art are about seeing. Both the artist and viewer learn how to see through practice. "It is a consummation devoutly to be wished" (Shakespeare), and certainly is neither swift nor easy -- the artist and the viewer must learn to take risks. It’s a free fall into the unknown. Both artist and viewer risk not liking the finished product. Or falling in love with it.

At the Chandler Gallery through February 20 is a two person show – Holly Walker’s Haptikos and Bhakti Ziek’s Continuum. Here is an opportunity to "see" the work of two accomplished Randolph artists who are stretching themselves beyond what they had done before. Both took risks and it paid off.

Holly Walker is a ceramicist, working in clay for 32 years. Here you will not find pottery turned on a wheel. Walker’s technique is a process of pinching layers of earthenware clay into coils, then layering the coils to build form. The results are bowls, platters, vessels, urns, jars, and pots that can all be used in the kitchen. The platters are so lovely they could also hang on your living room wall (each fastened with a stainless steel wire for hanging). The step jars could stand outdoors beside a stand of lilies (bringing them in, of course, during the winter). Her work is sculpture, urging you to stroke and carry. Just looking at the work one gets endless ideas for ways to use these durable, dynamic works of art. A center piece on your dining room table. Soup tureens. Sculptures in the entryway of your house. The tiered jar in your kitchen as a vegetable peel container.

Walker’s work moves, it is active. She said, "I approach the surface of the pot as a painter, brushing colored slips over the raw terracotta surface, layering multiple glazes through bisquing." One can see her process in the work, all the way back to the original clay peeking through the glaze, around the rim or underneath. Inside many of the vessels is a deep iron glaze which offers depth and a cradle for your delicious goods or precious gems. The outside colors are rich – lime green, deep rusted red, bold turquoise, cobalt blue. Haptikos, the title of her show, is Greek for "haptic" which means the sense of touch. I wanted to pick up every piece and stroke it, feeling the pressure her thumbs had made in the moist clay; still visible, still pulsing.

(pictured at right), 11.5 x 7.25 x 14"h, is one of Walker’s pieces that could be used for many things; fruit, soup, hidden treasures, center piece or as a sculpture. Its 4 tiered lid is white with a swath of bright brick red down the center; the base is glazed in coral, warm white and rose red. A more delicate piece is Rectangular Step JarSix-Lobed Disk: Twig (seen above), 11.5" diameter x 3" high, in lime green and creamy white. It looks fragile but as in all her work it is sturdy and durable. An oval platter looks like a lyre; a bowl looks like a sleigh or a baby’s cradle, a rectangular platter is made of many different slips of color - imagine putting a cherry in each square or a dollop of sushi! Holly Walker’s work is unique and playful – a delight to look at and use.

Bhakti Ziek has been a weaver since 1969, known for her exploration of woven technology that ranges from the simplest backstrap looms to state-of-the-art electronic digital equipment. Her work is cerebral, intricate and densely woven. She shows many facets of the world in her work – stars, blossoms, shadows, sacred geometry, a house, even the mathematical computations required for her weavings. Except for her piece, "Nomad", all the work is woven with 60 vertical threads per inch on the loom (the warp) and an average of 140 horizontal threads per inch (the weft) - a mind boggling concept. Ziek’s work portrays multi leveled narratives of her inner world as if she were weaving her brain’s hologram into a 3 dimensional form. How she is able to weave so many perfect circles is as impressive as the scope of her work in this show. So many stories, so many thoughts and ideas charted through a course of one year of intensive work. She calls this current body of work Continuum representing one thread becoming 880 threads – one continuous line, a continuous thread.

In her piece, Walking (left; click on image for a larger view), 13.5" x 49", Ziek has woven together 6 panels of different mental narratives. In the detailed dense patterns of 5 panels, one can find numbers, words, flowers, a circle collage, grids in shades of blue, ochre and grey. The largest panel is the bluest. It is the sky. Combined with the density of the other panels, one feels a sense of uplift, of openness, an urge to stop thinking for a moment, to look out and to breathe deep. It is made with silk, tencel, bamboo, silver metal gimp, hand-woven lampas and weft-backed jacquard. One can only marvel at the dexterity and intensity this work must require.

There is humor too, as in Focused Distraction, 20" x 26". On one panel, against a background of lovely flower petals, is a white pentagram with words on each tip, marking the many daily transgressions - Email, Website, Blog, Facebook, Solitaire. The other panel represents the many choices Ziek has as an artist - digital, handmade, contemporary, historical. Continuum, (pictured below), 13.5" x 47.5"w, is one of her prettiest pieces, 4 panels of a striking delicious pink, with the largest panel of white on pink looking like dendrites in the brain. It is textured, the intersecting weaves revealing the volume of silk used. Nomad, her largest piece, is 6 vast panels, 60" x 164", covering an entire wall of the gallery. It is a formidable piece displaying in words all the places Ziek has ever lived - Turkey, Kansas, New Mexico, Canada, Europe, Guatemala, Haiti, Southeastern Asia, New York. It is another mindscape, capturing her many lives as a weaver and teacher and thinker. Ziek’s greatest influence comes from the Persian Safavid - court weavers from 1501. Her work even looks like the maps of the Persian Empire from that time!

Both artists are giving hands-on demonstrations at the gallery. Bhakti Ziek’s is Sunday, January 30, at 1 pm. Holly Walker’s is Sunday, February 13, at 1 pm. These are wonderful opportunities to explore their working methods and to ask questions.

Art takes time to "see" because it takes the artist time to make the work. Energy begets energy. Be generous when you view art - open yourself to the mystery of seeing the mind of an artist in material form. If you focus on the work, the return will always be awe; even if you did not at first think you would like the work. The work in this show is not safe. Both artists took risks in order to create work that is dynamic and powerful. I could have stayed in the gallery the entire afternoon. As it was, I was there for 3 hours. And that was the second time.

Images (all photos by Michael Sacca):

Holly Walker, Large Six-Lobed Disk: Twig, 2010, Terracotta, slab, pinched coils, hand painted slips and glazes, inlaid glaze, 11.5" diameter x 3"h, tabletop or wall mount

Holly Walker, Rectangular Step Jar, 2010, Terracotta, slab, pinched coils, hand painted slips and glazes, 11.5" x 7.25" x 14"h

Bhakti Ziek, Walking, 2010, 13.5"h x 49"w, silk, tencel, bamboo, silver metal gimp; handwoven lampas and weft-backed jacquard

Bhakti Ziek, Continuum, 2010, 13.5"h x 47.5"w, silk, tencel, bamboo; handwoven lampas jacquard