Liz James Artscene

WINDBLOWN : Gusts of Autumn Art!

2009-10-21T12:15:00.007-04:00

GO GO GO! IT WILL BE FANTASTIC.

LEON APPLEBAUM will visit his major exhibition at HAWK GALLERIES, 162 East Main, on October 24, 11 to 5 pm and October 25, 1 to 4 pm. This artist's work is FIRST CLASS and NOW! He's been working glass over thirty years. His post card image suggests two big GLASS truck tires (or maybe inner tubes) conjoined by glass and floating in space! -- Way to go Tom, it's at your place I once saw TAGLIPIETRA himself working in glass!

PASTELLY & ROMANTIC, -- Vivid, child-spirited watercolors by ALICE CARPENTER will show at SHARON WEISS, 20 East Lincoln, at the November HOP and onward. Pre-images suggest "youthful, spritly, thought provoking."

BERNIECE KOFF WILL SHOW her fabulous, fabulous, flowers -- at least one! -- in PATTERNS IN PAINT at THE LYLE, 615 East Town, to November 18. -- LYLE is a delight, a gorgeous, eclectic, much needed space, an up-to-date new old home! And Koff continues to dare -- in colors and shapes! She has a splendid original way of using her compositional space!

STARRING ALICE SCHILLE: She was independent, often congenial, always keen and engaged -- a sometimes teacher to boot! AND SHE HAD STYLE! She painted independently and often alone and faraway. A world traveler in a tentative era for women. She was a gracious, determined woman who possessed an adventurous spirit and quiet technical ability. Yet, she returned yearly, well, almost yearly, to teach and to paint in Columbus. As curated by JAMES M KENY of KENY GALLERY (in German Village, Columbus, Ohio) the exhibit features Schille's work from 1902 to 1914. -- We all know what dislodged the European sojourns of U.S. artists from 1914 to 1917! During her career Schille painted -- as did her "ancestor," Mary Cassatt -- Dutch-clad toddlers; she captured desert scenes, painted dignified portraits, and solemn donkeys. Highly skilled at drawing, she could render horses, camels, and run-abouts. Her colors glowed; they did not blaze. She was often a woman alone painting outdoors, plein air. She understood flowers, gardens, and high fashion. What to wear for brunch, outdoors, with wicker chairs. She was always learning and practicing. You must see her work for yourselves in ALICE SCHILLE, THE EARLY YEARS, 1902-1914. THE SCHUMACHER is on the Fourth Floor Library at CAPITAL UNIVERSITY, College & Main in Columbus.

ALSO FROM KENY TO COLUMBUS: IN the Schumacher Show Case, works of the techno poetic MICHAEL McEWAN. McEWAN, as was SCHILLE, is a much admired teacher and a very substantial painter. -- I can't wait to see the new works. McEwan knows how to paint, and his students consider themselves lucky!

DOROTHY GILL BARNES in a fresh tradition of earliest Ohio -- combines with talents of BLAIR DAVIS and ADAM BRADLEY -- to offer a major sculpture presentation: GENERATIONS: MARKS IN TIME opens October 22, 6 to 8 pm, in the new PEGGY McCONNELL ART CENTER OF WORTHINGTON, 160 West Dublin Granville Road. Everything in Gill Barnes' work uses material from the Olentangy River Flood Plain. Way to go!

SEPTEMBER FIREWORKS! (IN ART!)

2009-09-18T10:06:00.005-04:00

ART ON FIRE! SEPTEMBER ART SPARKS from LIZ: A PANOPLY!
Written on September 18, 2009.

-- In case you're interested, and I know you are: AREO PROSE GROUP will meet on OCTOBER 15, 2:30 pm,at AREOPAGITCA BOOK STORE. (Third Thursday) -- LIZ, that's me, plans to discuss literature about Florence Harding and her husband, President Warren G. Harding of Marion, Ohio. -- YOU ARE INVITED. Our sessions always include time for conversation and the sharing of work. Rebecca Rutledge, AREO proprietor, kindly makes tea. coffee, and cookies, available.

ART DANCES; DANCE WITH ART: And, be sure to dance around the art fires burning in the Columbus area! -- which includes Worthington, Upper Arlington, Grandview, and adjacent areas.

TO October 17 at SCHUMACHER GALLERY: LEE & GRANT. This exhibition features selections from the Civil War Collection of the Motts Military Museum, Groveport, Ohio, and was organized by the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, Virginia. It shows at Capital University Fourth Floor Library, Monday--Saturday, 1 to 5 pm. Worthy of at least an hour.

THE OHIO CRAFT MUSEUM, 1665 West Fifth Avenue, presents CONVERSATIONS IN FABRIC as curated by Linda Fowler and Tracy Rieger. The post card image, by Susan She, should tweak everyone's curiosity!

FROM THE MARVELOUS KENY GALLERY TO SCHUMACHER: The One the only ALICE SCHILLE: THE EARLY YEARS 1902-1914. Without ALICE SCHILLE -- traveler, recorder of journeys, teacher, painter extraordinary, -- the art lights in Columbus would dim considerably. The reception for the Schumacher exhibition will be Friday November 13, 5 to 7:30 pm. The exhibit opens October 27 and runs to December 5. Aren't we lucky?

MICHAEL McEWAN's DIVERSE LANDSCAPES will show at the marvelous Keny Galleries through October 5, 2009. McEwan's art, glowing depictions of the Ohio countryside -- including Hoover Dam -- is, well, tranquil yet glowing. This artist understands: the manipulation of oil paint, the natural world, and light. He has "the gift to paint simple." -- So what else could be necessary? KENY GALLERY is at 300 East Beck Street in the German Village section of Columbus.

In the CONCOURSE GALLERY to October 23 work inspired by Italy. Everything at CONCOURSE -- which is located in the (UPPER ARLINGTON) Municipal Services Center 1600 Tremont -- is always first class. Whenever I'm able, I attend Concourse Openings which are fabulous and yummy and provide good music. -- A fabulous space with art that's always spanking new!

THE ART HOUSE IS ON FIRE! CHIHULY XIV opens October 2 at the beautiful HAWK GALLERY 153 East Main Street. Call 614-225-9595 to reserve a spot at the opening. CHIHULY is the Glass Master without compare, and he understand public art.

MAHAN, MAHAN: MAHAN Gallery is so cool it's hot in fact almost beyond NOW, it's THE NOW ART SPOT. FRESH MEAT will show there, 717 North High, until September 26. The title says it all, or provokes all. Again, 717 North High.

At 2731 Innes Road, WOODSCAPE ART STUDIO, JERRY TOLLIFSON's art is solid. In more ways than one. His sculptures have even been controversial! The exhibit is titled SYSTEMS OF PARADOX, and can be viewed 2 pm to 6 pm on September 20, 27, or October 4 and 11.

CURTIS GOLDSTEIN will show at the Ohio State University Faculty Club to October 23, and this guy is good. He can paint anything; his scapes can't be beat. We wish him luck and think he is an A#1 artist. In November and December at the Faculty Club: ELAINE FREEMAN, JUDITH HAZEN, ANASTASIA HOROWITZ, BECKY TAFT. Again, I'm familiar with the work of these artists and they are above first rate! The spirit of Anita Loos will hover.

UP AT RGBLIV, where art is always explosive and that's good, the 20th Anniversary juried Exhibition will be fabulous.

