Barbara Wade and Aki May at Hixon Interiors:
Barbara Wade "Self Portrait"
I went last Wednesday’s opening at Hixon Interiors to see Barbara Wade’s work, but was really pleased to discover Aki May too. If you’ve taken Printmaking at CSU you’ve likely met Barbara, a shy and softspoken white-haired lady who creates powerful and brooding portraits and cityscapes. If you’re very lucky, you traded for one of these masterful intaglios in a print exchange, as I did. Wade continues to produce- and very occasionally exhibit. Don’t wait around- this is a rare opportunity to see some of her strongest paintings and prints, and get a sense of her evolution. As always, I’m most drawn to her self portraits, which are unflinchingly self-examined.
Aki May "One Sunny Day" (detail)
Aki May’s work pairs beautifully with Wade’s because both artists share an unusual sensitivity of touch. This show has much to say about drawing, and how observational drawing is a way of re-touching what we see and love in the world. May’s tree series shares her experience of connecting spiritually with two particular “magic trees,” one from her childhood in Japan, and one discovered on a mountain excursion in Colorado. The style of these drawings is really interesting: May adapts the traditional approach of Nihonga painting, but applies contemporary materials- colored pencils and pen. So the work has a fresh contemporary look, playfully referencing tradition.
Kudos to the Hixon team for creating a space for visual art in our community, and to curator Kimberly Noel for her keen aesthetic. Hixon Interiors Presents A Special Art Showing Featuring Aki May and Barbara Wade runs through May 7.
Warm at Clara Hatton Gallery:
You may be aware that there are some new faces in the CSU Art Dept. Warm, the current exhibit at CSU’s Clara Hatton Gallery, showcases three innovative new faculty members- Suzanne Faris, Ajean Lee Ryan, and Cyane Tornatzky.
If you see the show this week: No, the ambient temperature in the gallery is not part of the exhibit- they just haven’t turned the AC on yet. Bring a water bottle and persevere- it’s worth it. The title Warm has more to do with the feeling of life force that pulses through this show: from Tornatsky’s artificial lifeforms, to Ryan’s churning constructed landscapes, to Faris’ cozy habitations for the human participant. I’m struck by how each artist involves the audience in a different kind of relationship to the work. Ryan’s drawings of an enchanted garden world involve us as viewers in the usual sense: we stand before the delineated window onto her psychological landscape. Tornatsky’s digital insects inhabit a 4- dimensional world, moving and changing as they do over time. Because they have an almost tangible presence, we may feel as viewers, a frustrated expectation that we might enter their frame and touch them. Faris, on the other hand, offers complete entry into the work. We insert ourselves into her isolation sacks, and are integrated into the artwork, out of the flow of time.
Strong work across the board. Ryan’s pastel and ink drawings are rich and fully realized, building upon the promising work she exhibited at MOCA last fall. She summarizes her major themes as “The Realm of the Domestic Feminine” and “The Sought After Landscape both Natural and Constructed.” In these large scale airy works, nature and ideation collide and displace each other. Often vegetation is indicated by an abstracted pattern- like a fabric pattern or marbling. An embroidered world. I’m most attracted to the big drawings Treasure Map on My Hand and Measuring and Thawing. In the former, a little boat, draped with a colorful textile, appears to be beached in a field of lush flowers, but easily the flowers and the textile could be the same melty ambiguous material. The latter drawing is all frothy turbulence, a tree trunk rising out of what may be melting snow, or may be sea foam, or something more ethereal.
Tornatsky’s artificial insects, created with generative programming, insist on their real existence- although the artist makes explicit their digital nature. Even at a small scale the moths draw the viewer’s attention from across the room- fluttering and bright against the relative darkness of the monitor screen. The writhing stream of blue grubs in the larger-scale I-Move exudes a wet and crunchy buggy noise- courtesy Tornatzky’s collaborator, sound artist Christopher Forrest. It made the hair rise on the back of my neck. I ultimately preferred the company of the quiet and industrious moths of II-Strive and III-Seek. I couldn’t stop feeling like I could touch them, if I could just get inside the screen; and I felt for their efforts- one chasing an evasive glowing orb, the other negotiating a 2-d environment, and bumping up against the edges of the screen.
The two suspended silver encasements composing Faris’ The Heated Conversation appear at first to be sternly minimalist sculpture; but external form is the lesser part of this work. Each can be entered through a slot near the floor, to neatly enfold the viewer-participant. The experience is one of abrupt removal from the surrounding environment. You can see out through a narrow embrasure, but external sounds are blocked. You can observe the outside environment, but it feels like time is flowing past without you. One encasement is wired with music- softly playing Fred Astaire’s Cheek to Cheek in an endless loop, making this interior environment all the more self-contained. Faris explains, “I believe the involvement and often re-orientation of the body to view these constructed “familiar” surroundings allows the mind to more adeptly question the function of the space.”
Warm runs through April 23.
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