Columbus, Ohio USA
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Elizabeth Ann James
Art Column Archive 1999-2003

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December 2003

Thomas R. Riley Galleries has continued to supercede its own excellence

Hiroshi Yamano creates glass masterpieces; he's a contemporary master. His current work, in this case a series employing fish as a motif, is somewhat realistic and detailed. On the other hand, it's dreamy, ethereal, provokes speculation of the artist's intent.

Yamano's glass sculptures will remain on view at Thomas R. Riley Galleries, 642 N. High Street, thru December 15, 2003. Riley is correct in saying that Yamano's consummate skill has "elevated glass beyond decor and function into art," meaning fine art, sculpture.

The exhibit consists of 18 blown worked-glass sculptures with titles that begin "From East To West." In halting but correct English, Yamano explained that "blown, worked - they're the same, glass blowing."

In fact, Yamano is familiar with traditional Japanese metalwork - even the art of sword making!

He can also plate the surface of a vessel with hot-sculpted and cold-worked glass elements. He can "roll thickly blown hot glass over silver leaf to fuse it, scratching figures into the surface; he can plate the surface with copper." Thus, the silver-sided ultra-gleaming fish!

The fish: These fish range from around 6 inches to 11 inches long. They droop, curl, hang, suspend. They gleam.

"They're frozen in time," Riley explained. There is a sameness to the many curved and drooping creatures and their enclosed aquatic environments, but there is an engaging individuality among them as well. Tinges of color on tails and fins vary. The fish and their environments are breathtaking.

The containers: With special drills "similar to dental instruments," Yamano can etch the surfaces of his fish-containers with images. In many cases he etches mini fish, tiny line-drawings which embellish the outer surfaces of his containers and baskets with all-over designs.

A statement from the Trevor Gallery in Seattle reinforces the concept of motif: "Yamano's trademarks are fish, oceans, and mountains." The fish speak of his wanderlust; the mountains refer to his stays in the U.S. His oceans and lakes (that the fish swim in) symbolize Japan.

Fish Catcher Bag Type #66 - Outside: This glass catcher bag, a mottled bronze in tone, is at least 19 inches tall. It does not appear to be entirely glass but it is. It seems to have an outer surface that is painted wood or clay. On the tan surface, Yamano, with that special drill, has etched tiny fish swimming with pale open mouths. They have teeth. They grimace.

Inside: As do most of Yamano's fish containers and catchers, this one has a clear glass port hole, a long oval in front thru which, toward the top, two, sometimes three, long fish are visible. In front, the silver fish has a faintly magenta tail hanging over the top. In back a second silver-sided fish curves a silver tail.

Immersed in glass, swimming or suspended, hanging within depths of a cloudy blue which settles into a faded yellow green toward the bottom - one can gaze upon Fish Catcher Bag Type #66 and continue to notice more details. Yamano's realistic fish have wide mouth lips, fins, and gills. Their glass eyes contain pupils. They are marvelous fish. They seem to escape Fish Catcher Bag Type #66 and to multiply. There are five of them on the Fish Hanger #25!

From East To West Fish Hanger #25: This sculpture/construction, one of the hangers, consists partly of a black frame. #25 is a two-section hanger with a top and a bottom. A yellow sea tone prevails in the glass here, with clear overlays. Yet Yamano's fish remain obstinately silver. On top, the catcher bag holds two fish with tails hanging over the lid. The lower section reveals two smaller fish curling over the sides of an etched yellow bowl.

Hiroshi Yamano, born in 1956 in Fukuoka, Japan, earned his MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology. He has shown in many fine galleries and lectured in Sweden, Ireland, Australia, Mexico, and, of course, in the States and Japan. After counting 30 solo exhibitions,

I stopped. In 1994, he entered the Japan Modern Glass Art Exhibition and won the Notojima Town Prize. His list of exhibits and educational accolades is superlative.

Of his recent youth and his ongoing fish motifs, Yamana says, "Some fish, like the tuna or the salmon, have to move, to keep moving or they die. I thought about that. I like to live like that. I'd move somewhere and I'd stay a couple years and make friends, connect, and then I'd move again and do the same thing".

At the opening, artist Xan Palay referred to Yamano's work as transformative. I'd say beautiful, precisely rendered, evoking layers of meaning.

As to the fish, although they've caught the light of gleaming moons and phosphorescent coral, they are sleek, thoroughly modern fish hooked by a contemporary master.

One more Piscean delight: three marvelously detailed women, nearly shoulder high, ceramic sculptures by Mel Rea. One sculpture is definitely a Mermaid; the other two seem to have emerged from the sea in intricately patterned ceramic apparel.

Get in the swim. See for yourself.

Mac Worthington, Genius In Aluminum

The artist grinds, polishes, cuts, spins and welds aluminum, and he does it with finesse and exactitude

Aluminum sculpture by the artist Mac Worthington continues to dance with a unique and upbeat light. It continues to sell too!

The artist grinds, polishes, cuts, spins and welds aluminum, and he does it with finesse and exactitude. - That's not easy. Any welder or metal worker knows that the welding and incising of aluminum is an intricate process. You have to be fast! Mac is very good at that; he's able to combine art and technology in a fabulous way.

What's Mac's newest thing? The Shadow Boxes,"flat aluminum paintings under glass."

One of them is Self Portrait in a black 20" x 24" frame. As a portrait, this one is highly abstract to say the least! Mac has used his unabashed love of color in arranging bright geometric shapes that touch each other but do not merge or blend.

"Deep pink, red, teal, yellow - I like primary colors. Vivid color! That's why this is me," he laughed, pointing to a big yellow circle with a bright red circle inside it, "and everything's aluminum!"

Seven, a horse flying without wings, is delicately carved, pointy maned and strong hooved. He's a gleaming aluminum wall sculpture named after Mac's own favorite horse in Colorado. He's 48 inches tall and around 39 inches wide.

Seven - he's Pegasus for the information age! Look up and there he is, flying in profile. Lucky Seven can race indoors and out.

The tables. Aluminum is soft, light, hard, and lasts forever. A Mac can be displayed, or used, indoors or out. Mac's polished (brushed) aluminum-and-glass tables are fabulous, one of a kind. They are indeed, "Art you can eat off of" as he has been known to say. At the time of this writing the Gallery contained five low-slung and gorgeous coffee tables and one full-sized dining table for four.

Aluminum supports, and armatures show thru the glass and make swirls, minimalist patterns which gleam under the glass. These subtle designs are wonderful, and you can see all of the tables, including the large "Peel" table at his Web site macworthington.com

My dream evening: at Mac Worthington's Sculpture & Design Studio, 749 N High, I sit with a spiced coffee at one of Mac's tables while Pro Musica plays something dreamy, and I see, or imagine I can see, the skaters downtown, the scrolled patterns under their blades, ice ferns. Trees by a frozen lake under my cup and saucer.

Or maybe I'd be having a cool drink. Mac has a large metal Margarita on the wall; it's garnished with a big cherry in his signature automotive red. The aluminum Martini is luscious too, with a big green olive.

Mac loves to support emerging artists, painters and photographers. In November, he showed photos by the amazing yet visually impaired photographer Traci Parks. On December 9, strong artists will celebrate the holiday season at Mac's!

Appreciation is due to Jessie Bohman and Chris Schamburg for being informed and gracious gallery hosts.

In conclusion: Mac's work sells. His art glimmers at the Columbus Metropolitan Public Library, Charles Penzone Salons, and the Sheraton Hotel in New York City. At many corporate and private venues at home and abroad, in Germany, and on the Worthington Green. To paraphrase the slogan about the Stars and Stripes: Mac's colors do not run! His sculpture is beautiful; it's unique, appealing, and lasts forever!

Hours: Wednesday-Thursday, Noon to 5; Friday-Saturday, 11-7; Sunday, Noon&endash;5. Call 294-7790 for more information or click on www.macworthington.com to see more shining examples of his work.

Chihuly at the Conservatory:

On a recent afternoon, a branch of the National League of American Pen Women met to see Dale Chihuly's glass artwork at the Franklin Park Conservatory.

Already familiar with the Great One's dramatic glass creations, I expected to view the Franklin Park exhibit with a mixture of shock and delicious awe. My expectations were fulfilled. Chihuly has demonstrated not only an exceptional aptitude for creating glass art, but a sheer genius for placing it in specific public spaces.

New sculptures were not created for the Franklin Park exhibit. Instead, Chihuly and his apprentices, as in Sorcerer's Apprentices, visited the Conservatory. They observed; they took photographs. Next, the Sorcerer, using his eagle eye, chose pieces from hundreds of existing sculptures. The show exemplifies not only fine glass sculptures, but the Master's genius at placing each of these in precisely the correct surroundings.

Colors meld and/or stand out from their specific environments, be it a miniature rain forest, a prairie, mountains, or a bonzai garden. Chihuly's glass works reflect shapes from the natural world, from what is organic.

Think of it: Patterns on the land echo patterns in the sea, in ourselves. Reeds, serpents, anemones, cacti. Cells, sinews, veins. Appendages. Venetian chandeliers. Torchieres. Orbs, spindles, globes. Chihuly knows. A few shapes are subtly dotted and striped. Some wind like serpents. Some spread their petal shapes into blossoms. Some extend like reeds. Many of them gleam in bright oranges, yellows, reds, greens, lavenders.

The Conservatory is more than a hundred years old and spacious. Although Chihuly's art is color-full the scene is uncrowded, and a lovely air of tranquility prevails. Walk over bridges and beside waterfalls. Visit the Himalayas. Listen to the tropical birds. Listen to the docent. Behold: the desert is rich with succulents, and some of them have been blown into huge blossoms and jellyfish and tall glass spikes and reeds!

Deborah Anderson, fabric artist, happened to be standing near some tall plants that resemble dotted mums: "Look," she laughed, "Chihuly painted those plants!" Maybe he had sculpted the entire garden and we were actually standing inside his imagination.

Franklin Park Conservatory is located at 1777 E. Broad Street. Call 645-8733. The Chihuly at the Conservatory runs through March 21, 2004. Chihuly's paintings, designs for sculptures, are also on view.

Retrosparks

To my readers: Matisse sat in meditation at the Rosary Cathedral in Vence, France, not in Venice, as a typo in last month's Cameo Gallery epiphany article stated.

Upper Arlington's Concourse Gallery hosted a truly stellar exhibit for TAO VII during November: Betty Collings' "For Spacious Skies," an inflated, twisted red, white and blue loop, acrylic on blackout cloth, wowed everybody. It should quickly find space in somebody's corporate head-quarters or a public site.