LUC TUYMANS OPENS AT THE WEX September 17. Members get in free, general public $5. It's a steal. Find out more at wexarts.org or call 614-292-3535.

The COLUMBUS CENTER FOR PAPER AND BOOK ARTS at EUROPEAN PAPERS will present 25 artists who will work on forms, as in dress dummy forms! October 3, 3 to 5:00 pm, meet the show artists at an Autumn Open House.

Last and far far from least, RICCARDO DAVENPORT, A 25 YEAR RETROSPECTIVE, shows at KIACA GALLERY to October 25 with an artist's talk on October 11, 3 to 4 pm. Be there. Talle Bamazi, artist and director at KIACA is a story in himself. As a painter he's powerful and as a raconteur, unbeatable.

-- I love looking at Art in THE RHODES STATE OFFICE TOWER LOBBY, and until September 30, you can see COLUMBUS: THE CROSSROADS OF OHIO, a don't-miss! I met some of the fabulous artists who are showing there, when I attended the Columbus Free Press Second Saturday Salon at Editor/Author Bob Fitrakis' historic 1900 mansion on East Broad. The house is an historic piece of art, and Fitrakis regaled me with tales which included that Eugene Debs adored the work of poet Whitcomb Riley.

COME HEAR LIZ AND BE A SUPPORTIVE PRESENCE On October 15 at AREOPAGITICA, 3510 North High. I will include James Wright's fantastic poems about Marion, Ohio, the locust trees, and the Hardings, -- Florence and "Warn" -- with whom at one non-smoke-filled time, my father's aunts played croquet. My mother often told me, "When I was growing up my foks talked about THEM: I can remember, your Grandma and Grandpa would say the Hardings did this, the Hardings did that," meaning the Hardings represented the apex of style and fashion, and people imitated them. -- Among the present generation of my family, however, Republicans are few and far between! -- And President Grant is looking better and better!

JOHN DONNELLY AT MARCIA'S!

2009-08-26T13:33:00.006-04:00

WHIMSICAL RHYTHMS! -- JOHN DONNELLY, Professor of Art, a much exhibited artist, has long been fascinated the concepts of beauty,art, -- and beauty's stereotypes! His vibrant paintings will show at MARCIA EVANS Art Consultant and Gallery thru October.

Donelly likes, but does not over-use, tree greens and bright reds. His aesthetic taste ranges from The Venus of Willendorf -- to Tinker Bell in Peter Pan -- to Marilyn Monroe, "MM," and "JFK," John Fizgerald Kennedy! John has a deep respect for the great white whale, Moby Dick. -- In fact, Melville's book, especially Father Maple's sermon and the great white whale itself, have been major inspirations for this audacious, -- sometimes in your face -- artist!

Again, Donnelly's work manages to be "catchy," -- that's my description.
At the same time it falls between Pop and Conceptual boundaries -- minimal and fun! John can paint abstracts which are original, complex, and very attractive. He understands layering and over-and-under painting and mixed media -- all that good stuff! When Marcia Evans said she had web images available, I was quite pleased.

Donnelly teaches drawing and painting at Mount Vernon Nazarene University, and, not long ago, won the Frey Award. Among places other than galleries, he enjoys showing his work in upscale restaurants. At Rosendale's his Tinkerbell, as in Peter Pan, evokes much popular commentary.
Donnelly loves Italy and manages to study and paint there part of the time, and he is a successful portrait painter.

MARCIA EVANS is at 8 East Lincoln where everything is always elegant and cutting edge. Cool.

PS. There is an ARTIST'S RECEPTION on Saturday, September 5, from 4 to 7 pm at the gallery. -- See ya!

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BEAUTIFUL 'SCAPES at "SHARON'S!";

2009-08-07T13:56:00.007-04:00

BETWEEN TWO TREES is a serene, luminous, and unpretentious exhibit of medium-to-small landscapes, nearly all of them inspired by the Ohio countryside, nearly all of them painted in watercolor-with-oil. The exhibit can be seen at the lovely Sharon Weiss Gallery in the Short North District of Columbus, Ohio.

The artist, ELAINE FREEMAN, is the lyrical creator of these "canvasses" which glow, like small bonfires, campfire coals, in soft rich colors. --Freeman is an astute colorist, and an aware minimalist! Her shapes and her subtle power-hues exemplify the dictum: "LESS IS MORE." Her titles express her "eye" for the rural and the proximate. She lives near Hover Dam. Her titles reveal her "provenance" . . . NORTH OF BUCYRUS; BANDONED FARM; LAKESIDE SUNSET . . . MARSH DREAMS depicts "the end of a road in New Albany, between two subdivisions" . . . OXBOW VISTA, on pastel and Wallis paper, reveals -- with simplicity -- a road in Delaware County. Near-by hangs THE WOODS AT OXBOW . . . "The trees tell their story," Freeman writes, "standing there guarding the road from Alum Creek."

ROSES IN WINTER, a departure from the "scapes", is a successful abstract. The ugly brown roses, starkly "blossom-less", stand tall and proud in an invisible Ohio winter that makes us shudder. --This painting takes place in our imaginations. Freeman is versatile. She is one of the most killed portraitists around. --Yet, ROSES, an abstraction, reveals a "Cold" in which we recognize the raw and unadorned roses of abandoned ditches, fields, and gardens.

-- Go, see, buy. This artist is the master of understatement. If she has a weakness it may be her tendency to over-simplify. In general, I think not. FREEMAN's work is pleasing and engaging to say the least. Her exhibition list as well as her educational vitae are impressive. BETWEEN TWO TREES will show at "Sharon's" thru August 2009. In NOVEMBER Freeman will have paintings at The O.S.U. FACULTY CLUB.

The versatile and spectacular -- I said it and I'm glad -- VIKI BLINN will show at SHARON WEISS in SEPTEMBER. I'll be there with bells!

THE ART SCENE IN COLUMBUS IS JUMPIN' OFF THE MAP! AGAIN: BETWEEN TWO TREES shows at Sharon Weiss Gallery, 20 E. Lincoln, thru August 30. (614-291-5683). Freeman will exhibit at the OSU Faculty Club in November. . . "It was the purple iris I drew in kindergarten that piqued my early interest in art and that image remains a guiding star. . . Sun from my twelve years in California provides the light. Color, light, and shape are the major elements of my art . . . " -- Artist's statement by Elaine Freeman.

-- And aren't we lucky!

MULLEN at LINDSAY. LIZ AT COMFEST.

2009-06-25T22:10:00.004-04:00

HURRY, hurry, hurry! Better than coney islands and as hot as electronic rock at COMFEST, KARL MULLEN'S Outsider paintings will shimmy on the walls at Lindsay Gallery 986 North High, at least thru July 4 and maybe longer.

The soft spoken artist hails from Dublin -- not Dublin Ohio -- and is now a resident of Pittsburg where he has been honored by several major awards and grants. Luckily for us, his unusual paintings visit Lindsay Gallery once in a while, once in a green moon I am tempted to say.

