Modern/Post-Modern II

Blue and Red Dance

Face First

Paintings by Gary Waddington.

© Phyllis Waddington

Modern/Post-Modern III - Seeing Red

Modern/Post-Modern III

Seeing Red

Big, bold, and beautiful are the first words these paintings evoke in me. Confident compositions in black and white and colour. Big, bold, beautiful, and red. The red dominates; it jumps out at me. From Ella's red lips. From the largest panel, at least four feet square, in all shades of red with black outlines--Escalation. Where all colours flow into one red dot--Red Focus. Studies in black and white with red accents--Miroesque. Fantasyland. A warped lidded jar on a black field, red and gold and purple, with eyes, evoking primitive pottery, Humpty-Dumpty, and Picasso--Face First. I can see the artist playing. Challenging himself with the styles of twentieth-century masters--Miro, Picasso, Mondrian, Braque--with whimsical twists.

A closer look reveals the presence of other colours in the show. A navy blue and white composition evoking Calgary weather--White Invasion. A beautiful sky-blue field with black, white, and green notes--The Blues. Blue and Red Dance. Red Slash. And a lot of gold. Bottles. Journey III. Girl with Dog is a forest of brown, green, and gold, a girl's face, an elusive dog. Journey II is a dream, a mauve pastel drip, with a Mondrian-ish corner. Like the background in the Ella portrait, the saxophone is yellow in Tribute to John Handy. I remember Gary's giant pup of a dog named Mingus. Names, like titles, are clues.

Very twentieth century. Very ''modern art" with a post-modern sensibility that rejects the myth of progress and the belief that art can improve things, that it can make a positive contribution. These paintings are an homage both to one man's life and to life in the last half of the twentieth century. They celebrate the artist's passions--jazz music, art, places of forest and snow. In colour and composition and movement, in a variety of applications of oil to linen and canvas, they communicate emotions and ideas. Red Slash, like a wound; red dot like a bullet hole. Back at the huge black and scarlet square, its shapes morph into deltas, islands, peninsulas, its colour devolving from blood red to agent orange--Escalation.

Eclectic Passion hangs in the Back Room of the Hope Arts Gallery, Hope, British Columbia, for the month of February, 2009.

Modern/Post-Modern IV - Escalation

Escalation

Gary Waddington

© Phyllis Waddington

Stave Falls Artist Group

Stave Falls Artist Group

The November Back Room show features work by twelve members of the Fraser Valley's Stave Falls Artist Group (SFAG). With one exception, a pen and ink sketch of Monet's House by Maria Daley, the twenty-eight other works are framed oil paintings ranging in price from $200 to closer to $2000. The subject matter sweeps from bucolic landscapes, some identified with West Vancouver, Fraser Valley, and Chilcotin place names, to beach and boating scenes, garden, pond hockey, and urban street scenes, still lifes, and figures -- window shoppers, boaters, lady, ballet dancer, bride. The level of skill is universally high and the choices of subject matter, although exhibiting great variety, are also universally appealing to this viewer. If I were forced to pick a favourite, it would probably be the bride portrait, but for no other reason than purely personal--the goddess allusion that for me all bride images evoke. The paintings are all beautiful and attractive, especially the way they play with light and colour; all celebrate our place and our lifestyles.

In an effort to make one useful observation, I felt several times that the frames, although beautiful, seem too heavy for the paintings they feature and have the negative effect of distracting the viewer from the work. But in the end, giving them all sufficient time, in the tug-of-war between beauty and security, between focus and frame, art wins.

The artists with works on display include: Bev Beresh, Bobbie Mac, Lynne Zimmerman, Shannon Coates, Janis Eaglesham, Linda Bishop, Stephen Dobson, Melanie Jane, Maria Daley, Gina Rubin, and Ron Hedrick. Jessica Hedrick is listed as an honorary member. Along with information about the history of the SFAG and its founder, boxed sets of Christmas Cards are on display, available for sale. The SFAG works are in the Back Room, Hope Arts Gallery, Hope, BC, from November 1 to 28, 2008.

The artist whose beautiful landscape is used on the poster is Melanie Jane. The group's website is: http://www.stavefallsartistgroup.com/ Check it out.

Bronze Sculpture

Bronze Sculpture

For the month of October, 2008, the Back Room showcases the work of Hope sculptor Henry Weaver. A plaster Neptune, dolphins, and a brass Vladimir greet you. In the Back Room, of the variety of pieces in bronze and plaster, the horses with mounted riders (Britiannicus/King Arthur, Andalusian) seem to catch the viewer's attention first. Perhaps it is the animal forms, the draught-horse detail, or the audacity, the very idea of imagining the mythic Brit as a real man in the costume of a specific era. Two boxers eye each other in the pause before the punch. A Greek and Persian warrior tableau evokes recovered bronzes of lost civilizations, yet the story is right out of a Hollywood epic. There is a commemorative plaque, a balletic Victory, and finally, three interesting portrait heads which make you want to linger, to circle, to nod, to breathe, Yes! Beautiful.