Thomas MacAulay had constructed a great walk-thru sized Broken Colonnade of white cardboard boxes. Ann Dewald's Neon Plastic constructions, each labeled NFS, gleamed In Memory. And Ron Kroutel has a strange flat way of painting scapes from Athens, Ohio - yes, they're darn good!

Most unforgettable: Jeanne Fryer Kohles' abstract expressionist oil paint-ings, The Table is Set and Scattering the Ashes. Fryer-Kohles' subtle on-the-edge colors, her deceptively casual use of shapes in composition, make her one of only a few actual, bedrock, abstract expressionist painters in America. Under-line expressionist. Underline actual.

Michael Jones, Marty J. Kalb, Rick Mayer, Anna Christoforidis, John Davies, William Ramage bolstered the merits of this solid multi-faceted show.

It's Worth The Trip: The Art of Romare Bearden

"The Art of Romare Bearden" will show at The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. thru January 4, 2004.

Bearden is a significant and recent figure (1914 - 1988) in American art. The show is titled "The Art of. . ." because, although Bearden was an accomplished and sought after painter, the majority of "paintings" in the show are collages.

The artist is famous for them. And he is admired for the vast range of his career which included, at various times, works verging on social realism, cubism, abstraction, and, last not least, the mind blowing collages which are a combination of all three!

Bearden was always original, created from his own emotions and observations. He was sophisticated. Cute and casual were not terms applied to his style or to his technique. He was profoundly exact at cutting, affixing, and arranging his collages.

He was engaged emotionally and socially. He grew up in the Harlem Renaissance; he out lived rock and roll, Pop Art and the sixties Civil Rights movement. He knew jazz and blues men, small country churches, lush Caribbean scenes, honky tonks, university halls and elite dinner clubs. He continued to make art. He became an American master.

A Holiday Card from Romare Bearden

Ritual Tidings, collage. Various papers, graphite.

1964. This biblical event, likely the Annunication, takes place in a rural village, probably North Carolina. Could be Kansas, Georgia, Idaho. Each color and shape in the "painting" is sharply defined and tightly conjoined. Two figures stand against a gray slat-walled house. One figure is soft, round, gray, and human. Her plump oval face contains gentle, pasted-on eyes. Her gentle head is wrapped in a bandanna. Her wide gown is floral and striped, perhaps cut from feed sacks.

One arm, stiffly angled, holds a crysanthemum from which dangles a stiff pink checked ribbon. The second figure, is dark, dark. --He, or she, is taller than the madonna figure. His, or her, stiff angelic arm has been cut from two black and white photos. The eyes are fierce; the mouth is open, annunciating. The garb is striped; a thin sharp triangle emerges from this tall figure's shoulder. Behind the two figures we see not only the slat walled house, but behind that, two favorite Bearden motifs, a small white church and a locomotive, and above it all, two white doves and two black doves against a vibrant pink sky. note: The collage Ritual Tidings is almost exactly similar to and a version of his The Visitor.

Romare Bearden once said, "All painting is a kind of talking about life. The true artist feels that there is only one art--and that belongs to all mankind."

The National Gallery of Art is located on the National Mall between 3rd & 9th

St. www.NGA.GOV. 202-737-4215.

(From the Nov. '03 issue)
By Light Enthralled: epiphany
Cameo Gallery presents "A Splash of Glass"

November brings epiphany to Cameo Gallery llc., at 772 N. High Street. The term epiphany suggests an aha! experience, a flash of insight. This November and December show, "A Splash of Glass," provides an experience in glass from the epiphany glass studio in Pontiac, Michigan.

Epiphany's state-of-the-art glass studio consists of 3000 square feet; the equipment therein was built by SpiralArts who have provided equipment for Chihuly, Lino Tagliapietra, Steuben, and the Corning Museum.

April Wagner and Jason Ruff are epiphany, and they have described their 10 year collaboration, and recent marriage, as "insight into the essence of an object and or material - epiphany." The two glass artists met when they were students at their alma mater, the Center for Creative Studies, College of Art and Design, in Detroit, Michigan.

Erin Nelson, co-owner and manager at Cameo, describes the epiphany free forms and other epiphany sculptures as "large and colorful, free form in aspect."

As quite simply described by them-selves, the process used by epiphany, is that of "blowing the glass in a free form manner." The resulting glass is sculptural, not intended as functional.

The Cameo show will include splash free form bowls that resemble large uneven blossoms with flat centers. Many of the "blossoms" are of one hue. Their single colors are pure and clear; they appear to glow. Lavender, soft purple, red, green. Violet. And, yes, some "blossoms" are striped; they ripple inside with their own colors, via the painstaking method of folding fluid cane-ribbons between molten glass layers. The completed free form "blossoms," - wavy, striped and unstriped, - have been bordered, some of them in gold, dull silver, or gray.

The show will also include wall sculptures and various large sculptural pieces. Epiphany's promotional brochure reveals appealing and complex glass sculptures such as those commissioned by General Motors Headquarters and Strategic Staffing Solutions in Detroit. Jason and April have glass in the White House Collection in Washington, D.C. Their show at Cameo should be a state-of-the-art glass experience.

I can sit in Cameo, and the light, from indoor overheads and outdoor sun, plays upon and shines thru glass objects, and I can feel, just slightly, as though I'm sitting in a chapel, the way Matisse did at Venice. Again, Cameo Gallery shows lovely art glass, and a variety of epiphany glass will be shown there thru December.

Cameo exhibits work by top glass artists year round.

The jewelry and the small object glass, much of it wearable, is splendid! Lawrence Tuber, outstanding contempo-rary glass artist from LT Glass in the Arena District, is well represented. Tuber will serve as a juror during the Columbus 2004 Arts Festival. In October, his gold-stone bowls were on view, along with his designer collaborations with Kelsey Murphy, Cameo's founder and owner.

Tuber, a Victorian Village resident, now offers beginning glass blowing thru his studio.

Kevin Pettelle, internationally known bronze sculptor, was slated for a Cameo appearance at the October Hop. His nearly life-sized woman, Salutation, makes viewers catch their breath.

Available only at Cameo: "Cameo Depictions made in heaven," fine note cards presenting color-brite scenes of the Short North, are the best anywhere.

Sparks, Sparks & Retro Sparks!

"Be strong, eat up. The fires of art burn fiercely."
-Auguste Rodin, sculptor, to student Malvina Hoffman

Dead leaves and live sparks fly over Ohio, and, from the Short North outward, the fires of art, indeed, burn fiercely. Walk up and down High Street. You'll find an abundance of art that is hot, terrific for the buying.

Splice Dance & Mad Dr. Frangst

News from the Ohio Art League:

In November Heather Mims, choreo-grapher, will present her art via the miracle of Chris Kaczmarek's video installation, at the League's gallery, 952 N. High Street. Described as "a slice, a cut, a joining; a memory joined with the present, juxtaposing the real, the remembered, and what remains," SPLICE will run thru November 29.

The dance and its accompanying sound will incorporate, relate to, the physical space in the OAL Gallery. Kaczmarek, working closely with Mims, will use ropes, stairs, projectors and projections in creating the dance environment. The work was excitingly in progress during October. Mims had not yet chosen the costumes, "not definitely, but they'll likely be white, so they will be luminous, pick up the light; perhaps we'll use the ones from Trios, a previous collaboration with Chris."

Mims, an MFA candidate in OSU's dance department, will not dance in SPLICE. The gifted OSU dancers splicing time, will be Ruth Anselm, Karen Ganin Pintot, and Tiffany Rhynard. Thru Kaczmarek's ability, you may sometimes be able to see thru them!

Mims' choreography is informed by strong interests in art, art history, and literature, "the past and the present and how we relate to people we have lost."

While choreographing SPLICE, Mims thought of her beloved grandmother whom she lost over a year ago: "I relate to her although she's not here, and to my mother but she is still here, and that difference."

(According to Jung, mom, grandmother, daughter, form a "trio" that insures human connection thru memory and attachment.)

Mim's Becoming a Woman and Other Awkward Subjects will be presented November 13-15 at OSU's Sullivant Hall Theater with Kaczmarek's sound score and projections.

Kaczmarek is a sculptor with a BFA from Appalachian University in North Carolina and is on staff in the OSU art department. In the past year he has expanded into digital video, using that medium to document performances and to create short films which have been shown in various festivals and exhibitions in Ohio and New York. Thru his expertise, SPLICE becomes choreography that's transcendent in more ways than one.

If Heather has any free time, she practices yoga and reads yoganic literature. If Chris has a moment, he plays basketball or reads. But mostly, Heather says, "We spend all of our time working, and if we have leisure time we go to galleries and dance concerts and watch other people work!"

Here Comes the Doctor

A surprise at OAL in September. An ingenious persona is dwelling among us, breaking aesthetic barriers and bestowing a hagiographic legacy of botanic and visual artifacts upon everyone.

"The Close-up World of Dr. Frangst" (aka Francis Schanberger) combined literature, science, and art in a deliciously informative manner. From a secret lab somewhere in Columbus, the esteemed doctor, a naturalist, provided, for all to peruse, an exhibit of large blue Cyanotypes complemented by mind-bending pages from his work journal.

Cyanotypes, loosely defined as early photography invented in 1841, employ sunlight and water to produce images. Frangst's large floating Cyanotypes, a strong chalky blue, are minimalist and appealing. One of them is of a tall blue shirt or smock. We hope more work by the unflappable ponderer is in the wings.

"Blue," Frangst reminds us, "is not easily found in nature ... I would like to return to a pre-Copernican view of nature." This show was both informative and enchanting.

And don't miss the Ohio Art League Annual Fall Juried Show at Fort Hayes, November 7 thru December 12, 2003. Helen Molesworth curates the show.

More Sparks

From Studios on High - and a career as an artist/teacher - Denise Romecki has been juried into the international ceramics show "21st Century Ceramics in the United States and Canada," held thru December 7 at the CCAD's Canzani Center downtown. Romecki's sculptures celebrate an ecological concern, in this case, the plight of endangered animals.

At JungHaus, belated congratulations to curator Claire Hagan who is now Claire Hagan Bauza. October brought Shirley Engleman and Viki Blinn to JungHaus Gallery, and these women are longtime winners. A group show is up for November and December with such notables as Don and Karen Jones, Elizabeth Fergus Jean, Kim Elliott, and the dynamic duo of Michael Bauza and Claire Hagan Bauza with Eric Weinberg, photographer.