For twenty years Mullen has shown in Canada, Ireland and the U.K, and his weird dreamlike paintings -- yes,they are representative -- and narrative -- often present crudely drawn personae. Like, like leprechauns and -- first graders' drawings! The guy knows literature and old books; sometimes his odd figures appear against pages of ancient tomes. He says his dreams are important to him -- I asked him -- and if you like, off beat skilled and original. KARL MULLEN is the guy! (he uses, or he has been known to employ, such weird "media" as lamp soot, walnut oil, street soot, sumi ink, you name it.) His musical band has just the right poom and oom, we hope he comes back soon. Go, see, buy!

P.S. I'll be reading with some terrific poets on Saturday night -- check the schedule -- at COMFEST, I think in the Arts Tent. Check the schedule. It's almost midnight and my eyes are giving out! -- Visit Lindsay Gallery and see Karl Mullens "Primitive", "Dream Like" art He's a quiet, one man COMFEST!!

JUNE 2009 BUSTS OUT WITH ART!

2009-06-04T11:12:00.022-04:00

FIRST DAY for the COLUMBUS ARTS FESTIVAL, this time near the one, the only Columbus Museum of Art!--I'm going down there tonight because Thursday is always a special night,and George Tooker will be there! (I hope we're brave enough to negotiate that Arts Festival traffic!)

MICHAEL BAUZA PhD.,will read his poetry at AREOPAGITICA BOOKS at 7:30pm on June 26 He'll read WORD MUSIC! (my title.) Bauza's newest work is based, or rather undergirded, by his attentive love for chamber music, -- even though much of his writing is not ABOUT chamber music! The writer holds a PhD in chemistry and works at Chemical Abstracts. This should be a sophisticated and unusual evening. There is always an open reading at AREO, 3510 N. High, and the imposing ghost of JOHN MILTON is usually hovering around the stacks, and the literary canine, Townsend, keeps watch on the readings and readers.

MORE THAN ARTSPARKS: TAMARA JAEGER's tall, unusual, and pleasingly wacky wood sculptures -- SELECTED ASSEMBLAGES -- will show at the impeccably lovely KENY GALLERY, 300 East Beck, thru JUNE 26. This show is a don't miss because it is substantial and quite unusual. -- Walking thru the exhibit this writer felt that she was wandering in a dream forest where she met characters from fantastical fairy tale books!! Many of the assemblages are taller than real people, and their flat wooden bodies have been painted in flat primary colors -- which are never dull, even when they don't shine!

JULIA McLEMORE's RECENT FLORAL PHOTOGRAMS are an absolute delight! These BIG flowers, and parts of flowers, are -- well, mind blowing, in that their design and color come straight from the natural world! McLemores artist's statement generously explains her process, but not the surprise that her works give to beholders. McLemore's work, with Jaeger's, will be on exhibit at KENY thru June 26. More information and images at www.kenygalleries.com

ERNEST LOCKRIDGE is a painters' painter. That is, he is agile at painting technique! -- Yet,the end results are not at all conventional. Color and imagination are the wellsprings of his work! Lockridge's CONVERGENCE shows at the CCPBA Gallery at European Papers, 539 East Town Street, until August 29.

The exhibit includes two large and striking images of Monarch butterflies who pause and fly with accuracy and elan! They're big! They're identifiable at a distance, and they remind us that we,as earthlings, stand at a "convergence" at which earth is in peril. (My interpretation.) Lockridge is a retired professor of literature; he taught at Yale and at the Ohio State University. The titles of his paintings reveal the liveliness and the variety of subjects of his paintings,some of which are rich with glimpses of a trip to Iceland.

TITLES: Aphrodite; The River Goddess, Boann; Force of Nature; Penelope; Saffron Robe; Proteus Rising from the Sea. -- You can find more images and info at www.ernestlockridge.net. I believe Lockridge's reputation as an artist will grow as time passes. He is original and his work has substance.

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LISA HALL: POET WITH A PALETTE!

2009-04-10T11:14:00.006-04:00

What gorgeous surprises! On a recent Sunday when I needed an art infusion, I found not only a delicious art exhibit, but a gallery space which was new to me! CATERINA Ltd., 571 South Third Street in German Village, Columbus, Ohio, is a tall historical old German Village building. Inside it you'll find color-full-state-of-the-art-pottery and kitchen-ware, and many imported objects which are to die for. --Yet, on the third floor you'll find a bonafide and spacious art gallery! --Caterina Gallery, of course!

HIGH SPIRITED, an exhibit of LISA HALL's medium to large size oil paintings will show at CATERINA through May 15, and they are quite good, quite pleasing, and quite original in an understated kind of way.

In 2008 Lisa and her husband rode motorcycles through the Alps, and the artist stopped to capture the mountainous and pastoral countryside. --Yes, you'll find a small white church nestled in one green mountain valley, and you'll see gorgeous snows and meadows! --You'll find that Hall knows how to "blow you away" with warm (and cool) muted colors! --She's a genius at thickly applied brush strokes --she may use a palette knife, I forgot to ask! --And she understands texture.

Her yellow sun rays dance. The greens, blues, and lavenders she harvests from the natural world become gentle choreography. Some of her landscapes resemble weavings. --Look closely, look from far away!

On TOP OF THE WORLD, the painting which became Hall's post card image, is the closest the artist comes to pure abstraction in this exhibit which is, despite my reluctance to label, "an example of abstractionism with just enough hard edge." The artist has managed to be derivative without being passé. To conclude: when you see Hall's poetic mountain-scapes "you'll want to go there." --These are definitely paintings to live with.

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In the hall SUSAN ASTLEFORDS's glorious blossoms made me think of Shakespeare's sonnets -- his birthday is in April,-- and DAVID PHALEN's photographs are first rate. --Especially the warm and friendly bar scene in Wales. --I'm Welsh-American so I may be prejudiced, but Phalen is darn good. --I'm darn glad I discovered CATERINA!

POETRY AT THE RIFFE!

2009-03-27T09:15:00.004-04:00

DEAR READERS: March 27, 2009 I'm writing from a not so good space in illness, but I want you to know about an event at the Verne Riffe Center Gallery, 77 S. High St., on Sunday, March 29 at two p.m. --- Maybe I'll be there, maybe not.

MIMI CHENFELD, FRED ANDRLE, WIlLIAM FABRYCKI, (with me, Liz!) are THE UMBRELLA POETS OF COLUMBUS, and they will give a reading honoring poetry and the visual arts. DAVID FRANCIS SMITH and CRAIG MCVAY will be guest poets. The current RIFFE GALLERY exhibit is Visual Dialogues, which presents art from Germany and Ohio.

Here's my prosaic offering: (abstractions exist on their own merit, but I boldly let these tell short short prose poems to me!)

I.
MY FEELINGS ASSUME COLORS AND SHAPES
when I look at Green #5 by Jana Morgenstern!
Behold: Circles, tubes, abdominal curves, the intestines
of a gorgeous April.
I'm searching for spring! --- I'll love stepping barefoot!
Ah, they are so green, these curves and shapes of art.
As I stand here writing, I can taste spearmmint!

************

II.
BLACK #7 BY DETLEF SCHWEIGER
is my Dresden Ink Blot dress! --- It's so NOW!
Cut on the bias from a piece of charcoal!
Look, I'm a cold-hot-charcoal-piece-of-fabric
when I slip it on.
Years ago, my first art teacher, Miss Josephine Lee,
in Fostoria, Ohio, taught me about
dyeing Queen Ann's Lace, taught me
about Coco Chanel's little black dress.
Taught me how to use my imagination!
And so, today, I muse, "I'll write some
designer lines for Black # 7 by Detlef Schweiger.
I'll tape a map of Ohio to my left shoulder
and locate the Riffe Center in Columbus, Ohio!
--- And look, --- an orange dagger, a good luck patch!
And look, I can see haute couture against mottled snow!
Voila! I can feel stylish and chic
and do anything I want to, and go where I want to go
in my little BLACK #7 ULTRA DRESS!"

