12/17/2009 - West Side Leader
     

Regional artists focus of year-end shows

Nancy Richards-Davis’ “1º of Change — Sustaining” is on view at Summit Artspace through Jan. 2.

Photo courtesy of Nancy Richards-Davis

The first is the seventh juried exhibition Kaleidoscope 2009, sponsored by the Alliance for the Visual Arts as its Holiday Show, and the annual Work by Members exhibit by associates of the Artists of Rubber City.

The exhibits overlap a bit in that about 25 percent of the artists, such as Joe Dick, Jerry Domokur, Miller Horns, Carol Klingel, Bob Pozarski and several others, appear in both exhibits. That can make it kind of an interesting dilemma and a little confusing for someone taking in both showings in the same afternoon.

For Kaleidoscope, artists are to put forth the best work they have with hopes of captivating the jurors who select the award winners and those for honorable mention. For the Work by Members exhibit, artists are likewise asked to bring forth perhaps not their best work, but works that best represent their body of work. That may well be splitting some very fine hairs in most cases, as a walk through the showings can make pretty clear. In short, what’s the difference?

Visit the exhibits in turn and see if you can find your own idea of distinctiveness, for that should be the key.

The winners of Kaleidoscope, Shirley Ende-Saxe, Sally Heston and Gwen Waight, were respectively singled out for the specialness of the “fresh approach to art” that their works represent, say, for the highly imaginative quality they bring to their art while retaining the high degree of craftsmanship that all the other works selected to be in the exhibit also bear. Ende-Saxe’s work, “Maple Man Embroiders the Truth,” for example, is an inventive collage depicting a page of poetry from “The Money-King” overlaid with an old-fashioned photo of a man who is framed by maple tree “swirlies” and hemmed in by embroidery thread. The work cries out for the viewer to bring his or her interpretation to this inventive work.

Oil painters Debra Thompson and Cleo Clark Williams, watercolorist Henry Walker and encaustic and collage maker Nancy Richards-Davis all were chosen as representing the top among works that jurors Timothy Callaghan and Mindy Tousley saw as having a “strong sense of observational skills and overall technical proficiency” among the submissions. Others artists easily could have been brought into that august body. Margot Eiseman’s silk painting “Never a Blue Monday” — a depiction of vibrant yellow flowers — is the essence of vibrancy in motion; Judith Gaiser’s terracotta bust “Ethiopian Eunuch” is captivating in its formal dimensions along with the interesting quality of the topic itself; Maryann Mosyjowski’s watcolor portrait of “Lynn” (which depicts a draped nude woman in purples gazing backward as if into reflected light) exudes wistfulness; and Kitty Waybright’s acrylic work “Out of the Mist” extends the theme in this narrow rectangle of a work through the postures the figures that are shown take as they emerge — thereby revealing a vast range of emotional states.

The Artists of the Rubber City Works by Members exhibit has some standout works of its own in this group’s second exhibition in its new space “The Box,” located on the third floor of Summit Artspace Gallery. Miller Horns’ “Night & Day,” an electrostatic piece done in purples, is simply conceived but highly dramatic in its impact; Shirley Blake’s oil on gesso board work “Dani” depicts in a subdued but dignified manner a portrait of a woman in a not-so-good place that serves as the background to the piece; Diane Seskes’ photo “Greylock Sunrise” shows a vividly red sun peeking over a dark purple terrain and cloud-laden sky to unveil distinctively through color the drama of a new day; and Janet Snell’s oil painting “Don’t Stick Your Tongue Out at Me” reveals through dramatic swirls of primary colors and line two birds poised beak to beak that show through compositional elements the harmony of their discontent.

Admission to the exhibits is free, as is parking in an attached lot. Hours for both are Thursdays through Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m.

Roger Durbin is professor emeritus of bibliography at The University of Akron and an avid art enthusiast. To contact him, e-mail  r.durbin@sbcglobal.net.

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