"Provence is a love of life culture!" The sun of southern France glows upon the OSU Faculty Club thru paintings by on-site Provencal travelers Christiane Curry, Anita Miller, and Carol Schar with their "Three Views of Provence" thru Dec. 18.

It's a gem (and a well-kept secret): Northwood ARTSpace Gallery in the OSU office building at the corner of High and Northwood. The "My Turn" show there, coincidentally, included a lovely farewell to autumn thru art with such titles as Nasturtiums, Pine Cone and Birch, Milkweed, Lantern Dancers, Ice House. Haiku included autumn plants.

(From the Oct. '03 issue)

Living Structures at Elements of Art

Tyler Bohm: A painter rising

He's an artist armed with strong and unusual new paintings. A relative newcomer to the exhibition scene, Tyler Bohm will present "Living Structures" at Elements of Art throughout October, 2003. There will be about 18 large acrylic paintings in the show, which is the artist's first major exhibition. The opening is set to be an outstanding event, a tribute by curator Roman Czech to a young man with a promising career.

"Living Structures" is a series of large paintings that, although highly abstracted and geometric, are imbued, or inspired by, the concept of cities, actual cities and their individual structural personae.

The artist has lived in most of them - the paintings and the cities! - and has been able to capture thru his cubist-like depictions, the specific personalities of various sites, even when, at first glance, the finished work seems highly abstracted.

The artist could have easily convinced me that he had solely painted in acrylics for this project; his work appears to be underpainted, layered, varnished. Shiny, textural. And, indeed, in some cases this is so. Yet he has also used an unusual mixture of aquarelle crayons, oil stick, pens, pencils and highlighters.

The work can be divided into two categories: there are the paintings in which pure geometrics, a kind of jigsaw puzzle design, is uppermost, and there are others in which actual skylines and structures are more evident.

Short North, 36" x 60", like most of the "Living Structures," dances with strong forms, solid colors and outlines. Abstracted buildings have definite, if wavy, shapes. Behind the Short North, the tall buildings of the Columbus skyline tilt toward and away from each other.

According to my notes, the Convention Center is the blonde building; the dome of the Greek Orthodox Church is green. High Street resembles a gray snake. Perspective shifts: we look down at blue-gray curves, curves that Bohm explains suggest construction work in progress. Overall the colors are vivid, yellow with sunlight, even though we don't see the sun. Although there are no people, these structures are inhabited with motion, i.e, they are living structures.

There are dusky tan colors in Odessa, they congeal in pan-shaped squares. Like a smeared-out poem. Bohn says that Odessa, a beautiful city, has become tarnished, is decaying, but remains beautiful, with dull oranges and browns. This painting has fewer sharp corners than the others.

Vertigo, 48" x 60" is one of Bohm's "puzzle shape paintings" - my description, intended as positive and meant to convey a graphic image for readers who have not seen the painting.

Vertigo was painted, yes, drawn, upon a silver background and contains many lines, shapes, and faint color smears. It is map-like; but it is not a map. It's a fantastical architectural design as seen from above, Bohm's viewpoint.

In the lower right are two purple balls with a red ball between them. Three grey rings conjoined by the same faded purple loop form, a violet-arched logo below the upper three balls. "It's a logo, kind of, a mark," Bohm explained. "The city is a complex concept. Alive, changing growing."

Somewhere between and within the many lines and boundaries, dim and name-less objects take shape. Tiny squares, a non-pointed star. Bullet-shaped towers, puzzle pieces, intersect with each other. Vaulting lines, representing skyscrapers shoot out at us. Perspective is flat yet dizzying. Vertigo, a mixed media on canvas, is vintage Tyler Bohm.

Bohm's colleagues sometimes compare his work to Cubism. I agree with him that both the abstracted work and the more representative, appear Cubistic, emphasize the geometric, yet are not actually Cubist. Bohm tends not to "cube" objects, extra-polate from them. Instead, he employs a modus that either invents objects and symbols, as it does in Vertigo, or he transforms an actual landscape into a kind of stage design, a stylized backdrop. Short North, Odessa, Warsaw, German Village, Chicago, Edinburgh.

Bohm paints every day, spends hours at that work, and he paints looking down, with the canvas below him. This method gives his paintings a map-like-aspect. Flat and intriguing.

Born in Columbus in 1976, the artist describes himself as self-taught. He grew up in a home where artistic pursuits were fostered, however. His mother is an artist and his father is an established architect.

Bohm has lived abroad for the last few years and recently returned to Columbus.

He has an engaging interest in other cultures, languages, history, and art.

He received a BA from Kenyon College in 1999 and shortly thereafter went to live in Moscow, Russia, and later Oxford, UK, where he received a Master's of Philosophy from Oxford University in 2002. While in Russia, he worked for an American NGO and pursued his interest in Russian art and architecture. In the UK, Bohm worked for the London-based theatre company Fat Beast Productions where he designed the theater's printed materials.

He has previously shown his work at 2Co's in the Short North and at the Arcana Gallery in Oxford.

Bohm's paintings will likely be much sought after because they are attractive, original and of substance. Their emphasis is on design. They are well-painted and can capture a wall or a room from a distance, and that's an admirable quality in itself.

An Opening Reception will be held at Elements of Art from 6-9 pm on Friday, October 3. The Gallery is located at 501 N. High Street in the Hampton Inn building. Call owner Roman Czech at 451-0767 or 324-9030 for more information.

"Living Structures," a collection of large-scale cityscapes and structural arrangements in mixed media by Bohm will remain on view October 1 &endash; 31, 2003 at Elements of Art, 501 N. High Street. Hours are Tues-Sat 11-3 or by appt. Call 614-324-9030.

(From the October 2003 Issue)

Gorgeous:

Paintings by Marti Steffy

An American Contemporary at Bexley's Art Access Gallery

Color is my focus ... its use, to create an atmosphere or a mood
of a special place or a memory. - Marti Steffy

Art Access Gallery in Bexley will show "New Work" by Marti Steffy thru October 11, 2003. There are 35 oil paintings on view. The artist's previous successful efforts have included a color-dance of bright landscapes, somewhat abstracted, based on her sojourns thru Italy, France, and Spain. The painter is also known for dreamlike representational work in which gentle personages, simply rendered, converse, if silently. Marti Steffy understands what Jung called "the shadow side."

One such painting is Conversation in the Garden. It's a 4' x 4' painting. In it two women, their faces painted without detail, are shown in full-length profiles. They wear long, simple dresses. The brushwork is flat and deceptively naive.

The woman in dull brownish red sits under an unabashedly green tree, on a lounge glider that is sky blue and might even represent a lake! Her hair is black; her skin is dark. She is the figure who signifies Steffy's shadow side, the hidden dark. She is also the observer.

The second woman's frock is forest green; this woman, the one standing, has orange hair. Her face is bathed in sunrise or sunset. In one hand, she grasps a small but iconic notebook. It resembles a gray clutch purse and that is how she holds it.

The two women seem to reach toward each other without speaking. They inhabit most of the space in the painting, standing slightly off center. The background is sketchy yet potent. The garden, or park, glows with yellow, yellow greens, several greens. The mood is one of immanence, possibility. Something is happening, we don't know what. The artist has managed to infuse an ordinary moment with lyricism and mystery.

Believing that artists should not always continue on one aesthetic path but should "try other ways," Steffy has created a series of abstractions, many of them pure abstractions. Again, there are 35 paintings in the show and they are all oil paintings.

New Abstractions

One of the many exceptional qualities in Steffy's work is that, whether representational or abstract, it is highly feminine, emotional - yet, it is never syrupy or trite.

She has declared herself an intuitional painter. Her dancing, well-balanced color-segments although sometimes hot are rarely brash or jangling; instead they are blossomy and vivid. They dance together; this is especially evident in the new "Pond" series which are lyrical and bold.

Ascending Ripples of Walden I is a galaxy of colors and shapes, loosely defined objects, that rise to the surface of Thoreau's ice-cold, ever-pure Walden Pond. (July 4, 1847, is the day Henry Thoreau began Walden.) Again, the painting is a galaxy, a current of soft-edged geometric shapes. Toward the top we see violet and magenta fronds, burnt orange crosshatches, all as delicate as fern hair. The sunlight comes from underneath.

To the left a pinkish coil shape; below that, quavering ovals, seed shapes, all suggesting elements of the natural world. Less than halfway down to the right, a smudgy black square stands out. Bottom left, a second smudgy black square.

The pink coil is balanced by magenta brushstrokes. Burnt orange leaf-patterns appear. A sketchy magenta plant grows from the dark square at the bottom. Look closely - at finely drawn cattail shapes, at small dusk-rose coils. Toward the top, purple pebble shapes as vivid as grape shot.

It is hard to get an academic "fix" on Steffy's compositional intent in the Walden paintings, but it is alive and well. The color-active sections reflect and play against each other; the painting "works" compositionally; it has flow.

The pond's indefinite center is illumined with violet, with livid cobalt blue, with crashes of ice blue and white, with at least one ice white rectangle, and that is where I apprehended Steffy's concept of pond, of a Walden pure and cold, sources unknown- in 1847.

Ascending Ripples of Walden I is echoed by Ascending Ripples of Walden II. They are a pair, similar in aspect, and effective separately and as a diptych. The more effusive Sunrise, Walden, echoes the duo with a personality of its own.

Ice-crystal waters suggest Thoreau's uncompromising integrity (my interpreta-tion). Walden's clarity enabled the water to reflect sky and earth, all living things.

I found this same ethos in Steffy's effervescent abstract paintings.

Steffy is also a miracle worker when it comes to the use of magenta-cobalt-violet-multiple blues and purples. She is able to suggest thru dramatic colors and thru brush-stroked shapes and not many identifiable objects, an actual space that exists somewhere in nature.

Anyone who can resist the large abstract Carolina Marshes, 6' x 5', a high octane rush of fuchsia strikes and wild iris strokes, doesn't recognize superb painting.

In my opinion Marti Steffy is fast on her way to becoming an important contemporary American artist.

Steffy holds a bachelor of arts from The Ohio State University. She has more than once won first place awards at the Zanesville Art Center, and in 2001 she was a finalist for the Greater Columbus Arts Council Business Arts Partnership. She

has received Awards of Excellence from the Art Extravaganza in Chattanooga, Tennessee, as juried by Miriam Shapiro.

Her paintings may be found, currently, in more than 25 corporate collections and in over 90 personal collections.