Here are some more of the abstractions in the Visual Dialogues exhibit. Click on each image to see a larger version.

GLORIES: VIVIAN PITMAN AT LINDSAY

2009-03-05T11:40:00.014-05:00

Wearing elegant, yet simple, Africa-print dresses and matching head wraps, Vivian Pitman and her mother, the artist Barbara Thomas, welcomed guests to their Lindsay Gallery Opening on Friday, February 27. It was a gala evening. Guests and glasses sparkled. Vivian's unique and bright paintings almost jumped off the wall, and so did the more sedate renderings of her mother. All of the small, puppet-like dolls seemed to breathe, even though they are cartoon-ish and stout and dance without strings!

When I asked Pitman what her dolls were made of, she replied, "clay. And anything I need to use and find to use."

Pitman is a self taught artist. She seems to dance, like a break dancer, between colors, words, and "schools" of art. Her liveliness surpasses the terms "primitive" or "authentic." She is unafraid to use bright reds, greens, yellows, purples. She knows how to create textures and surfaces, and she will not reveal her secret: how she uses sand in her creations.

Her composition -- sometimes elementary, sometimes random -- is always effective. Expressive. As in Expressionist! In THE DEATH OF LINCOLN, Pitman, at her most elementary, has depicted the martyred President as resting, his corpse strangely tube-shaped, on bright grass surrounded by a color guard in bright yellow shirts! The crudely painted soldiers are firing a salute, "as they would for a President," Pitman said. An encirclement of creatures that resemble merry go round horses -- or reindeer -- surrounds the scene. And everything dances together. --As I recall, this is a scene in which a grotesque blood red Bird of Death is veering.-- A Pitman may be child-like, but it is rarely, or ever, "cute."

Vivian employs words; most of her paintings include titles or phrases. You'll find an ALPHABET OF SLAVERY: "A is for African, torn from his home. B is the bloodhound to catch all that roam. C is the cotton plant. . ."

One of the small stout three-D puppet-like dolls represents "Eta Moten, singer, actress, hailed as a pioneer for black actresses."--I had to look her up!-- Pitman "saw Moten once in a movie." And many remarkable personages will be seen at this Lindsay show. You will learn much. For example, Virgina Hamilton, who wrote books for young people, is represented.

The slogan,"Only Love Can Drive Out Hate" is visible. So is a heart wrenching Klan Whipping, and a Lynching, and the admonition "KKK. Leave the negro alone!" (in which blood drips from the white man's club!) Gazing at these grotesque depictions we are reminded of the ferocity of anarchist posters that blossomed before and between World War I and II. They said it like it was.

Pitman celebrates history and narrative in a unique way, and she is, indeed, worthy of the title, Griot. History bearer and tale teller. Lincoln, Martin Luther King, yes, and nearly life-sized President Barak Obama, are much in evidence. In one painting the wonderful young President, in profile, wearing a classy green sweater -- I just know it's cashmere -- looks admiringly at a recognizable, if stout, Martin Luther King. They are both happy because Barak Obama has fulfilled The Dream. A wide Stars and Stripes provides a background for the two gifted leaders. In one painting Obama-as-Hero seems to have morphed into Spider Man!

OOOPS! One of Pitman's most outre subjects, unique but not offensive, depicts women sitting at a long table, similar to that in the legendary Last Supper. However,Pitman's "supper" presents, not traditional disciples of Jesus, but women who are squirting breast milk at each other! Pitman said this painting was inspired by Women Who Earn Money by Selling Their Own Milk!

IN OUR TELEPHONE INTERVIEW Pitman revealed that she works part time, is a Christian who loves her church, and that her art career started when she began making ladies hats and selling them. Her mother, Barbara Thomas, a strong yet more conventional artist, has always encouraged Vivian.

About her own art Pitman said, "it's kind of a gift, like a talent for throwing a baseball. You're born with it, but you have to practice. I'm still learning."

She added, "I'm patient and strong, and I can work hard." Pitman likes to listen to jazz and all kinds of music. She is not immune to the power of dreams. And she is wonderfully proud of her sister, the novelist GWANDINE THURMAN who recently published ETHIOPIAN PRINCESS. (see www.kingdomnovels.com.)

Pitman is "engaged" or engagee as the French used to say about socially concerned artists. She was definitely not born with a gold paint brush in her hand. In fact, Duff Lindsay, gallery owner and curator, first discovered Pitman through a contact at The Mid-Ohio Food Bank.

The current exhibition reveals a wide sweep of concerns and subjects, which, like the proverbial maiden in a fairy tale, Vivian Pitman has woven into a mythical assemblage of paintings, dolls, and sculptures.

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Lindsay Gallery is located at 986 North High in Columbus, Ohio. 614-291-1973. VIVIAN PITMAN will run thru March 21. See photos of the Pitman reception.

MARCIA EVANS ON LINCOLN

2008-09-11T13:29:00.003-04:00

When I dropped in at Marcia Evans Art Consulting Gallery, 8 East Lincoln, to see the current exhibit, I blinked with pleasure at the large abstracts glowing on the walls. These acrylic paintings by BJR, BRIAN REAUME, are vivacious yet sedate, and their color intensity is warm, not hot! --- Here are beautiful, if not provocative, contemporary paintings.

The artist employs, if loosely, a range-of-colors-and-geometric aesthetic which is "Now" yet "Classic." BJR is a self taught emerging artist with a Masters in literature, and the titles of his paintings describe a mood, an inner journey:

My idea begins with a story. . .
Brand New Wish. . .
This space was designed around me. . .
I was just going to. . .

BJR is quite a facile painter; he knows about hues and layers. He knows how to make colors and shapes dance! His no nonsense abstracts reveal a lively spirit, and his work is decorative in the best sense of the word. His large paintings are perfect for various offices and corporate sites and for many gracious living spaces.

DAWSON KELLOGG, Professor of Art at CCAD, is the glass half of this show, GLASS & CANVAS. Kellogg's tall vessels, at least the ones at "Marcia's," average around 18 inches tall and have a classic urn-like shape. Of translucent glass, they usually emphasize one radiant color, one clear glass tone, so to speak, which has been augmented by compatible hues, chromatic blurrs and shapes, within. Deep blue, for example, enhanced by various blue and purple swirls within. Kellogg, like Reaume, is a Now-yet-Classic master.

The opening reception for Glass & Canvas included live jazz and hors d'euvres, and was quite well attended. THE EXHIBIT CLOSES SEPTEMBER 30.

Next up at Marcia Evans will likely be a SALON show with works which may or may not include paintings by one of Marcia Evans' most sought after painters, JOHN DONNELLY, Professor of Art at Mount Vernon Nazarene University. Donnelly's zany and flowing interpetations of everyone and everything --- from Marilyn Monroe to Mona Lisa to a rooster crossing the road --- I think I saw that --- present the hallmarks of a strong and practiced painter!