The very presence of bronze statuary seems somewhat intimidating (before any reference to price). There is so much more to creating the art object beyond the concept, original sketches, revised drafts, and artist's completed 3D model in clay or plaster. A formal manufacturing process involves sending the work out to a foundry where, before or after, the sculpture is adjusted for scale and goes through several stages involving armatures, rubber molds, wax positives, lost wax, chasing, investing, pouring, devesting, welding, more chasing, patina. (See http://www.modernsculpture.com/bronze.htm ) It is an alchemy thousands of years old. This fact too inspires awe--here in a small town in British Columbia in the twenty-first century artists are making objects in the same way artists have from the bronze age forward. This is a continuity which says something about both art and the human condition.

Henry Weaver spoke last month at the Philosopher's Cafe. His definitions of art and of the difference between fine art and commercial art help elucidate his Back Room show. Fine art, he said, is a pleasing object created for itself. Commercial art is art created to sell something else. We stopped there (before getting into "graphic", "design", or "craft", an object created for a specific function.) Henry pointed out that what the artist chooses to focus upon communicates what the artist values. Thus, the show in the Back Room suggests to this viewer an interest in history, mythology, heroes and concepts of heroism, leadership, nobility, physical activity, strength, competition, grace, humanity, and human diversity. The objects further evoke feelings in this viewer of Independence and Celebration and arouse questions about What is Beauty? and Why are History and Art Important? For if the work shows what the artist values, does not the artist show us what we and what our culture should value, ideals to which we aspire? Without ever telling anyone what to think or do, without ever using the word "should", art can highlight our best attributes and achievements, as individuals, as nations, as the human race. When it works, when it connects with the viewer, fine art creates a feeling of "identification" between object and viewer, identification in the sense of recognizing in the object or the other something within or desired within yourself. Henry refers to this as "the connection" and suggests that bronze invites viewers to touch, indeed permits touch as a physical response to that psychological connection. Perhaps this idea of identification explains why, for this viewer, the four female figures, Victory and the three heads, are most appealing, because art at the viewer's level is very personal, and gender is part of our personal experience of the world.

This is Henry Weaver's first solo show. Images of some of his sculpture on display in the Back Room can be viewed on the family website: www.johnweaverfinearts.com/

The Joy of Play

The Joy of Play

I am having so much fun playing with old and new photographs on my computer. I've started by trying to save shots I like that were not quite ready for prime time. Here are three: "Lynden Koi," "Notre Dame des Arbres," and "Water Under the Bridge".

All photos on Earthabridge are Copyright jmb; enjoy them, like flowers, and please do not take.

A Brush with Creation

A Brush With Creation

A Brush With Creation features two friends who have exhibited together in the Hope Arts Gallery Back Room for several years--Jenny Wolpert and Shirley Wotherspoon.

The first impression from the threshold of the room is awe, incredulity. So many pieces, so much work, new work, all completed since last year's show. Almost overwhelming. You tell yourself to focus: on this wall, then this wall, then this, and this, and this.

To your right, Shirley has two jewel-toned crazy-quilt inspired stitched fabric landscapes, "Mountain Lake", "Moons Up", with four large acrylic landscapes. Straight ahead, Jenny's two colourful quilted fabric hangings, "Legends of the West" and "Flight to Freedom" are featured, along with digital collage paintings beside oil paintings and encaustic paintings by Shirley. The end wall features a large mixed media painting of Jenny's, "Dancing to the Exit", its yellows repeating Shirley's fall landscape above it. The fourth wall holds a mixture of acrylic paintings and smaller watercolour landscapes by both artists, and a shelf with small paintings and Jenny's pine needle sculptures and decorated gourds. The gourds are trimmed with stitchery and painted with a mysterious hieroglyphics first seen on the hanging featured behind the front desk. This object, some sort of fabric--is it plastic? is it leather?--attracts first by its uniqueness. It is peach-coloured with a grey shadow pattern, over-stitched, scribed with those same turquoise shapes giving an impression of glyphs, as if the shapes contain/conceal/reveal meaning. "Stelae of a Passing Culture: History detectives speculate about the rise and fall of culture. Why did this civilization fail? Will they identify the lowly pine beetle?" Aha, the subtextual pattern is that of the stains in pine-beetle-destroyed wood.

Although their work is very different, there are always surprising connections between these two artists. Exuberant colours. Nature. Explorations of several different media each. Shirley uses acrylic, oil, and watercolour paints as well as encaustic and fabric to portray natural objects, scenes, and settings. One painting shows a cabin on Mt. Ogilvie, another a bear popping out of a bush. The other nineteen pieces show no signs of human habitation beyond a footpath which could just as easily be a deer trail. It is as if she has chosen to focus upon Beauty and Peace, and to explore that beauty in several different media.

Jenny's work--fabric art, acrylic and watercolour paintings, photography, digital collage, pine needle weaving, decorated gourds--tends to feature symbolic and mythic creatures such as coyote, salmon, and eagle in the fabric art, or swans, bears, and butterflies in the collages, dead trucks, and humans moving through a landscape. There are men in meaningful pursuits (walking with briefcase on highway, exploding) or girls (in adolescent glory, rising from a sea shell, dancing with trailing ribbons) in allusive and symbolic poses. Jenny also engages viewers with the written commentary to each work, explaining some of her own observation, inspiration, or interpretation. The comments in many of these captions suggest that Jenny works to transform anger into art, pain into beauty.

Two different artists. One great show, in the Back Room at the Hope Arts Gallery, Hope, British Columbia, until September 28, 2008.