Again, Steffy's "New Work" will show thru October 11, 2003. Gail Burkart and Barb Unverferth direct Art Access Gallery 540 S. Drexel Avenue in Bexley. Gallery hours are Tuesday thru Friday, 11 - 5 pm; Saturday 11 - 4 pm. Other times by appointment. 614-338-8325 or click on www . artaccessgallery. com

(From the September 2003 Issue)

Sharon Weiss Gallery

Hani Hara's August Show Glows with Affection and Imagination

Salon Show starts September; Daniel Ferlan opens October

Sharon Weiss Gallery showed paintings and sculpture by Hani Hara during August. Hara's work is available on an ongoing basis thru the gallery. His acrylic paintings dance. They glow without hi-tech colors. They glow with affection and imagination. Those qualities are somewhat rare in cubist-like works in which colors, lines, and geometric patterns seem intentionally plotted and counter-balanced.

Hara works with, often begins with, line drawings. In Couple at the Loft, 18 x 24 inches, the scène d'action is definitely a loft in an upscale high-rise. We see lines, sections of color. We note angles, squares, curves that likely represent glass bricks, steel-and-glass furniture, and Danish cabinets. Furnishings we assume would be present.

We assume that cool neutral colors would reside there. Yet, the loft apartment dances with deliciously warm colors. Because this is a delicious scene: The Lovers. They sit up front, just off center. They gaze at us. One of his arms enfolds her while the other arm rests on the sofa. She's on his lap. The duo seem to have lightly entwined after a deeper twining. Her breasts, circles, echo many patterns and remain exposed despite her figured shirt. His left shoulder and head reside in segments of yellow light. The yellows touch orange shards. The Lovers possess Hani Hara faces; their "profile" lines are soft, calm, genteel.

The room with its geometric panoply of colors and objects recedes behind the Couple thru a narrow rectangle, a window displaying other windows in other buildings. Windows as patterns. Light green-blue patches move about the room. Hara's signature hues of magenta and purple are not absent. Color divides and connects the lines. An orange sun shines rigid painted rays against blue green.

Hara loves dreams; his art reveals their complexity. The artist himself suggests that "the red curve, in the center above them, yes, it sets off the painting. Well, in a way, that could suggest a universal meaning. And that pink streak could be a fuse. Yet, this painting is about love."

Hara showed 17 paintings during August, and each tends to be as dream-like and complex as The Loft. Jerusalem/Columbus speaks boldly thru a red-and-black structure-scape, an abstract of a spiritual habitat. It is likely his largest painting. Columbus, a large cityscape, has been much commented upon. Native is gorgeous. In it a dark face in vibrant tribal robes peers thru rainforest greens (and magentas.) Chuck, a Hara-esque portrait in yellows and browns, wears a recognizable Hani-talisman, a wide-brimmed hat. Two paintings of sketchy anguished faces, Tragedy and Vanished, are September 11 tributes.

Hara's painted log sculptures-on-turn-tables "work" well with his paintings or independently. Wood blocks, many of them railroad ties, serve as rectangular surfaces that hold paintings: faces and objects against color-full backgrounds. A story unfolds when the block turns. The knots and fissures in the natural grain have become part of the paintings.

Life Ride (woodblock) shows the faces of ordinary Iraqi people fleeing bombs. Turn, and under a red sky exploding with lizards, fish, birds, a man drives a horse cart "as life goes on."

Reservation at Eight is delightful. Turn, and colors and faces evolve from night to day (or vice versa). There are around seven block sculptures. Complementing them is Modern Totem. This tall hanging plank painted with ascending modern-day faces has proved to be "a hit" and understandably so.

Hara's paintings and sculpture, their complexity and balance, are quite appealing. They manage to be derivative yet original and should prove a sound investment. Well-executed and spontaneous, they blur, successfully, the lines between decor and high art. - That's good!

Daniel Ferlan will show in October. Weiss describes him as "very different, cutting-edge, youthful."

Ferlan graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in 1996. He has shown at the notable Barth Gallery and such Short North venues as ACME, Basso Bean, and the Coffee Table. His October show will include non-traditional portraits in oil.

"It's one thing to paint your fiancé, your Dad, your friends, people you know. I wanted something else. For months I went to Goodale Park and made sketches of interesting people. I'd often see the same people. I either sketched them or took a Polaroid, and I painted them as different personalities. Some of them are cartoon-like, but it's rather hard to label my work. Yes, in a sense they are abstracts.

"My colors are warm, vibrant but not loud. You'll see some earth tones. I'm a fanatic about mixing my oil paint colors. I use a lot of paint and these portraits are very textual."

Wonderful antiques and vintage objects remain available at Sharon Weiss Gallery, formerly Antiques & Art on Poplar. There, fine art is running strong. Congratulations are due to the entire salon and to the gracious gallery director and owner, Sharon Weiss. The Gallery is at 20 East Lincoln. Hours are Thurs.- Fri. 12 noon to 4 pm. Sat.12-5 p.m. Sun. 1-4 p.m. Call 291-5683.

(From the August 2003 Issue)

ROY G BIV
Hot Times are Cool at ROY G BIV

It's almost too much for one writer to handle! I'm referring to the exciting eruption of events at ROY G BIV Gallery, 997 N. High, over the next three months.

Tara Espinoza and Nate Larson opened at the July Hop and will close August 9, 2003, so you may be able to catch them. Rachel Dove and Whitney Lee will show August 13 thru 30. A non-traditional ceramics exhibit by Ohio University instructors Brad Schweiger and Chuck McWeeny, who have been awarded Ohio Arts Council fellowships and are now creating work thru a Maine residency, will remain September 6 thru October 11. (Look for Schweiger in the upcoming CCAD ceramic extravaganza in October.)

"River Rat" with Thom Lessner and Pat O'Neill closed at ROY on June 28, and you may read about their show in my "Sparks & Retro Sparks."

Tara and Nate and Supernormal

"Supernormal," works by Nate Larson and Tara Espinoza will remain at ROY thru August 9, 2003, with a closing reception scheduled during the Hop on August 2. The two artists know technique and have control over their mediums. Larson is a photographer. Espinoza draws, paints, collages, and is a printmaker. Both artists manage to present work that is highly original yet understated.

Tara Espinoza draws small cartoon-like presentations of animals. The aardvark and the armadillo are her heroes. In many of her mixed media prints, these creatures wear televisions on their heads. (Don't we all?) Her works have weird titles, for example, blah, blah, blah in lithograph, silkscreen, and colored pencil. In blah, blah, blah - obviously I like the title - bats and kangaroos use tin cup phones! It's a miscommunication gambit.

In light blue, pink, brown with white, my favorite Espinoza, the armadillos have become a flying squadron of small etched cutouts. And they, the armadillos, or aardvarks, wear bubble helmets, and fly with delicacy through this "etching, painting, beeswax." It's an all-over pattern of flying whimsical Espinozian varks.

Espinoza often clear-tapes a creature or two on the prints, and the effect is charming, suggesting kids art. The background, an interplanetary milieu is light blue, pink, brown with white. Her creatures always prance against minimal soft-hued backgrounds.

In you know it's bad when pigeons have to defend themselves, a bubble-helmeted fox holds up a butterfly net. A squadron of white pigeons with yellow halos hold up toy guns. Their taped-on leader wears a helmet, and, well, you know it's bad when pigeons have to defend themselves.

In the conversationalist and his listener, a creature, dragon or lizard (yes, wearing a TV on its head), speaks via cartoon blurb to a frog-type creature.

Creature: "That's the last time I let Wanna Rider (Winona Ryder) borrow my helmet."

Frog: (answering from a flower pot) "Same here!"

The artist is interested in communication, its misfires and quirks, and in the thinking process; her work expresses this. She is aware of the quickness of media culture, and her use of clear tape has to do with "a deliberate disjunction of the print tradition."

The flash of Espinoza's ideas, when combined with her light masterful touch, creates an unusual and pleasing aesthetic. Her alma mater, Columbus College of Art and Design, can be proud of her.

Many Manifestations of Larson

This meld, of a daring concept to a careful understated execution, is also the hallmark of Nate Larson's black-and-white photographs. They, too, are supernormal, or perhaps, more accurately, supranormal, beyond or above normal.

Nate Larson received an MFA in photography from The Ohio State University. His medium-sized black-and-white photographs "explore the line between belief and skepticism." His cloud-scape Doorway to Heaven, a polaroid print, presages his "Manifestation" series.

In Christic Manifestation: Cloud, a pigment print, Larson has "seen" a Jesus figure in white clouds; the lithe faceless image wears a belt around his robe;

he stands among fuming clouds, is part of them. How the belt streak was "manifested" is a (technical) mystery.

The Manifestations seem to have been photographed in a windy sky. There is no earth, plane, or bird. The clouds beckon - thin, fibrous, cold and white, against the dark firmament, i.e., space. Yet, contrast is not high, but celestial. Look closely, angels manifest themselves.

Maybe someday Nate will make a wall-sized field or cloudscape, but the current skies manage to be dramatic in traditional sizes.

Larson is a "mail order" minister, interested in the fusion of the secular and the sacred. His sense of humor is light-hearted not scathing, and he understands whimsy. His appreciation of the world around him is "manifested" thru scenes of parks, fields and the clouds above them.

Anthony and Elizabeth, shows a bride and groom, yes, with Sunday suit and white veiling, getting married outdoors, and includes comments by their pastor, Nate Larson.

Larson also photographed and married David and Lisa outdoors. He likes to place one or two people against vast back-grounds where they feel at home despite the space. The aspect produces a calm wonder.

Grandmother's Dove: Heart-Shaped Wound, 12" x 16" pigment print, is a realist's photograph. We see lines and wrinkles in the woman's large hands and arms. It is a higher contrast, less ethereal photo than most of Larsons' work. Grandmother is his actual grandmother, "just as all of my photographs are real people, who I say they are."

Grandmother's real alive spotted dove, clutched in her big hands, is about to leap off the photo paper. You want to see Granny chopping steak and sweeping off the porch. Her lap is more than ample. You can't see her face; her torso fills the frame.

Larson himself appears in the luminous yet minimal Shadow Person Sight-ings, and in the Three Dowsing for Water. The image of one ordinary man against wide space, whether that space is under a stadium or in the midst of a green field, is both haunting and inviting. Spiritual yet secular, like Nate Larson.

His low-key photographs appeal thru single works and thru sequences. Note: His show also includes a rambunctious goat and the infamous Two-Headed Kitty!