LINDA WESNER's* colored pencil renderings of rural Ohio have won top national awards. In an inimitable understated (Wesnerian) way, they're breathtaking!

Donnelly and Wesner are but two of the many fine artists who have been exhibited by Marcia Evans. Marcia Evans moved from Granville to her current site, 8 East Lincoln almost two years ago. She has been working successfully as an art consultant for twenty years. She has a diamond cutter's eye for choosing art and art objects from the Mid West and nationwide. She and her gallery can be summed up in a few words. --- New York sophistication with an (Ohion's) - hard-cider-zing!

CAROL PHILLIPS WITT lives in Granville, Ohio, and her smallish, sun-toned, nature-informed "plates and vessels of pressed clay" are to die for.

MARCIA EVANS is open 11-5 Tuesday-Saturday and by appointment. 614-298-8847.

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*note: Linda Wesner's colored pencil renderings will be on exhibit at Ohio Wesleyan's Richard M Ross Art Museum in Delaware, Ohio, thru September 21st.

IMPRESSIONIST WOMEN,-- THEY'RE HOT!

2008-08-27T11:25:00.005-04:00

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

2008-08-22T13:28:00.013-04:00

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

from an INTERVIEW WITH STEPHANIE SYPSA

2008-03-07T13:23:00.001-05:00

She's a romantic with a cutting edge. Columbus resident Stephanie Sypsa graduated from Columbus College of Art and Design in 2004. She hails from near Biloxi Mississippi, which is "just a hop,skip,and a jump fromNew Orleans and the Gulf." She has been married to Jason, a mechanical engineer, for nine years. Jason also is from the South, and "we love our visits there, and lots of family stuff." Sypsa possesses a strong sense of history. When she visited Dresden , Germany, during her OAC residency, she was haunted by awareness of the World War II bombings, and by the then recent damage done by HurricaneKatrina in the U.S.
When Sypsa visited Rome (during the residency) she was fascinated, indeed, engaged, by monuments, reliquaries, burials,cemeteries.--When I asked her what she was reading, she replied that she had been "spending most of my reading time on researching memory and memorials. I was struck by that feeling in Rome, how we need to connect, need connection to those gone before.. And memory. . . how we need to be remembered. I've been reading about
that, especially as regards Victorian times Funeral wreathes,hair lockets, that sort of thing.
I've even been researching light machinery from that period."
Sypsa appreciates photography, and incorporates photographs into her art. Yet, she
states, emphatically, "I am not a photographer.--At CCAD I was lucky to study art, painting and drawing. I did have a photography class that inspired me. In it I learned much about old time photography. I learned traditional stuff--Brown tones. Old nasty chemicals. Not digital.
I learned how you could color photographs, like painting!"
Stephanie and Jason like to travel, at home and abroad. "I love traveling," Sypsa said.
"We've been to Costa Rica, New Zealand, to Paris. Dresden. Rome. And, of course, we look at art, and I do take photographs.--I'm an over documentarian!"
Like most visual artists Sypsa likes to listen to music, and there again, her tastes include
"some vintage." She loves the music of Jeff Buckley "who died young and had such a beautiful voice. And I love Billie Holiday who died a long time ago."
Recently, Sypsa began to work out of a new studio in Grandview. She remains excited about belonging to the Phoenix Print Making Collective. She enjoys working at Riffe, especially being a teacher or assistant at Family Days.
"What's good about the Columbus art scene? New groups are emerging and merging. There's a new art scene in GrandView--Their gallery hop is huge! The art scene is what makes Columbus special. If not, I wouldn't stay here!"
Connections II, Ohio Artists Abroad, is open until April 8 and exhibits fourteen very contemporary and agile artists who created work during OAC residencies in Germany, Poland,and the Czech Republic. It is a varied and cerebral show and you are bound to see things you like and love and puzzle over.
The Ohio Arts Council's Riffe Gallery is at 77 S. High St. in Columbus, Ohio in the Verne Riffe building. Admission, like the best in art, is free.

STEPHANIE SYPSA at THE RIFFE

2008-03-07T10:50:00.004-05:00

At the Riffe Gallery's Connections II, Ohioans Abroad exhibit STEPHANIE SYPSA's images serve as striking talismans for Women's History Month. Or Herstory month!
ENCLOSED IN GRAY MATTER I. consists of progressive images, three presentations of a young woman's vintage, somewhat colorless, face on three separate 8x10 inch papers. The first image is stark, earnest, unembellished. The second and third reprints of the same face have acquired overlays, marks,. . .symbols. Although Sypsa wants to convey the idea of "vintage" --the collar, the sweet earnest visage, the hair drawn back, parted in the middle--she has chosen images that lend themselves to chronological ambiguity. She suggests , I think, that we, as women, are stamped, or patterned, by cultures and events.
Superimposed marks, blocks, patterns--suggest the necessity of women to conform at home or in the work place. Yet, the same repetition can also symbolize the power of connection. Combining photography, xerox, prints,reprints and overlays,
with--graph paper, clear plastic, straight pins, and yes, thread --Sypsa conveys aspects of regularity and repetition, even factory work.
In the haunting AFTER IMAGE OF A YOUNG GIRL, photo lithograph, pins on paper, (24 x 36 inches) a single , indefinite , woman figure glows.--Well, part of the woman's face glows! So does part of her arm, and a purse--or midriff--no matter.
The purple-black-wine-velvet- background dominates, envelopes the woman.--Yet she shines thru! Her environment is Jung's "Dark" . Standing inside it, the woman calls to us from a distance,from the past, most likely. Thru stark , nearly primitive , rendering
the young girl becomes iconic, archetypal We can imbue her with meaning: Our mothers, their mothers,our sisters, our selves.
Sypsa earned her bachelor of arts at Columbus College of Art and Design in 2004. She has done free lance work for the Columbus Museum of Art and has taught continu
ing education classes for CCAD. In 2006 she took part in an Ohio Arts Council international residency at the Dresden Graphic workshop in Dresden Germany. She is a gallery assistant and preparator at the Riffe Gallery. Her phone interview follows.--Happy Women's Day, everyone!

SING THE BODY ELECTRIC!

