BUSH UP YOUR SHAKESPEARE!

MARJORIE BENDER, long acknowledged for excellence in printmaking and ceramics and for her unfettered imagination, has surprised everyone again! She has combined her disadmiration for the Bush administation with her unimpeachable (!) knowledge of Shakespeare! Sometime in 2004 she built and painted a wooden theater, 30 x 5 x 24 inches. Inside it she sculpted and placed familiar, if recalcitrant, dramatis personae.--The name of her mixed media construction? THE NEW SHAKESPEARE PLAYS, ACT I: SCENE II FROM the FIRST BUSH ADMINISTRATION, A TRAGEDY.
In this clay and mixed media sculpture the well known players, seen mostly from the shoulders up, as in Roman busts, have been depicted realistically if whimsically. Again, each character is recognizable and, actually, has been portrayed with a kind of droll empathy.--CARL ROVE,as Iago,in full figure, dominates the stage, in a non period costume which includes a plaid vest! He gestures affably, like a used car salesman or a Hyde Park agitator. Behind him red curtains open to reveal an exploding tank and flying soldiers.--Is this a swagger I see before my eyes?
Out, out, acrylic spot,lay on, MacDuff. A sympathetic COLIN POWELL delivers the soliloquy from Hamlet . LAURA BUSH and CONDOLEEZA RICE, in evening dresses, appear as Ladies in Waiting from MacBeth. They're lovely, and were actually sculpted from wooden sock darning forms!--As red headed Cardinal Wolsey in drag, who else but DICK CHEYNEY! JOHN ASHCROFT wrings his hands as Richard III. GEORGE W. BUSH appears monarchial, recognizable--ah those elfin ears--as King John. Pleasantly goofy, suitably crowned, and caped, he probably doesn't remember the little murdered princes in the tower.--Or did somebody else do that?
What's remarkable about Bender's theater is it's finesse. The figures have been painted with accuracy and skill.--No slap dash poster art here, but a serious, if zany, work of art worthy of consideration.--As Laurence Olivier once said, and Colin Powell never did, but might have, "the play's the thing in which. . . oh well." Bender's creations are available thru Gallery V which shows the very very best in contemporary art.

SPECIAL MOMENT,SPECIAL SHOW

LINO TAGLIAPETRA, born in Murano Italy in 1934, is likely the greatest living
glass artist and master blower of our century. He is the last working practicioner who, at age twelve, was apprenticed to a master. His elegant, powerful glass sculptures will show at HAWK gallery, 153 East Main Street, Columbus, Ohio, thru July 31. The show is titled FROM VENICE TO COLUMBUS, Da Venezia a Colombus, and it's a don't miss, the chance of a life time! Abstracted glass "dinosaurs" form a series, as do sea crafts, gondola-shapes, in the "endeavor" series. "Bilbao" reflects images from Spain.
For our troubled times: ANGEL TEARs (there's more than one) is at least 4'tall.
Its long stem stands straight up, heavenward, from its lute-shaped globe.--Inside the globe? Ribans, ribbands, ribbons.--Bright, slender, variegated, sky blue, green, scarlet, rose, webbed, cellular--they curve, winding upward into the stem.
Once streams of molten glass, these ribans run the curved gamut of a Tear.
They flow, touching each other but not overlapping, inside glass as clear as a raindrop, almost invisible.
Lino's unassuming yet debonair presence graced the opening on June 11. It was an honor to see him quietly discussing glass art with awed students and visitors, and making an effort to shake each hand.

SERENDIPITY

Photographer Marguerite Cox Molk is presenting Serendipity, a show of extraordinarily pleasing colored photographs thru July. Her exhibit takes place at a newly discovered gem of a gallery, Studio B, at 21 Brighton.
Serendipity is an eco-centered exhibit. Molk values the natural world and its creatures.--And yes, she likes people too. In still lifes she knows the value of simplicity.
REGENERATION, OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK, WASHINGTON, 1996: A weathered, blotched bone, or possibly a marked piece of driftwood, casts its own shadow on gray, sun-baked sand, or fine gray sediment. This photo is around 12 x 21 inches.
The large central object casts its own shadow and, as is typical in Molk's photos, takes up most of the space. Several smooth round pebbles, strategically placed, surround this iconic "bone", and a pine sprig has sprouted in one corner of it. The ambiance is primeval. An invisible sun is the protagonist. Georgia O'Keeffe's spirit is nodding approval, smiling down.
GRANITE FALLS WYOMING, 20 x 12 inches, like Regeneration, is an example of how "excerpting" or "cropping" nature creates a kind of abstraction. Here, close up and cropped, the dark ridge of granite bursts thru a magnified barrrage of startling white spray. There is no horizon and no sky.
In RUBY BEACH, WASHINGTON, Molk's shore scape is less abstracted, yet her composition is one hundred per cent! In this 20 x 12 inch photo she has caught the angled yet razor straight line of the shore: farther back pointed gray rocks form turrets with silhouettes of tall birches behind them. Here again the dancing foam manages to be startling white in just the right places and the horizon consists of modulated contrasts, darks against lights. Ruby Beach is a study of dark night blues and grays against foam whites.
Sun and shadow are important in most of Molk's photos, even in the "people" ones. The wandering, bearded ARTHUR smiles at us from his wander-bike! He's a lavender and sun guy in faded plaid shirt and faded purple jeans. His sport shoes and socks are white and so is his beard. He's beaming straight at us, his weathered face kindly as St. Nicks'! Three big plastic bottles hang from the bike which has numerous metal carriers and appendages. Arthur's bedding rides on the handlebars, and the photo is enlivened by three red plastic baskets jammed with groceries and other stuff. The sun beams on the pavement where shadows of rider and bicycle cast sharp safari-like shadows.
In TOO MANY TOURISTS, Costa Rica 2000, a little white monkey seen from the shoulders up, stares out of the frame. He, or she, is sticking her tongue out--ugh--at all those tourists! The background is negligible. The monkey is an adorable protagonist!
Molk knows the value of simplicity. She's kind of a minimalist in that she makes her charming subjects quite central; they fill up most of each frame. My emotional favorite? MARMOT MATRIARCH who's standing up, like a pet kitty cat or Buckeye Chuck'
Studio B. is a salon directed and owned by cutter and hair stylist BOB ENSLEE who is himself an accomplished photographer. Studio B Gallery, although it serves as a waiting room for the salon, is a lovely art-friendly space, uncluttered, with walls reserved only for the hanging of art.--A single vase of chicory echoes the SouthWest emphasis of Molk's photos.