Rachel and Whitney

Rachel Dove, a recent CCAD gradute, will show latchwork-derived art with Whitney Lee at ROY, August 13 &endash; 30, 2003. Edmund Gaisie, president of the board, is enthusiastic about Dove's work, describing it as "unusual, yet dealing with the feminine." It could be considered tradi-tional, including the perceived notion of women's art - flowers, sewing.

"When Rachel paints, the paint is used in a way similar to a thread passing thru the grid. Rachel tends toward warm colors: reds, burgundy, pinks. She works in oils, intaglio printing, and mixed media. I co-curated this exhibit, and I thought the two women's art with their latch-hook themes would prove to be a wonderful combina-tion. They're both terrific. Lee's work goes a bit farther in implying a feminist message. Both artists are strong."

Whitney Lee recently won Best of Show for her "Cyber Girl" series at the "Art on View" regional juried show at the Dairy Barn in Athens, Ohio.

The artist loved to latch hook when she was a child, remembers latching a big red heart. Now she has combined her digital photography with the latch-grid concept, and in so doing she has created and re-created images of women.

Playboy "girls" morphed into head and shoulder portraits of women, are presented in latch-grid mode with actual latch-kit colors, digitally derived. Using terms such as "pixels," "knots," and "grids," Lee tried to explain how she programs grids and yarn colors into her computer. (Explaining to a Luddite like me isn't easy!)

Whitney says her Playboy women, originally intended for the male gaze, reverse the sexist aesthetic when they are photographed, re-imaged, their faces cropped, from the neck up. Then, they appear to be more assertive, to look straight at the viewer.

Melody and Her Mission

Ohio University alumna Melody Worsley is director of ROY G BIV gallery which is, "first and foremost, intended to show emerging artists." Recalling her wonderful performance art days in college, Worsley stressed this mission repeatedly in her interview. In general, "emerging" describes artists who are talented but unestablished, and "for whatever reason have not been able to show widely."

Exhibitors receive educational feedback and constructive criticism from jurors, the public, peers, and often, the press. The artist's work is offered for sale with a commission much lower than that of a commercial gallery.

Beginning with a mere $25, there are several membership categories available. Membership makes one eligible for the annual members show. Non-artists are welcome to become supporting members.

ROY G BIV was founded in 1989 and receives funds from the Ohio Arts Council, The Columbus Foundation, and the Greater Columbus Arts Council.

(From the August 2003 Issue)

Spectacular Beads: The Ohio Craft Museum

"Bead International 2003" and "Beadwork III: The Beaded Cloth" will run at The Ohio Craft Museum 1665 West Fifth Avenue thru August 24. Out of a possible five stars this show deserves a seven.

"Bead International 2003" was organized by The Dairy Barn Southeastern Ohio Cultural Arts Center in Athens, Ohio. This show encompasses all sides of bead art ranging from embroidery, braiding, jewelry and sculpture. It includes work that appears quite contemporary in aspect, and there is a wide range of subject and style. You are bound to find at least several bead art objects to adore and love.

"Beadwork III: The Beaded Cloth" was organized and circulated by Bead maga-zine, and consists of over 40 beading projects with beads affixed or sewn to cloth. Much of the bead art is traditional, or, rather, reminiscent of the past, and is quite beautiful. (Much of it is modern too!)

Chris Forsythe's Geoffrey, 26" x 24," is a pelican walking sideways in the close-fit teeny tiny beads of himself. He is a no-nonsense pelican, proud and alive, almost filling his simple black background. He glistens, of course, with various rainbowy pastelly beads, with "fiber trim crimpline and black stitch techniques."

His, or her, cocky head gleams with a gold comb, a red crown. A touch of purple. His rear and tail feathers bear wispy tufts. He is a Geoffrey of now, but he could have pranced in from the last century. His wall neighbor is the 13" x 15" That's How My Garden Grows, beaded by Deb Menz. The intricate, luscious flowers are a delight for anytime, and reminded me somewhat of children's book illustrations by Fern Bissell Peate.

Laura Willits of Seattle, Washington wowed everyone with her gorgeous bead-scenes, as part of "International." These "landscapes", finely, finely, executed in loom-woven glass seed beads and neutral colors, manage to be precise yet lyrical. The classical has fused with the contemporary. Willits' City North of Home won "Best of Show."

Bopping us on the head with his bold colors is a 3-D canine driving a keen black and yellow rocket-mobile. He's On the Prowl - rhymes with growl. The sporty mutt wears bright red goggles and a bright red scarf. He's a silver (white) and black mutt who commemorates Konyak, the artist's Siberian Husky. He's a statue of sorts, in seed beads, peyote stitch, right angle weave. Valerie Harlow won a juror's award for him.

On July 11, at a gala opening for both bead shows, Dr. Rita Yokoi presented a marvelous lecture on Santo Domingo Pueblo beading. She was introduced by Joyce Griffiths of Byzantium. It was a great evening during which authentic Pueblo jewelry could be seen and purchased. Dr. Yokoi is the world's premiere expert in heishi beads and Pueblo Santo Domingo jewelry, its craft and history. She is the founder and director of The Museum of Native American Jewelry.

"Sophisticated Figures: Nontraditional Dolls by Contemporary Artists" will show at the Craft Museum September 4 thru November 2. Catherine Butler sculpture and jewelry and Fiberart Forum will accompany the doll show.

The Ohio Craft Museum, 1665 W Fifth Avenue, is open from 1 to 4 pm Sunday and 10 am to 5 pm Monday through Friday. Parking is free. For information, call 486-4402.

Sparks & Retro Sparks

Don't miss it! "Behling, Behling, & Behling" will show at Civilization 2837 Festival Lane in Dublin thru October 30, 2003. Artwork by John H. Behling and his two grown sons Matthew C. and Paul F. are bound to please and astound. This is real painting with the fine traditions of contemporary masters behind it.

The trim youthful Behling studied art in Mexico in 1953 when the great ones were still around. He knows how to paint and knows how to teach. His paintings of Bright Optimism continue to sell like an unstoppable underground river. He taught his sons to paint and they've done it well, each with his own volcanic creative spirit.

Cathy Babbit, pianist and entrepreneur, owned Civilization in Clintonville and now curates the space in Dublin. The Behling show is in The Piano Gallery in Festival Center at Civilization Art Gallery, "the discovery of Art, Culture and Atmosphere among friends." Call 793-8444.

Showing The Colors

Allen Zak, veteran photographer of the Selma March and the sixties, showed photographs from the last ten years at MPX Gallery, 3313 N High, during June. Ohio's Bicentennial outreach needs these color-full photos, many of them showing the colors, Old Glory, the flag.

We Ohioans - Columbus and Clintonville dwellers - could recognize ourselves in this show. Images are clear, lively, and strong. Many photos were shot at the Ohio State Fair. We see Fair Ladies and Moment with the Giant Chicken. We see an Elvis Sighting and Valentines Day at Big Bear! We see Fourth and Spring and the Broad Street Bridge. We see a solitary old guy in a wheel chair, looking out the window in a Veteran's Home.

Showing the Flag, inspiration for the show's title, was shot near Zak's West Como Avenue home when a neighbor agreed to help raise an actual veteran's tattered flag against a tree ablaze with autumn colors. The neighbor held up a blue service star flag (the kind you put in a window) and "wore" the newer taken-down flag draped over his shoulder.

In order to see these images contact Allen Zak at 262-4098 or email azak@columbus.rr.com. Long may they wave!

"RiverRat" with Thom Lessner, skateboard veteran, acclaimed street artist with Columbus roots, was a blast at ROY G BIV in June. Lessner's work has become more sophisticated; his new cool paint colors and the new Philadelphia posters blew me away. Pat O Dell travels and skateboards with Lessner. O Dell's shots - celebs, groupies, board parties - danced off the walls.

&endash; Elizabeth Ann James

(From the July 2003 Issue)

Columbus Museum of Art
Discover Someone You Love: American Expressionism

"American Expressionism: Art and Social Change 1920s - 1950s" will remain at the Columbus Museum of Art thru August 24. The exhibit consists of 78 paintings by famous and not-so-famous artists. Be warned: You may encounter an old love there - Ben Shahn, perhaps, whose social expressionism I would label "poetic."

Two African-Americans on his Willis Avenue Bridge, a tempera on paper executed in 1940, are eloquently but simply depicted as they sit on their bench, packages and all. It's night; white stockings, a petticoat and pajama bottoms gleam in the darkness. The young man has deliberately turned his face away from the elderly woman swaddled in dark clothes and a prim hat. His tall yellow crutches stand out like a religious talisman, and the red bridge girders suggest cathedral beams.

In George Tooker's Entertainers painted in 1960, the three youthful singers, curvaceous and scantily garbed in red, hold tambourines that are as white as paper plates. These kids are hot! They're the princesses of Round, and fill up the space from the waist up. The middle one is singing straight at us.

Charles White's three poster-like paintings, exacting and heart wrenching, depict the dignity and anguish of the black laboring man and the lowly foot soldier in WW II.

So, look out! As in "some enchanted evening you may see a stranger across a crowded room" and fall in love. I did, and you'll see later with whom.

Who Were They?

The Expressionists were skilled painters who could paint what they observed realistically. They could paint cows so real you could hear the cud being chewed just looking at their canvas. But they were imaginative painters who might decide to paint green cows with wings!

The Expressionists used vivid colors and strange angles too. They employed distortion and exaggeration in order to express how they felt about what they actually saw. In general, they were engaged politically and emotionally. They cared about the problems they saw around them.

The Expressionist movement began in Germany in 1905. The heyday was over by 1920, but the tidal waves continued to roll over European art, buffeting the New World, where, of course, Yankee artists expressed them-selves in their own individualistic and uproarious ways.

The historic period "1920 - 1950s" covered by the current Art Museum show includes many disastrous events: Jim Crow, lynchings, the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, World War II, McCarthyism. Note: A few of the paintings in the show were actually painted in the 1960s.

Mental Geography

O. Louis Guglielmi, 1905-1956, the son of Italian immigrants, grew up in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. During his brief life he was horrified by the Spanish Civil War and the rise of fascism in Europe.

Orwell and Hemingway shared that horror also, and it was during this period that Picasso painted Guernica. The title referred to a Basque town bombed by Spanish fascists/falangists in 1937. Anton Refregier also painted a Guernica and that painting, a chilling surrealist oil on panel, is in the show. In 1938, O. Louis Guglielmi painted a fantastical depiction of the Brooklyn Bridge. He then entitled this work, a rather large oil on masonite (35 3/4 x 24 inches), Mental Geography and wrote a brief manifesto in which he explained his title. In so many words, he mocked the indifference and naiveté of his fellow Americans in the face of tragic European events.