2008-03-01T22:58:00.003-05:00

March. Women'shistory month. I'll begin my annual celebration by writing about a guy who loves women! --He thinks that 'Women and flowers are God's greatest projects!"--In fact, Jerry Tollifson, State Art Education, Consultant Emeritus, was recently asked to remove his female
totems, sculptures, from a Westerville Gallery. Fearing a lawsuit he removed the sculptures almost immediately!
Nothing succeeds like notoriety. When I spoke to Tollifson on February 29, he said that The Other Paper had taken up his cause, and as a result, one of his "censored" nudes had sold almost immediately.--Like the next day! (I haven't read The Other Paper article yet, but I shall! They're usually right on target in that sort of matter)
Tollifson goes to church each Sunday. I didn't ask where.--And afterward, still wearing church-appropriate suit and tie, he visits the Ohio Art League where, among frayed jeaned paint spattered artists, he practices drawing and painting from live nude models.
"Yes," he admitted, "So far all of the nude models have been women, and some of the women artists say there should be men models too."--Right on!
In his letter to me Tollifson , in describing himself, wrote " a problem has arisen. Tollifson
has been suffering from an identity crisis. He doesn't quite know whether he identifies more
with Larry Flint, the pornographer and publisher of Hustler magazine, or with Michael Angelo, the 15th century artist whose nude paintings were objected to by officials of the Catholic Church at the time.--Apparently Tollifson's crisis has been resolved by hismaking a choice of identity, for when last seen he was searching for places where he could purchase fig leaves."
YOU TOO can work from live models at the Ohio Art League Sundays 1 to 4 pm. It's not necessary to reserve, but for more information call theOAL at 614-299 8225. Jerry Tollifson's
Fabulous Flowers will be shown at a one man show at Inniswood Park during August, 2008.
The artist is a big tall guy with a lot of cool white hair, and he often wears what is, or is similar to, a white panama suit, like the one the author Tom Wolfe wears.--Perhaps Jerry should pose fully clothed, for a Sunday afternoon modeling session.--Jerry, on a grayday your letter was a breath of fresh air!
ELECTRIC LADIES : Last month I was reborn, renascent as poet Edna St VincentMillay would say, when I visited Electric Lady Land at Mahan Gallery, 717 N.High. (More than once!) Liz Markus lives in New York and her large"Protector " abstracts were to die for!
The peripheral remarks by Colleen Grannen, co director and gallery guide, informed me, beamed me up! Grannen's sense of Now and Then and Popular Culture was, indeed, a breath of fresh air. Kime (Kimmy)Buzzelli, now of L.A.,blew me away with her big neo romantic fashion drawings.--Well, romantic is a non linear state of time and mind). Lithe women,"retro flower women,"Grannen explained. Figures, graceful and lyrical, cutting edge, on big paper. Flowers tendrils,stenciled on walls by Kime Buzzelli herself. The woman is an NFL running back! (New Fashion Life.)--I found Kime's blogg. I wanted to visit Show Pony in L.A.! I wanted to be young and thin, like those lithe sixties women on Kime's big papers. Iraq was blowing up. More Ohioans were losing jobs. But Liz Markus had painted abstracts in honor of such icons asJim Hendryx (sp) and John Lennon,who wore helmets and goggles or dark glasses, and were,as Colleen said, "protectors."-- I want to live in Electric Lady Land, even if only part time!

ERNEST LOCKRIDGE: WINTER DREAMS

2008-01-17T10:15:00.001-05:00

WINTER DREAMS: PAINTINGS BY ERNEST LOCKRIDGE
"Still life is a contradiction in terms." -- Ernest Lockridge

Winter Dreams, a one man show by the contemporary American artist Ernest Lockridge, closed at The Worthington Art Center on January 14, 2008.-- My holiday rush had evolved into a smush, but I'm glad I got to the Art Center before Winter Dreams closed! The artist is working in acrylics,and his twelve painting exhibit was substantial.-- In other words, well painted, exciting.

An "unretired" Professor of English from The Ohio State University, Lockridge once taught at Yale and has three published novels under his belt. He is able to paint full time now, hence his descriptive "unretired," and he loves to travel. A few years back he and his wife, Laurel Richardson, poet/sociologist, co-authored Travels With Ernest, a lively mixed genre account of their travels. Lockridge's artistic efforts, many of them originating plein air, have taken him from Taos, New Mexico, to the Yucatan Peninsula, to Hawaii, and to other exciting places, including Schiller and WhetstoneParks in Columbus! Winter Dreams is visual evidence of the Richardson/Lockridge penchant for globe trotting.

As to painting, Lockridge's is grounded in his technical aplomb and in his familiarity with work of "greats"-- ranging from Sargent to Grandma Moses to Native American pictographs to the cave paintings at Chauvet." -- On his artist's statement he says that he began to use his first set of Sargents(!) paints when he was eight years old. Now he uses thickly applied paint and obvious brush strokes, like the Impressionists did. He is not afraid of color. His use of it although broad, is harmonious, meticulous. The tall BURNING BUSH, TASMANIA, seems about to explode with raw color and linear shapes.

THE FIRE THIS TIME, TAOS, 24 x 36 inches, a gorgeous canvas (board) was, of course, painted in Georgia O Keefe country in New Mexico, and in it masterful gradations of reds, oranges, browns, form a blizzard of tree foliage that nearly covers the side of a non-descript ranch house. The colors on both of these paintings are on fire, smouldering. Having lived in Ohio for years when he taught at The Ohio State University, Lockridge has internalized the audacious hues of Ohio autumns and has transported them to other venues, tamed them to his palette. -- And, speak of "taming," -- in LOST IN ICELAND, 20 x 24 inches, the strangely elided and juxtaposed shapes of two big horses stand flank by flank, nearly fill the "canvas," and create a study in design and color that is baffling. -- As I recall, a splat of midnight sun, or perhaps a day time moon -- is visible here. And iconic white aurioles, sun-like splats, glimmer in other of Lockridge's paintings. -- But you have to look.

The aesthetics of design and abstraction are present in Lost in Iceland. Yet, the large truncated shapes of the two horses suggest something primitive and one cannot help but think of pre-Norse myths and legends.

Again. Lockridge has mastered the elements of composition and color. Yet, his canvasses (or boards) manage to shimmy, to emit an electric charge. -- It's brush strokes in motion! This is true of TIDAL POOL, YUCATAN, 24 x 36 inches, in which a very small man in red trunks swims his way thru huge sheafs of white water toward the opening crevice that might suggest the birth canal. Lockridge's paintings are all somewhat abstract, yet the majority of them include elements of the representational. The swimmer in red trunks is a swimmer in red trunks! Lockridge's chosen modus, wisely, tends toward the maxim that "less is more."

FOUNDATION, a foray into grids and pure abstraction, is striking yet understated. The hues of SEDONA SUNSET emit lavender-sagebrush-deep purple-fragrances -- if you can see fragrances!

For Winter Dreams Lockridge's most "outre" effort is NO PARKING ZONE, CARMEL. We wonder what was going on there. An afternoon exercise of the painterly arts perhaps. In "Carmel" we see the backside of a white convertible, top down, and the contents of a jagged and narow back yard. And long weedy grass. I think it's long and weedy! And a No Parking sign and a skinny watch dog. A mutt. The colors dance and so does the feeling of a familiar, perhaps lackadaisical, moment, when we ourselves captured, in words or paint, the unvarnished and uncropped splendor of a hot afternoon.

THE WORTHINGTON COMMUNITY CENTER is at 345 East Wilson Bridge Road. and it is open every day of the week. Call 431--0329. Ernest Lockridge has exhibited at High Road Gallery and Weisheimer Gallery and thru most of January and February he and Laurel have paintings and sculpture in what is bound to be a very exciting MEMBERS SHOW at the beautiful, I mean beautiful, JUNGHAUS ASSOCIATION GALLERY, 59 West Third Avenue, 291-8050.

JUNGHAUS Gallery is open to every one, but it is best to call first. Claire Hagan Bauza curates JungHaus exhibits which are always outstanding. The current Members Show includes oils, acrylics, watercolor, fibers, sculpture, an array of art media. Coming soon: a Members Show including photography and digital imaging.

