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ARC exhibit at Mocha Maiden has professionalism and mastery. Artists' paintings and sculptures display new realms of creativity
By Dorothy Shinn
Beacon Journal art and architecture critic
Published on Sunday, Jun 28, 2009
You've come a long way, baby.
For the 42 artists whose works made the cut for the Artists of Rubber City 19th Annual Juried Show, that pretty much says it all.
I don't know whether ARC has kept a visual record of its past shows, but if it has, it might be worthwhile for members to look back at former shows and compare them to its current one, on view at Upstairs Gallery @ Mocha Maiden, 22 N. High St., Akron, through Thursday.
Last year I said this is the go-to group for serious local contemporary artists, and this show only reinforces that opinion. The sense of mastery and professionalism evidenced by this exhibit is far and away the best seen in years.
Juror Laura Vinnedge, University of Akron Myers School of Art associate professor of fine arts, said in her statement that she looked for both tangibles and intangibles: ''an engaging or challenging conceptual framework; an honest voice; a sense of poetry or magic; a visual tension or mystery; an impressive technical facility or process; and a strong design and apparent ease with issues of form.''
But what impresses me more is that as a whole, these ARC members seem not to have stagnated or played it safe, but to
have moved forward, progressing, developing and entering new realms of creative activity.
I'm thinking in particular of Jerry Domokur, who took first place for his impressive digital image, Light & Shadows, a work that goes beyond the gimcrackery of Photoshop manipulation into the realm of the truly esoteric, raising as many questions about space and time as the ''how'd you do that?'' queries that usually follow his work.
I'm also thinking of Marjorie Dettling, whose lushly painted landscapes and still lifes have made an impressive leap into post-painterly abstraction, as seen in her oil-on-canvas Golden Harvest.
John Freiman's Grandpa's Canoe Birch not only took second place, but it also took his work to a new level of monumentality and introspection.
Shirley Ende-Saxe certainly deserves honorable mention for her body of work: Mapleman Disappears and An Embroidery of Wishful Thinking, both of which not only employ poetic labeling but also create collages of allusion and mystery through the much-overlooked art form of needlework.
George Reuter's body of work also received an honorable mention for three marker and pen sketches: Warrior Angel I, Falling Angel and Warrior Angel II. These three pieces take the classroom art of ring-binder doodling into the serious realm through their intense complexity of vision.
Sharon Wagner's two wood-fired stoneware vases with willow and grapevine handles are scene stealers, playing the crisp geometries of slab-sided pottery off the barely controlled sinuousness of the bent canes and vines.
Wagner fires her pots at Carol Ohl's Treatyline Pottery in Millersburg in a kiln she and Ohl built together in 2003.
''We fire it three or four times a year,'' she said. It's a slow, labor-intensive process done in a wood-fired, Japanese-style Noborigama kiln.
''The work goes in raw,'' Wagner said, ''meaning it's not bisque-fired before, so we go very slowly.
''It takes 400 to 500 pieces, and we fill it up. It's a bit of a community effort, because once we start loading it, we can't stop. It takes us two days of loading, practically 'round the clock, and 30 to 35 hours of firing.
''Then it must cool naturally, and that takes four days. It's a wonderful facility . . . well worth the trip to Millersburg.''
Katina Pastis Radwanski took third place with First Kiss, a pendant diptych painted in acrylics, a work that surpasses classification, in that it's neither realistic, nor abstract, but a dreamlike combination of the two.
Radwanski said she arrives at her compositions after filling page after page in her sketchbooks with doodles.
''I had two thoughts while I was in the process of making it,'' Radwanski said. ''The kiss of life and the first kiss between a man and a woman and the energies and psychologies behind that.''
The painting consists of interlocking fleshy loops and doughlike ovoids of various sizes that float above a large, ochre-colored net.
It's the net that solidifies Radwanski's amorphous forms. With the net in the background, we cease to see the bubbly fantasy that she intends and instead we begin to imagine the forms as something more sinister floating to the surface of a polluted waterway.
I say keep the net, keep the forms — it's a nicely realized painting — but change the title and forget the romance. This painting has more going for it than kisses.
Radwanski is also a sculptor and two of her painted steel works — Interactions #1 and Interactions #2 — also deal with interpersonal relationships. Her abstracted figures are oddly reminiscent of Kent State University professor Ira Matteson's silhouetted figures cut from plywood.
Margot Eiseman's silk painting, The Attack of the Giant Columbine, is amorphous and delicate-looking. Parts of it look like watered silk, something she achieves by not being too careful when painting the background.
''It's a lot like working with watercolor,'' Eiseman said.
''I start with white silk and draw with a white algae-based medium to create the white lines. I let that dry and paint inside the white lines, then I paint the background totally free and loose.''
The work is allowed to dry, then it's washed, which removes the algae-based resist and reveals the lines that tie the painting together.
Eiseman has two more silk paintings on display in We Gallery, which is adjacent to Upstairs Gallery @ Mocha Maiden in a new space carved from once-vacant offices.
There are 71 works by 42 artists in this show, an impressive turnout and one that juror Vinnedge said could have been doubled had space not been a factor.
Akron definitely has a vibrant visual art scene, and this show reveals a vigorous and impressive side of it.
It would be a shame if the economy pulls the rug out from under the talent that has been drawn here by the dynamic ambience created by these artists, the Akron Art Museum and the University of Akron Myers School of Art.
For now, it's going strong. Let's try to keep it that way.
Details:
Show: Artists of Rubber City 19th Annual Juried Show.
When: Through Thursday. Hours: 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Thursday, closed today.
Where: Upstairs Gallery @ Mocha Maiden, 17-19 Maiden Lake or 22 N. High St., Akron.
Information: 330-374-1114 or www.downtownakron.com/go/the-upstairs-gallery-mocha-maiden
Dorothy Shinn writes about art and architecture for the Akron Beacon Journal. Send information to her at the Akron Beacon Journal, P.O. Box 640, Akron, OH 44309-0640 or dtgshinn@neo.rr.com.
You've come a long way, baby.
Get the full article here.
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