He wondered how his neighbors would feel if they were to experience war. How would Brooklynites imagine their bridge being bombed? Would they continue with their "mental geography?"

To my mind Mental Geography is one of the weirdest paintings in a show of many unusual paintings. Yet, it does not scream for attention from across the room; its mysterious shapes and outlines draw one close.

Employing an old European master's quiet palette Guglielmi has portrayed a bombed Brooklyn Bridge, the sky, and the river.

Arched and shadowy, soft orange in sunset, the bridge looms tall and gigantic. Spindly and unstrung it has been painstakingly rendered. Steel girders and tubes have dropped. This painting is murky, in color tone as well as content.

Our eyes go to a disturbingly blue sky: dark, not robins egg, painted carefully, suggesting neoclassicism thru wisps of magenta.

Composition has been carefully yet unobtrusively worked out. Part of the bridge is gone. The concrete guard rails reflect the dusky yet aqua tints of the upper sky. The only brightness comes from the sun on the top of the bridge.

With a realist's precision, Guglielmi has presented tiny human figures on the bridge. The woman is wearing a neat blue dress and her hair is neatly arranged in a bun; calmly, she straddles the side of the damaged bridge. Her back is toward us as she stares at a hole in the arches. She is about as tall as my little finger.

Two halves of a canister bomb protrude from her back. To her right, farther up, a man sits strumming a concert harp; as I recall the harp has no strings. Miniscule buildings are visible near the bridge and teeny tiny humans may be seen upon it.

Guglielmi has used a realist's finesse in order to present a horrific yet subtle dreamscape. The result is Mental Geography.

Greenwich Village, 1945

"I do know that great art can only be created out of love and that no greater lover has ever held a brush." - James Baldwin on Beauford Delaney.

Beauford Delaney's Greenwich Village made me fall in love with him and his paintings. His work was unknown to me before, as on "some enchanted evening," his painting Greenwich Village, 1945, was the "stranger" I saw "from across the room." It was love at first sight.

Love at first sight cannot be explained totally, of course, but a certain spirit, a joie de vivre, perhaps, attracted me. The scene, of course, is Greenwich Village 1945, shortly before Beauford Delaney moved to Paris.

This painting (oil on board 26 x 38 inches) is a panoply of green-and-blue brush strokes, and ah, that orange! The scene dances, yet the composition is well-balanced. The thickly applied colors dance with rhythmic texture, a homage, perhaps, to another expres-sionist whose initials are V.V.G. You see that rhythm up close. From a distance the painting opens up to a more defined presentation. A good painter can do that.

The sky is composed of dark blues and purples. A dull yellow moon, as though a child has drawn it, languishes dead center, almost touching roofs.

Everything has been carefully, mathe-matically laid out. But the affect is one of spontaneity! The moon glow is echoed by a triangle of lampposts; one is closer to us, and the moon glow is reflected by globes on the street lamps. The three green manhole covers lead us to an orange traffic box. The light falls to the right of the painting. The modest brick buildings seem made of melted crayon strokes.

Amazing Grace: A Life of Beauford Delaney by David Adams Leeming reinforced my affection for this artist who had many "important" shows in the U.S. in the thirties. But things were rough for him, financially and otherwise. As a gay black man of wonderful but humble origins, Delaney moved to Paris in the mid forties. His close friends were James Baldwin and Henry Miller and others in the intellectual and ex-patriot community.

Always sincerely engaged in love and art, Delaney eventually suffered from paranoid hallucinations which he endured with "Amazing Grace" until his death. He had many successful shows in France, including shows at the Gallery Lambert and the American Cultural Center. Illustrations of his paintings increased my affection and admiration. There are poignant and realistic watercolor scenes, and powerful, expressive portraits of Henry Miller and Jean Genet.

There is always something deliberately childlike and unashamedly sensitive about a Delaney. In one painting, Rosa Parks is naively yet skillfully depicted as dressed for a garden party, in a hat and knee-length dress. She has posed in Delaney's imagination, on a park bench; it appears to be snowing in that almost empty park in 1971, but the painter has given us a snow storm of blossoms. Some of Delaney's pale abstractions are like that.

Yet, his Marian Anderson Poster in Greenwich Village, 1951, is an amazing, nearly cubist piece and is highly sophisticated in its bold colors and design. Like all great artists, Beauford Delaney experimented and worked consistently.

Delaney's grandmother had been a slave. His father was a preacher. His mother Delia had sometimes taken in washing and cleaned houses for white people. His memories were rich and his career estimable. His loving and vibrant paintings kept his own torturous voices at bay almost to the end. He died in France in St Anne's Hospital for the Insane in Paris, 1979. He had once told James Baldwin that there was never any reason to return home since he "had never really left."

David Leeming was correct in saying "he lives on in his paintings."

Again, be warned: The Columbus Museum of Art is a dangerous place. You too may fall in love with one or more of the American Expressionists.

Danger! George Bellow's portrait of his mother broke my heart. George Wesley Bellows (1882-1925) can't be beat. I'm in love with him too! He's an old flame. His unsurpassed oil portraits, many of them life-sized, radiate with affection and dignity.

His paintings of shipyards and boxers are exemplary. And, by the way, like many of the Expressionists, he had deep social concerns. He even contributed to The Masses, (1911-1917) an arts magazine promoting racial equality and labor reform.

Bellows remains one of the great American artists. He was born and educated in Columbus where, as he said, blithely, "I rose up surrounded by Methodists and Republicans."

"By George! Columbus Celebrates American Master George Bellows" will show at the Museum thru July 27.

The Columbus Museum of Art, 480 East Broad Street, is open Tuesday thru Sunday from 10:00 am to 5:30 pm, and until 8:30 pm every Thursday. Free admission Thursdays 5:30 - 8:30 pm 614-221-4848.

Summer Salon at Gallery V
Nine Ohio Artists in a Salon Style Show Honor Ohio's Bicentennial

Thru August 2, Lynne Muskoff, director at Gallery V, will honor Ohio's Bicentennial with the works of nine Ohio artists showing at her High Street gallery. Those exhibiting are highly esteemed artists currently living and working in Ohio.

"Summer Salon" is a new-works exhibit which includes painting and sculpture, ceramics, photography, and mixed media. Muskoff is correct in saying that the exhibit is being presented "in honor of Ohio's extensive and accomplished contemporary art scene."

Barbara Vogel and Marjorie Bender, veteran artists of Columbus art venues, are new on the Gallery V scene and will have works in the bicentennial show.

Barbara Vogel, thru mixed media, based upon photography and painting, will exhibit an inventive new series. "Couples" originated when the artist decided to photograph her married friends, 30 couples, in black and white! Included in the photo shoot were her husband and the family dog, her own parents, and Ursula Lanning (of former Lanning Gallery) with Nellie the cat!

Vogel's method consists of coating canvas with a liquid emulsion, printing, then painting them. She notes that her work previously has dealt mostly with the past and that her current series focuses mainly on her everyday life. "These are all people I have interacted with, snippets of the now, little slices of life," she says.

"Perhaps I am living more in the present after I had open heart surgery a few years ago. I see in each of these a start, a recollection, recognition, a letting go, and an insight."

Marjorie Bender, who spends time available painting while she cares for her ailing mother, left her own art narrative up to Vogel: "In this show Marge will feature some new collages which are layered with family memorabilia, prints, and pigment. Her new collages are really layered. The surfaces are rich. The tone of Marge's collages tend to be either very light, including images of Shirley Temple or old movie stars, or they are full of power and angst, like her own self-portrait."

Vogel, and especially Bender, are risk takers with firm groundings in technique. Both have strong fine arts backgrounds in painting and drawing. Barbara Vogel is also an experienced photographer; Marjorie Bender is a skilled ceramicist.

In a recent conversation Vogel referred to their art as "highly personal responses to the world around us."

Barbara Gibbon, a 2002 graduate, will have one work in the show. Gibbon's SCAB a large abstract oil on canvas, 43 x 72 inches, is painted in "deep, deep blues and purples with unusual underlayers." Candice Madey, gallery assistant, continued her description of Gibbon's work as "really unusual, attractive, one of a series, "Introspection."

Presenting in the Gallery V show are: Marjorie Bender, drawings and ceramics; Ed Corle, ceramics; Kelly Dietrick, abstract paintings: thread and acrylic on canvas. Barbara Gibbon, a large-scale abstract painting. Alan Gough, small-scale paintings of southern Ohio land-scapes; John Kortlander, abstract paintings; William Kortlander, southern Ohio landscapes in acrylic; Julie Taggart, photo-realistic oil paintings of contemporary urban scenes; Barbara Vogel, multimedia.

"Summer Salon" is certain to provide evidence of Columbus' new status as a cultural leader among cities. According to a recent article in the Columbus Dispatch, Columbus ranks 12th in a list of the 25 best art destinations in the United States. The survey from AmericanStyle magazine shows Pitts-burgh and Cleveland ranked lower than Columbus. And Chicago has edged out New York City as No. 1!

An Artist's Reception will be held on Friday July 11 from 5:30 to 7:30. Gallery V is located at 694 N. High Street. Hours are Tuesday thru Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm and by appointment. Call 614-228-8955. p

(From the June '03 issue)

Wexner/COSI Collaboration, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Dazzle: The Art and Science of Light

Frederic Remington's "The Color of Night" will show at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., through July 13. Meanwhile, Hiro Yamagata's Supernova, an installation presented by the Wexner Center for the Arts and COSI Columbus, will show at COSI, 333 W. Broad Street, through September 1.

These two disparate shows are about light. Throw the word into the air and powerful associations bounce back: Light! Truth, sun, word, refraction, prism, spec-trum, particles, speed of, sheet lightning, rainbow pigment, aurora borealis.

The young Rembrandt noticed light as it filtered through a spinning rat cage throwing shadows. Frederic Remington picked up a brush and painted with his own two hands, and manages even today to dazzle us with light. Hiro Yamagata combines techno wizardry with physics in order to dazzle us with glittering cubes and kinetic constellations.

Hiro Yamagata's installation/environ-ment Supernova includes "hundreds of mirrored cubes lit from within and suspended from the ceiling, ranging in size from 2 ft to 8 ft square. Some of the cubes have motion sensors that activate the cubes as visitors approach; by affecting the movement of the cubes, the viewer becomes part of the work." Glittering and flowing effects are constantly changing. A glorious trip! It's correctly described as a "total-immersion experience"!