DECEMBER 31, JOIN US, RIING OUT WILD BELLS!,

2007-12-27T14:36:00.000-05:00

POETS, WRITERS, LISTENERS, LOVERS OF LITERATURE AND HISTORY, ATTEND: Lend us your eyes, your ears, your radiant and attentive presences! Come to Areopagitica Book Store, 3510 North High Street between 730 and midnight, on December 31, 2007 and ring in, or almost ring in, the new year of 2008! as Lord Tennyson so ably put it: Ring in the good that is to come. SPEND THE EVENING IN THE PRESENCE OF THE GREAT WRITERS, PAST and PRESENT. Punch, tea, coffee, cookies , conversation and lots of good solid literary work by writers living and dead, yet all alive. literary quizzzes, book raffles. Books to savor and to buy.
Suggested donations of five dollars or more will go to the Poets and Writers Guild of Central Ohio. Celebrate their upcoming publication, made possible through a Greater Columbus Arts Council grant,for War, Peace, Earth. Honor the Guild and its founder Dotte Turner. Words by your favorite authors read by YOU Your original prose and poetry welcome too. Bring cookies or snacks if you wish. C ome dressed as your favorite author if the spirit moves you..If you insist upon more information call 267 3085 and ask for Robert or Elizabeth Browning and leave your phone number.--And remember, "Marley was dead to begin with."--Ring in the good that is to come!

EDNA THROWS A PARTY

2007-12-17T10:04:00.000-05:00

One of the most delicious exhibits anywhere in the U.S.A. is bound be be EDNA BOIES HOPKINS which will glimmer at the Columbus Museum of Art to March 2nd 2008! Edna died in 1937. She was, and is, a woodcut artist supreme. She's one of the supremes! The Hopkins often vacationed in France before and after the First World War. Like her some-what-contemporary Zelda Fitzgerald, herself no stranger to Paris night life--Edna loved parties, and some of her block prints are party invitations. I first met Edna at Keny Gallery, 300 East Beck St. You can read about her in a previous ArtScene, Women & Art: EDNA, March 21,2007.

TRIBUTARIES

2007-12-14T12:20:00.000-05:00

TRIBUTARIES AND GILDA. Whenever I can I visit the National Galleryof Art in Washington D.C. There, around the time of Gilda Edwards' death in 2000, I saw an exhibit of paintings by artists who used to visit Monet on the river. The Impressionists, a few of Monet's close friends and their families, came there to paint and to visit, and, "kit and kaboodle," they stayed in Monet's house! They liked to paint the river, and they liked to fish on the river. They liked to eat the fish! A grocer's cart passed by each day. There was an actual green studio boat with an oil lamp in it. Sometimes Monet stayed on the boat all night. Sometimes it rained.. . . Somehow, the studio boat at night presented me with the image of a woman artist near death in a hospital.--In my poem the studio boat became a hospital bed, and Monet became the spirit of art which strengthens the woman. The woman is not actually Gilda Edwards, but Gilda's vivid imagination inspired me, and I dedicated the poem to her, and it was published and received an award from Flashpoint magazine.(I can't find the issue!)

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST IN INTENSIVE CARE
for Gilda Edwards, 1955 --2000.

Needles spring from her arms, tubes
meander the esophagus into what's left
of her stomach.
She knows the cool "port" of morphine.
"I'm tripping,"
she whispers. "It's raining
behind this screen.
My steel beds rockin!"

Distanced from bodily pain
she is able to imagine
somewhere else. Monet's bleached-green
studio boat, the sides hooked down.
"A tub," she giggles. A man sits beside
an oil lamp in the boat. She can sense
his being, solid, yet the color of charcoal dust.
Bowed above the thick paper while he tries
to explain in French, "this morning painted . . .
light, water, pure sky.
Now, a chalk study. . . One day
the Zambesi River."

He unwraps dry bread and a mango.
She manages a whiff. Ripe fruit. Brie.
Anaesthesia. The cavity of her stomach
fills with orchids and lilacs. She exhales
knows in her own way the painter will remain
beside her until day break. She hears
a series of bleeps, raindrops
from the monitor. She's unafraid. For years
this has been her strength. Breath.
The focusing . Images.

*******************

The Lure of Giverny is a tone poem of connections. Langston Hughes wrote: "I have known rivers, rivers as ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep with the rivers."
gs.

TRIBUTARIES: Monet, Gilda, and Edna

2007-12-14T12:19:00.000-05:00

IN MONET'S GARDEN: THE LURE OF GIVERNY

2007-12-13T11:56:00.000-05:00

Like a pond. With as many twists and turns as Langston Hughes "Rivers." --That's the way
Claude Monet's gardens and ponds will meander thru the upper realms of The Columbus Museum of Art, 480 East Broad Street, until January 20, 2008.
The show contains evrything from geometric abstraction to romantic impressionismto inventive garden scenes. Wall charts, audios, and photos, present and past present the chronology and connections of Monet's life and art! The melange of art and events works very very well.
Will Cotton's brazen "Flannpond " (New York, NewYork, 2002) attracted a lot of attention when I was there. --Monet did love cooking, you know--And over the years the ponds and the gardens and art groupies and Impressionism itself have gone through various phases of dishab ille and rejuvenation. Not to mention two world wars. Flannond shimmers with double entendres, many meanings.--Andthis is a marvelous show to look at!
Monet's colors--as in "The Artist's Garden, 1900," --are earthy, but not of this world.
Monet's brush strokes bear the chalky warmth of Degas'pastels, yet they are oils.
Monet's Field of Irises,-- they are Yellow Irises--is flat, layered, like farmland strung with jewels.--Some of Monet's lovely scenes become less abstract when you step back from them
and more abstract when you stand up close! And, of course, you'll see the legendary water Lilies, the Nympheas, which shimmer, float, and threaten to disappear.
Some of Han Xin's work is exhibited close to the Monet exhibit. Han Xin is a world class painter. A few years back I asked him, "how are you able to make your Giverny tributes shimmer without using gold or silver?" After some thought he answered:
"I was trained to draw. I can draw fountains. Light, shadows. With a pencil, graphite.
I think that has something to do with the way I can make my paintings seem to shine. Like water. "
The Giverny exhibit includes photographs of Monet and his blended family. In one tiny photograph we see Monet's earnest step daughter who, with her stepfather's guidance,
became a painter too! In a lovely painting, La Debacle, painted in 1892 by
Theodore Robinson, we see a well dressed, straw-chapeaued woman resting on a low garden wall. We know by the length and breadth of her hobbled skirt , that she has paused, letter in hand, to think of a lost love, perhaps, before the First World War.
Monet's history at Giverny blossoms with water lilies, flows like a river, and gleams like a pond. The Columbus Museum of Art is at 480 East Broad Street,614-221-4848.
www.columbus Museum.com
Transcribed on December 13, this post will continue with
"Tributaries and Gilda Edwards " and "Edna Boies Throws a Party!"

POWER AT THE RIFFE!

