IMPRESSIONIST WOMEN,-- THEY'RE HOT!

Midwestern Visions of Impressionism will show at the Ohio Arts Council's Riffe Gallery at 77 South High in downtown Columbus until October 12. You will find my article about this wonderful exhibit in the current (September) issue of The Short North Gazette. The exhibit stars several pretty women, so look for them. (Unfortunately I've lost my exhibition list so I'm flying by the seat of my flowery wash- and-wear skirt!)

Believe me, Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman was not lovelier than the slender youngish woman in Morning Sun, as painted by Pauline Palmer. ( I think around 1920, perhaps earlier. No matter.) The time is morning; the scene is a sea side hotel room with a high ceiling. Near a huge window the pretty woman sits at a make-shift vanity table likely arranged by the artist herself. Perhaps the slender young woman in gauzy and layered "morning" attire IS the artist herself! A wood frame stand-up mirror is her mirror and she's making herself up, the way the painter is making this painting up! The window is tall and wide and beyond it is the bay, the sky, and the LIGHT fills everything. --- It's the light, guys, how you paint light! --- Yes, the pretty woman is, quote, "illustrative,"--- She's a magazine cover for all time. --- You want to call room service and order a French press (coffee) and chat with her.


Mary Holland Bacher, 1891, by Otto Bacher (1856--1909) (Click image for a larger view.)

In 1891 Otto Bacher painted Mary Holland Bacher his wife, an artist. Her long, full tennis- whites dress, possibly a blouse and skirt,with its big dippy lace collar, was likely made to order by a dress maker. There were visiting dress makers; they would stay at your house while they sewed clothes for you, and you didn't have to be especially rich. --- The white chapeau --- sooo 1890s --- is topped by a big white rose! Mary sits --- notice I use the present tense --- leaning forward in a straight backed wicker chair, probably in her own back yard, to pose for her husband. She poses, of course, in natural light that filters through shimmering leaves while daisies glow like dim stars toward the back. Mary's fingers, grasping the tennis racket, are strong. --- She's a painter! Her wrists are small. She's a lady, a no nonsense woman-lady. Her face is thin, sweet, earnest --- she looks straight at you, and, if you observe carefully, you notice sensible brown "athletic"shoes peering from beneath the ruffled skirt.

I know Mary is accurately dressed in the tennis playing vogue of her time because I have seen very old photographs of my father's aunts playing tennis in Marion, Ohio, around 1900. Sometimes they played croquet and wore similar dresses and once in a while a very young guy named Warren G. dropped by and joined the crowd. Aunt Letty wouldn't let him smoke in the house. But that was later.

The Midwestern Visions exhibit allows us to time travel. Good painting orbits beyond time!

EXCELLENT EXHIBITS

GETTING REAL at High Road Gallery in Worthington is an eclectic and enticing show which closes on August 24, this weekend. This article is belated but the show was so good that I wanted to congratulate the exhibitors and the High Road Board.

One wouldn't want tastes in art to return solely to a realist emphasis, but this exhibit proved that Realism is alive, well, and a many splendored thing! The exhibit includes/included many paintings that made me say "Wow!" AND, the exhibit included at least one painting that is likely to, eventually, earn a place in the collective art memory of our nation.

TOM BAILLEUL'S RAINMAKER really packs a punch and deserves its Best of Show Award. (The Board of High Road, all of them art professionals, educators, artists, juried the show.) Baillieul's art is precise, not rigid, and is color-full. The man is an ecological scientifically based artist. --- Yet, paradoxically, one might describe his art as talismanic, or symbolic --- as in religion or analytic thought!


RAINMAKER. This large, strikingly simple "canvas" was painted in acrylic with dull yet lustrous paints. The figure of the Rainmaker stands "open to" and "against" unidentifiable darkness which has been rendered in subtle dark bands. --- That is, he, or she, stands in the night, or in the underground, or in a prison, or perhaps in the darkness of our collective souls. --- YOU decide. From some where above a single trickle of rain, a lit string, hits the Rainmaker' s right hand which is cupped in his left. He, or she, becomes an iconic and/or symbolic figure. Youthful, yet ageless, he stands tall, receptively, wearing an old white-gray shirt and long baggy trousers, faded, of course. The artist knew exactly how to use simplicity and where to cast light from a mysterious source onto the Rainmaker's solemn face. And he knew that the Rainmaker would likely wear his hair in a long loose pony tail and not in a Mohawk or a crewcut. --- Perhaps my analysis of Baillieul's intent is incorrect, but nevertheless --- Rainmaker is iconic!

You can find Baillieul and his talented other half, the fabric artist Deb, on their website --- But, of course, the Rainmaker should be seen live and close up! Baillieul is a scientist by profession. He has lived in Third World countries, has seen the borders melt between magic and science. From "aboriginal" people he has learned how to telegraph an instant image that goes beyond written language. --- PINK ALERT! My aesthetic radar tells me that its likely a herd(!) of Baillieul's pink flamingos have nested at Camelot Cellars, 958 N. High.

SUZANNE! At this writing the amazing Suzanne Gallagher, portraitist and painter, has a studio at High Road Gallery.--She's the artist in residence. If her studio door is open or if you knock she may invite you in to see her in progress and completed art works.

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW closes on August 30 at Weisheimer Gallery in First UnitarianUniversalist Church 93 W. Weisheimer. The exhibit is open when the church is, which is most of the time before 9 pm. In the worship center, John Dickinson's "The Salvaged Cabinet 2007" filled me with awe. Realism on speed! You must see it in order to appreciate the dignity and the detail. The oil can, the cabinet itself, the T square . . . And Karen Rush Jones' dancing red trumpetflowers . . . And Claire Hagan Bauza's yellow barn and . . . A fine show, but too late to cover it now. . .

CLAIRE HAGAN BAUZA'S IRELAND: IMAGES FOR A SACRED JOURNEY will run until August 30 at Jung Haus Gallery, 59 West Third Avenue in Columbus. This exhibit, in its variety and depth, provides a solid yet lively retrospective of a visit to Ireland in 2007. Here are paintings that are abstract, representational, and yes, impressionist and expressionist! Hagan Bauza is an earnest painter --- imaginative, skilled, hardworking and prolific. Her use of color is alive in its variety and warmth, yet it is never rash. There are ten watercolors and ten oil paintings in the show. Among them you will find plain spoken scenes melded with legend. You will find hints of emerald and purple! --- There is not much time, so I hope these titles will lure you in: Tree Spirit; Glendallagh Valley; Kilkenny, Early Morning; The Stones that Wept; The Rock of Cashel. And my favorite, Madonna of theBirds. --- Hagan Bauza's art is not photo realist. Yet, it reveals subtle, authentic --- and sometimes mythical, glimpses of the Irish countryside, --- its bridges and outbuildings, and, of course, its trees, stones, and enchanted waters. Irish eyes will certainly be smiling. Jung Haus Gallery, despite its rather abbreviated hours, is a gorgeous space located in the lovely, impressive building that is the C.G. Jung Society of Central Ohio. Hours are 11 am to 2 pm Tuesdays-Saturdays but it's best to call first, 614- 291-8050