Entering what seemed to be a black velvet corridor, I stepped gingerly when I reached the brilliance. There, everything sparkled and flowed around me. Fluorescent hues blinked and darted. The illusion was that of standing on a bridge connecting outer (and inner) space. I felt I could fall off. Of course, I couldn't but that was my sensation.

I thought of Dante's bridge between heaven and hell. But this was nicer. And, of course, the Milky Way isn't made of cubes, but that's how I felt. You'll describe things differently, but you'll love the experience, and you can take your time and go around again.

Another section of Supernova represents the constellations, drifting and changing across the black velvet ceiling. They require time. They're a symphony of soft yet warm hues. They reminded me of my mother's colored scarves. She's out there now. And they'll remind you of something else. I'll brush up on my constellations before I go back.

Hiro Yamagata is a laser artist, a Renaissance man of technology and science. He was born in Japan in 1948 and, after studying in Paris, settled in Los

Angeles in 1978. His father was a scientist and worked in the aerospace field.

Buoyant, stalwart, in dark slacks, white tennis shoes and white shirt. Bespectacled with crew-cut, Yamagata personifies a steady flow of energy. Neutrons and protons one might say.

At the May 1st reception, he recalled that his father wanted him to be a "star gazer." But Hiro wanted to do other things and attended L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Yet, he had a strong grounding in the sciences and decided that his calling was to combine the two disciplines. More than once during his brief talk, he mentioned his enjoyment of poetry. Afterward, he told me that he had always loved poetry. That he often writes poetry, but "mostly in one lines, for myself, not actual poetry."

He referred to Jack Kerouac's friend Gregory Corso as a best friend. Allen Ginsberg too. "I was friends with the Beat poets. Yes, I always loved poetry. I made The Source a documentary on them."

When asked if it's true that physicists often love poetry, he responded "Well, some might. But most of them I know are just interested in their own stuff - physics. I think people can enjoy facets of both

physics and art and that's my goal when I work."

When I queried him about his childhood, He said, again, "My father wanted me to be a stargazer." And added, "but you know, I wanted to watch Our Gang and Alfalfa." p

Wexner Center and COSI present Supernova, a dazzling high-tech exhibition by Hiro Yamagata, featuring lasers, lights, and mirrors in fusion of art and science. It remains on view thru September 1, 2003. COSI is located at 333 W. Broad Street. Hours are 10 am to 5 pm Monday thru Saturday; Noon to 6 pm on Sunday. Tickets: Adults $12; Seniors $10; Age 2-12 $7

Call the Wexner Center at 292-3535 or COSI at 228-COSI (2674) for more information.

Frederic Remington: The Color of Night

A New Yorker, born to privilege, the artist Frederic Remington died prematurely at age 48 of appendec-tomy complications (as George Bellows died) in 1909.

He had gone to Yale, majored in art, and played football. His early businesses "went bust" (even the saloon didn't make a go of it). He bought a sheep ranch in Kansas, for which he was ill-suited and subsequently sold. But his western sojourns spawned a devotion for the mythic and actual West that remained with him until his death.

In a funk after his career losses, he sent some black-and-white sketches to Harpers; they sold, and he suddenly became a popular illustrator. His drawings and paintings made money. He worked hard. He wanted to be considered "a fine painter." He dined with artist pals at the Players Club twice a week. Childe Hassam, exquisite painter of mist, rain, and street lamps, was one of his best friends.

Remington believed, like Teddy Roosevelt, in the glory of "heroic combat," in the natural glory of the West, and in Manifest Destiny. He obtained a war correspondent's credentials and entered the

Spanish American War in 1898, intent upon experiencing the realities of armed conflict first-hand.

Afterward, he continued to paint but he was never the same. He had witnessed, yes, even "embedded behind the lines at San Juan Hill," more anguish than glory among the groaning wounded and the youthful dead. He contracted fever and endured a long convalescence. His war experiences haunted him. He may have remained what Jack London would have called with disdain "a club man," but he had become a club man with heart.

His nocturnes, 129 paintings executed by moonlight, actual and imagined, were painted in the months before his death. There is a new, emotional side to these canvasses. In each we see a precarious moment. A noise is heard in the sagebrush. Horses rare up for unknown reasons. Nothing is secure but everything is beautiful. The figures of the Native American Indians are heroic. In some cases, they brought tears to my eyes. (I'm not an ardent fan of Manifest Destiny.)

In the nocturnes painted detail, the illustrator's responsibility to narrative is gone. There is striking simplicity.

Noon, sunset, lightning, campfires, kerosene lamps. When I entered the gallery, I thought the oil paintings were illumined underneath by actual lighting. Not so. Under dim over-heads the paintings themselves glowed. I pondered and looked. Later, when I read about tonalism (those guys at the Players Club called themselves tonalists), I was proud I had figured out why the paintings glowed.

Within a studied yet unobtrusive composition, the painter had employed contrast. For example: fields of white (or light) paint lie dead-against dark grass-lands. Or, snow or sand flow into midnight sky. The horse's white muzzle and the whites of his eyes gleam in shadows, draw our eyes to places the artist wants us to look at. A visual trajectory, and by golly, it's the science of light!

Remington gave that a Master's touch. In the nocturnes, the artist's responsibility to narrative is gone. What remains is a striking simplicity, lots of space, i.e., sky, plains, water.

In Gossips, a warm dusk touches everything. The dark/light contrast is less obvious. Two braves are bathed in "gold" patches, reflections of sun on the marsh. A faint nearly regular line of tepees (or tied brush) is discernible toward the horizon. The focal point lies up front where two long-haired riders gesture in sign language. Again, the moment is precarious, muted. The pregnant spaces fill with awe.

Moonlight, Wolf was painted in 1909. The wolf cornered me; his tiny eyes gleamed from twenty paces. He was a wolf painted small yet standing tall beside a watering hole. The oil painting is not large, not over 24 inches long. Tiny splats, the stars, glitter above, and below in the shallow water which contains a shadow wolf. I put my face close; I feared the guard would run over! I found two miniscule silver strokes on the wolf's underbelly. I saw how the stars had been painted in dull gold, actual gold, and that the contrast, dull gold versus the darkness, had created the feel of "gleam, light." Soft, mysterious, moonlit nocturnes, the way Chopin played them.

Yamagata and Remington. You've got to see their work "in person." Long may they glow.

The National Gallery of Art is on Constitution Avenue between 3rd and 9th Street NW. Free, open every day. The "Color of Night" will show thru July 13. Call 202-737-4215 or visit www.nga.gov

Waldo's Walls Pop with George Kraemer's American Art

Meteoric Visions land at Gallery V

George Kraemer's Big Art oil paintings are hot! And they are very well-painted in that brash flat Pop Art kind of way. Five of them blared from the cool gray walls at Waldo's On High, 755 N. High Street, which is always a cool place to begin with. Kraemer will show May and June at Waldo's and at least two or three of the paintings named here will be present for both months.

In Elvis Loves Mustangs (44" x 58"), a youthful King sits at a bar, his hands clasped, his big blue eyes gazing pensively at us or into space, thru the superb legs of a high-heeled showgirl. Big jet fighters, red white and blue, of course, fly in formation close to the window. His bar companion is a red-bloused starlet who seems to be twirling a small crystal globe between her brightly manicured finger tips.

Kraemer knows how to paint show girls. He knows the panache veiling the collective American psyche. He knows movies, big fast cars and wide open spaces. In American Bam Bam, show girl Raquel Welch wears a Stars & Stripes bikini and tips a white Stetson. Her elbow length gloves are bright red. Joseph Stalin glares from a red poster. A white convertible races by. The sky is so blue you can stick your first thru it.

My favorite Kraemer is Andy Get Your Gun. I recognized a wistful and frightened Andy at once. And who is looking over Andy's shoulder, but a pistol packin' Duke. The expression on Andy Warhol's face is wonderful, vulnerable. It's Andy all right! In Yucca Flat, Nevada you can see a handsome Pablo Picasso, and a wistful armless woman in a pink dress is walking down the road.

C'mon. Jim Morrison is hanging out at Waldo's too. Kraemer is fantastic at what he does, and to my mind he has out-popped everybody else around! There's a nice positive esprit to a Kraemer.

Call Waldo's on High at 294-2887.

They're so good, they're luminous. "Cityscapes" by Parisian artist

Claude Bauret Allard and New Yorker Paul Ching-Bor at Gallery V thru June 21.

Bauret Allard is a rare creature. Since her first exhibit in Paris in 1955, she has steadily achieved a kind of aesthetic stardom thru her expertise in pastel work.

In general, she is considered an abstractionist. Her visual expressions of her beloved Paris are layered, dreamy, and non-site specific. They beckon us from a space that is beyond the sentimental. Yet, they are girded with a technique that is as grounded as the Arch of Triumph.

Born in China and a one-time resident of Australia, Ching-Bor is new to Gallery V and is apt to delight us with his large-scale watercolors. Academically practiced, he is the master of his lines, constructions, and (look closely) emerging figures. That fine line between exactitude and wash is a hard line for water colorists to tread.

Ching-Bor has a studio in Brooklyn where he is apt to paint the bridges nearby. One of these tough but elegant bridge paintings is taller than I am! Gallery V's Lynn Muskoff "discovered" Ching-Bor at The Butler. She is correct in using such descriptives as "mystery, formal acumen, intuition and sensitivity."

Congratulations to Gallery V on their press release which graciously concludes "We offer this exhibition as a peaceful, yet powerful statement in a time of tragedy and strained relationships among differing countries and cultures, in the hopes that art has the power to heal and bring peace to those open to its message."

Visit Gallery V at 694 North High Street. Hours: Tuesday thru Saturday from 11-5. Call 228-8955.

Art Darts! At ROY G BIV it looks like another knock-down drag-out show thru June 14. Talk about unique!

The announcement card is definitely from the Edge. Helma Groot appears to have hung a history-laden sea mobile, par excellence, and Jaiymie Kiggins bizarre and fierce metal dog (a pit bull?) seems ready to attack!

&endash; Elizabeth Ann James

(From the May '03 issue)
Art Blossoms on the Wind: Celebrating Time and Talent - Past and Present

Thank You, Rebecca

Ten Years in Columbus will show at Rebecca Ibel Gallery, 1055 North High St., through May 31. Denny Griffith, President of Columbus College of Art & Design, was correct in stating that "Rebecca has shown a level of personal

focus and professional commitment to contemporary art that is quite distinctive in this city. She has inoculated the community with work that is on the forefront of the national discourse. We're lucky she's here."