2007-11-30T13:46:00.000-05:00

HIGH POWERED VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF LIFE .
A vibrant multi-faceted show, New Horizons: Rewards of Time and Place, opened at the Riffe Gallery in down town Columbus on November 8 and will close on January 6, 2008. Sara Johnson, director at the Southern Ohio Museum in Portsmouth, curated this exhibit which is so excitingly eclectic and has been so elegantly hung.
NewHorizons gathers a range of work--from painting to sculpture to fiber arts--that was created during, or inspired by, Ohio Arts Council domestic residency grants . These grants allow artists to live and work in an art-centered facility outside Ohio for three months.
Such coast-rimmed places as The Fine Arts Work Center in Province Town, Mass; The Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, Ca. , and the Arts Center/South Florida in Miami, provided inspiration and available work time for 11 Ohio artists. The exhibit is an adventure. Each artist possesses a strong technique and more than a dash of daring- do. Rather than
"review" the entire exhibit I decided to give myself a Christmas gift and "go" with a few of my own emotional responses.
EMORY. Paul Emory's work tends to be large, on canvas, and painted with much strength--in color, composition, and the manipulation of paint. His prowess includes originality; his work is distinctly individual but not ostentatious. His "Horizon" paintings worked best for me when he allowed the slightly grotesque or daemonic/demonic,as in creative, to emerge. In FINCH KISS two large shiny birds,accurately painted, pause beak to beak! Quarreling
or kissing, no matter. Their circular background is puzzling, yet unabashed in color and balance. The painting succeeds-as a painting and as a contextual puzzle.
In Emory's CAGED a giant squirrel grinds and sputters nuts. The floor of the slatted cage is littered with shells. Two strangely fierce boys, their skin sun-tinged, hang from the side of the cage and stare at the squirrel.--In fear? In threat? No matter. They are like monkeys. The painting has impact. The"tight" largesse of the composition succeeds The white farm house and the vigilant farmer are barely visible. One thinks of Wlliam Saroyan's lines, "I had a dream to open cages and I did."
LAURA AND THE LORELIES! Laura Saunders knows how to paint water, large and small bodies of it, tranquil and stormy! She paints canvasses that sing to you from across the gallery. (I thought I heard the sea shore,and maybe I did.--After all, Todd Slaughter's humungus steel and fiberglass Red Riding Hood was guarding the Riffe outdoors. All things
are possible in art.) In Saunders' WAVE WITH CHILD, a large rectangular oil on canvas,--the water--a bay, an ocean, a lake, -- seems magical and turbulent and quite real. The artist gives us "the feel" of vastness by placing a diminutive young girl, a child in a white dress, to one side, and allows the child to trail a hand in the water. The child is unafraid. An unseen Mom, perhaps the painter herself , is near by. We know she is near by. She must be.
In DRAIN AND FILL, a grand three- canvas work, another child braves the water, this time in the center canvas, with two marvelous water studies--they are more than studies--on each side. This is not a sentimental painting but one of grandeur and reality.--If water has texture, Saunders knows how to paint it!
When I got back home I sat on the sofa. I remembered JuliaFriedman's big black paper sculpture of a tree.(Untitled cut-out paper, 84x54x10 inches) It cast a shadow and it was as tall as I am. I know it was paper because I touched it with the tip of my smallest finger, for a nano second! It reminded me of Turner Classic Movies, the infrequent times when Robert Osborne shows the1900s black and white Silhouette Silents on Sunday night.
I thought about Gerry Fogarty's Bamboo Lattice. BAMBOO LATTICE exalts simplicity. Fogarty collects, cuts, weaves, staples, glues,affixes. The results are awfully good,and the earth and indigenous cultures are celebrated.
Yes, back at home I sat on the sofa and imagined I was sitting in the sun in Douglas Unger's MARIETTA ALLEY SERIES with hollyhocks. I saw plant poles and a garden too. I chose a shell from my shell dish and held a shell to my ear. I heardLaura Saunder's oceans I saw LINDA GALL or someone who looked like her , having a great time at the beach and painting like mad.
I heard LACEY LUCE, Marketing Specialist at the RIFFE, say , "Each day I come in,and I ask myself what 's my favorite today, and it's always different."

--Don't miss New Horizons! --Take a notebook,write your own journal responses.
The Ohio Arts Council's Riffe Gallery is located at the Vern Riffe Center for Government and the Arts, 77 S. High St. Columbus, Ohio. Visit www.Riffe Gallery.org or phone 614-728-2239. Admission is free.
gtu

I CATCH UP WITH DAINA & VIV!!

2007-04-03T15:40:00.000-04:00

Better great than never! Women's month is really over now, but I want to mention two female comets who passed thru recently and are likely to return soon.
In January at REBECCA IBEL Gallery: An open conversation by DAINA HIGGINS , graffiti art celeb, and JOE HOUSTON,-- yeah, he's a guy,-- the curator of Contemporary Art at the Columbus Museum of Art. Higgins and Houston discussed High and Low art , and Higgins work. In addressing the issue of elitism Houston and Higgins agreed that the artists themselves tend not to be "elitist" but are "democratic." They spoke of Atget and Man Wray, and maybe even Basquiat! (which doesn't rhyme.) The afternoon was a treat. Higgins, once a street artist, has great art school credentials and is formerly of Columbus. She's now a genuine New York (and Brooklyn) artist working with Melissa Meyer who is a major player at Miranova and Rebecca Ibel Galleries here, as well as in the New York area. Higgins' (mostly) monochromatic works at "Rebecca's" had been finely honed in the making ---repeatedly screened, cut out, stenciled, rendered, and never dripped! Small and exacting for silk screen, the "paintings" suggest faded yet incisive photographs. They present viewers with a "take" on urban houses and scapes. --Cool. Poetic.--Go, Daina, go. And come back soon.
Looking spectacular in Kelly green VIVIAN RIPLEY was glimpsed rushing out of the current High Road Gallery show, DAZZLE, which runs thru April. DAZZLE dazzles. Vivian Ripley gets my vote for ART WOMAN. For years she has been teaching painting AND piano, and her students win awards at both. She has earned more than one artist in residency in the state and national park systems. At a recent Trillium soirree she concertized beautifully while presenting a brief history of music, and managed to remain calm under the duress of more than one fire alarm! When she rustled by me at High Road, she whispered something about having "won first place at the Mill Run show"(for painting) and was "on to another gig." Whoosh! All the comets aren't in the sky. FRAN MANGINO, dazzeled at DAZZLE and so did the curator of High Road, CAROL HERSHEY who, herself , moves in a glowing and versatile art orbit. --OKAY. Women's month 2007, is over.--COME HEAR ME READ POETRY AT AREOPAGITICA BOOK STORE, 3510 N. High 7:30 pm April 27.

WOMEN& ART, ART & WOMEN

2007-03-21T16:39:00.000-04:00

This is in Women's history/herstory month. YOU MAY WANT TO READ THE PREFACE WHICH IS TOWARD THE BOTTOM Art dances on . I dedicatethe Edna Boies Hopkins piece to my cousin Jill .

SHORT NORTH:ART & WOMEN:MARCIA & LAURIE, WOMEN & ART

2007-03-21T16:21:00.000-04:00

Celebrate MARCIA EVANS, Petite, talented, courageous Art Consultant 8 East Lincoln, who, in cooperation with the Puffin Foundation, will show Eva Andry's solemn and interactive exhibit PUTTING FACES TO THE NAMES . The exhibit consists of 300 original photographs representing the (American) Iraq war Fallen.. This interactive event is a witnessing. Educator and consultant Evans comprehends public and private needs for art enhancement in all communities. She is to be commended for sharing her upscale professional gallery with Putting Faces to the Names. The exhibit, if not the war, will close on April 15. See the current Short North Gazette for more. See the April Gazette for my review of LAURIE VON ENDT's imaginative LAY OF THE LAND, an exhibit of colored infrared photographs at JUNG HAUS GALLERY 59 West Third Avenue. This exhibit closes on April 28.