Following Up, Part 1

In my last post I talked about and linked to the various projects I was involved in. Now I'd like to show them to you more fully in a series of posts over the next couple of weeks, each with pictures and links. Because they're all group exhibitions, you'll get to see a lot of work by artists from around the country.

My painting, Diamond Life 20, 2012, encaustic on panel, 22.5 x 22.5
Critic David Raymond described it as having "a structural rigor that counters the dreamy side of waxy paint"

The Elephant in the Room

This show, at the Laconia Gallery in Boston, has been extended to July 5, all the better to be part of the First Fridays openings in the South End--so you have a bit more time, but just a bit more, to see it. Curated by artist Linda Cordner and gallery director James Hull, the show gets its title from an online conversation several artists were having about encaustic, a composite of which went something like this: "We're painters, sculptors and printmakers. Our conversation is with contemporary abstraction,  to issues relating to our specific disciplines. We work with encaustic (and love the medium), but the work is not about encaustic. If we were to show together, it would be because of our engagement with these issues. The elephant in the room is wax."

From that conversation a show was conceived by Cordner and Hull, and the tongue-in-cheek title remained. Of course, there's no getting around the elephant. Reviewing the show recently in Art New England, David Raymond writes: "Organizing an exhibition around a medium forces a specific engagement with the material character of the works that will be beneficial for some viewers and irrelevant to others." Raymond was engaged, describing a range of material character from "a soft blow of dissolving vision," which would be paintings by Cordner, to "structural rigor," which would be mine. (Review is posted below.)

You can see a nice selection of installation images in the gallery website, a few of which I have larcenously posted here. Seventeen artists from  10 states were invited to participate:

Entrance to the gallery, with works by Nancy Natale (Easthampton, Mass.) and Tracey Adams  (Carmel, California)

 

The wall angles  as we head into the gallery proper. This painting by Linda Cordner (Boston) has "a soft blow of dissolving vision . . . locating us in front of things faintly seen"

 

Opposite Cordner's painting are a print by David A. Clark (Palm Springs, California) and two paintings by Lisa Pressman (West Orange, New Jersey)

 

From far end of wall: Lynette Haggard (Framingham, Mass., myself, Milisa Galazzi (Providence); and Lynda Ray (Richmond, Virginia)

 

 

Continuing around the gallery: Ray; Gregory Wright (Lowell, Mass.), Howard Hersh (San Francisco)

 

Hersh; Marybeth Rothman (Tenafly, New Jersey), Binnie Birsten (Old Greenwich, Connecticut)

 

 

Birstein; Deborah Kapoor (Seattle)

 

 

Kapoor; foreground, Tracey Adams; back wall: Jane Guthridge, Toby Sisson

Photo: Jane Guthridge

 

Click here to view the catalog online

 

Click image below to enlarge the review to readable size (from Art New England, July/August, review by David Raymond)