Curtis Fairman, Dion Johnson, Timothy Buckwalter, Charles LaBelle, Lynton Wells and the astonishing Yek, make up the first of three shows celebrating the gallery's decade.

LaBelle is a photographer. His haunting tempestuous black-and-white series of "Intervals and Intersections"- it includes Southern Palms, the title says it all - is luxuriant with motels, bar fronts, traffic, with palm trees and street lights tossing aureoles. LaBelle, based in Los Angeles, has photo-graphed Sunset Boulevard, "the high and low of American dreams." He has had recent shows in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Berkeley.

Dion Johnson's Thank You, an acrylic on canvas 47 x 35 inches, is but one knock-out punch in this very contemporary show. In other words, Thank You, painted slickly and well, is an attention getter! Influenced

by commercial design and computer-generated images, Thank You's bright hues and line drawings grab you from across the room. Yet, the painting is not loud or in your face.

The upper half is a strong but subdued hi-tech blue with subtle purple markings. The bottom half is lemon yellow, grassy green, with fine markings, tulips and daffodils.

Clouds and marshmallowy shapes drift across a copy machine sky. There's a house. The roof holds what resembles a pink tile; the tile contains a drawing of a backpack and a hooded coat. An emblem from childhood. A design of cool times, but Mom, Dad, and caring are hiding behind Johnson's images.

The eyes have it! Curtis Fairman's wall sculptures grabbed me and knocked me down.

In polypropylene, stainless steel, and air brush, Fairman's Cirrus, is a three-D wall piece that is about the size of a hubcap. By golly, it's an eye, or an eye. And ditto for Fairman's Pylon in Polypropylene!

Reflecting at the Riffe

By chance, if you receive a copy of the Short North Gazette early, try to go down to the Riffe Gallery at 77 S. High Street. I am so sorry I misread the closing date of this show which will end on May 4. It is, indeed, "A Celebration of Ohio's Rich Artistic Heritage."

From itinerant portrait painters and European-influenced landscape artists, to and through impressionism and post impressionism into George Bellows' prize fight paintings, this is a very beautiful, carefully curated exhibit. Try to see it, and if you can't, seek out the March/June Timeline (like I did), a publication of the Ohio Historical Society.

With Mary Cassatt's spirit looking over her shoulder in 1911, Columbus' own Alice Schille painted Mother and Child in a Garden, France. This is a period painting in which watercolors dance with pointillist-like flecks along with lyrical but spare curves.

Tones of brown reverberate via the bent willow chair, the cropped head of the child, the loosely coiffed hair of the mother and the garden foliage. Mother and child wear white frocks, drawing the eye into sweet somnolent faces and out again to the dancing foliage of masterful quick brush strokes. The dying sun blesses all.

Although this particular piece did not make it into the exhibit, it is printed in Timeline along with a wonderful collec-tion of works that have been included in this magnificent show.

Acme Art Company is relocating to Clintonville at 2997 Indianola Avenue. They will be sharing the retail space, at the intersection of Weber Road, with American Importers. Their Grand Opening Celebration on Thursday, May 1 will begin at 9:00 pm. The Columbus Peace Project canvas, will still be available at 1129 N. High Street, for all to paint/draw/write their views during the May Hop from noon until 10:00 pm.

Meanwhile, New Yorker Norma Greenwood's "Moments in Time," medium-to-large oil on canvas paintings, infused sulky March with joy. It took a while to realize why these paintings, obviously direct "takes" from family photos, were so unique and appealing.

The skillful artist uses a delicate and warm palette and does not seem to rearrange or alter original groupings or scenes. Yet, her subjects seem spon-taneous, in the moment, and alive. She captures facial expressions with pinpoint accuracy. She manages the flow of light and shadow in her own special way, an impressionist for fast flash times! Norma, paint on. Continue to spread your creative wings and try out new spaces.

Eddie Fulcher's large assemblages and constructions are exciting yet under-stated. Meticulously wrought and assembled, a Fulcher provokes conversa-tion and thought. A couple of years back, at the Ohio Art League, I believe, Fulcher's mason jars glimmered with memory and speculation. The Vintage Useful met the Imaginative Now.

In March at Acme, Fulcher's Defined/ Strata seemed prophetic, by chance or intent suggested the gravitas of a national crisis. The interior of this construct, a walled room, austere and shadowy, contained nothing but four chairs, a built-table, and the light from one faint bulb. Tiny printed words on a multitude of uniformly folded paper cubes formed this space that resembled a bunker, possibly the bunkers of our minds; entrance walls also were layered with words. Words as an environment. A cautionary tale.

Fulcher enlivened his scene with a continuous voice collage, mainly adjectives: "fanatic, 19 years old, gay, male, eighteen, a soldier, all crazy, arrogant, selfish."

As the South Pacific song goes, "You've got to be properly taught."

We hope Defined/Strata is able to travel to other venues. p

 

(From the April 2003 issue)

 

Antiques and Art on Poplar

 

Craig Carlisle: A Magical Flight into Spring

Craig Carlisle's show "Monsters & Butterflies," presenting 20 new painting and drawings, flies into Columbus from Los Angeles on Friday, April 4, remaining thru April 30 at Antiques and Art on Poplar, 20 E. Lincoln Street in the Short North. An opening reception with Craig Carlisle in attendance is scheduled from 6 &endash; 8 pm on Friday,
April 4. Call 291-5683 for more details.

The newest Craig Carlisle show should provide an emotional life jacket amid the waves of angst swamping our nation.

Minimally rendered and upbeat, "Monsters & Butterflies" will be exhibited at Sharon Weiss's Antiques & Art on Poplar through Wednesday, April 30. The monsters, isolated and benign figures whose heads and faces send beatitudes upon their viewers, are Carlisle's hallmark, his prevailing motif.

Butterflies, also a motif in the new show, have long been a symbol of hope, of transformation, of creativity. Voila! "Monsters and Butterflies."

The Painter Paints

In his Los Angeles studio, Carlisle paints steadfastly, carefully, in acrylics. He makes pencil drawings too, and there are some graphite drawings in the new show. He says his brushwork has, progressively, become "more refined." And it has: more refined, more detailed and controlled. He practices. His education at Columbus College of Art and Design and his persistent journey into the art world have led him to a peculiar space of his own.

"I'm into interpretation," he said. "I may feel something and paint something, that's my interpretation. But then I want you to interpret what I've done, maybe even discuss it. Two birds, for example, one holding a branch, the other holding a sword. What does this mean? It's up to you; it's up to me."

The artist's admirations are many, a tribute to his joie de vivre. His favorite artists are those who interpreted their own exterior and interior realities, and, simul-taneously, left margins of interpretation open to the viewer.

"Rousseau, I love Rousseau, the jungle paintings, the imaginative animals. And Frida Kahlo, her images, I love her psychological drama and the Mexican surrealists in general."

Carlisle is also intrigued by the images and icons of California artist Mark Ryden, the colors contained in Japanese brush-work such as those of Takashi Murakami, as well as the intricate detail seen in erotic miniature paintings from India.

The stamp of surrealism and interpre-tation is evident in all Carlisle's art. After all, surrealism is in the Head! And this painter has a zest for Japanese pop culture, the games, toys, cartoons, so rich in the Los Angeles area.

In fact, kids stuff and the art of kids are an obvious influence in Carlisle's work: the simplicity, the sense of wonder and hope, the "truth behind each brushstroke" &endash; as he so aptly describes it. Behold the shiny playful flowers and toggle toy birds!

Yet, a meditative quality is Carlisle's coin of the realm. With that comes repetition and motif similar to that in a visual interpretation of a Celtic charm, or the inspirational affect of a Mexican retablo. You look at one and you feel better! You're inspired! You're probably happier. You look at it again.

Getting A Head

Carlisle's Heads, aka Monsters, have continued to evolve: Pink Monsters and Angel Heads have already visited Sharon Weiss' shop. These were preceded by Little Heads preceded by Big Heads, preceded by Large Heads. Each "Head" or "Monster" painting reveals a single human-like figure, either from the chest up or from the neck up.

I use the term human-like rather than humanoid because these monsters, or heads, are fully human in their vulner-ability and pathos. Carlisle says of his new Pink Monsters that their blurred and nubby edges suggest the rolling California landscape he loves. In general, the backgrounds are painted in a single color. Simplicity rules. In a typical Carlisle the subject is isolated, revealed without competing objects. Perspective is flat. One thinks of a coloring book page.

The April show will include about 20 paintings averaging 8 by 10 inches in size. Among the Monsters will be several paint-ings of flowers and birds. We need them.

"There are around four flower paintings and there is a lot of blue. I love flowers, I love blue, and I love birds too!" See, two fat birds dance like fishing tackle above a simple gray branch in a flat blue sky. These birds are as fat and round as billiard balls. But they're as happy as larks!

The Guy

Craig Carlisle graduated from CCAD in 1988 and will return to Columbus for his opening at Antiques and Art on Poplar from 6 to 8 pm on April 4.

Carlisle is represented by George Billis Gallery in New York City. His work is also showing in St. Louis at Elliot Smith Gallery and the Robert Kidd Gallery in Detroit. The Rebecca Bruce Gallery in Mill Valley has exhibited his work as well.

While attending CCAD, Carlisle spent summers as an intern at the Nimbus Gallery in Dallas where he was influenced by the large-scale oils of the Native American artist Fritz Scholder. "I liked the drama, the mystery, the passion in the brush strokes, the isolation of objects, and the size of his paintings."

The artist also considers his CCAD friend, the late Matt Harbert who died in the early '90s, to have been a major influence. "Matt and I shared a studio loft space at The Buggyworks Building in the late '80s," Carlisle said. "His death was a huge loss to the Columbus art community."

In person, Craig Carlisle exudes caring and warmth and is one of the most personable art guys around. He possesses equanimity, balance. His interests include a love of gardens, the natural world, and the ocean. "I love the ocean," he says. "It's important for me to go there and meditate."

He reads many inspirational books and enjoys art history and biographies of artists. One of his favorite books? The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama. He collects first edition books and vintage toys. He noted that many stuffed toys from the fifties and sixties "have their arms raised in celebration." He shares my own enthusiasm for the poetry and music of Leonard Cohen.

Carlisle's mythical and mysterious monsters have a following from California to New York and beyond.

Pink Monster

Pink Monster With Three Butterflies, an acrylic on panel, 10" x 8", is painted on a dark background, almost solidly black. This monster has a lar