Disquieting muses.
At the Strecker-Nelson’s June 26 gala — "Constructed Dreaming" and "extraORDINARY CHARACTERs," the art was good but we went alone, which: sadness! Also, it makes things feel extra weird when we use this plural pronoun, but whatever, we figure you’ll just deal with it.
So yeah, there was art and stuff, but more important was the rush of tabloidiness we felt when we saw Phil Nel, Karin Westman (awkward?), Angela Hubler, and Tim Dayton (in plaid shorts? also awkward) huddled together. Presumably Nel dominated the conversation, repeatedly outdoing Hubler with witty Broadway-musical references, then smugly mumbling "froynlaven" as he swished his fine Riesling around in its glass and partook of a hearty sip, as, presumably, is his gentlemanly wont. Presumably, Dayton, with his hands in his pockets, managed to scowl at everyone without actually making eye contact. Right? Right?
But we don’t know any of that for sure. While that exchange may or may not have occurred, we found ourselves at the back of the gallery with Torry Dickinson and the Potatoheadey sculptures by Ben Ahvers.
And the paintings of Charlotte Nickel. Perhaps they are “expressionist?” We don’t really know what that is though. Since Torry seemed interested in them, we gawked at them for about 10 seconds not really knowing what they mean or how to feel about them, then sipped our box wine and excused ourselves to contemplate who we are and why we are here, in a very broad sense. It didn’t go so well. While we wrestle with things, you should click on these images to see more works in each artists’ series. Uh, make sure you also buy something while you’re at it.
Since Donna Potts didn’t immediately ensconce herself with the cluster of ivory tower elites once she showed up, we figured she was ours for the taking and pretty much borrowed her for much of the evening. The other professors were grouped in that one room, apparently, because one of their peers, psych professor Clive Fullagar, had a bunch of paintings being shown in the gallery and his colleagues were showing their support and boy oh boy why wouldn’t they, isn’t there something just dreamy about landscapes? Sometimes they make us feel like dancing:
Fullagar’s oil paintings showed off the meetings of earthy horizons with large skies. They were done in colours that, even with a heavy light/dark contrast, were soothing and easy. The presence of clouds and ether in each of his works made them all seem expansive, even if the painting’s focus was relatively small. Don’t we all sometimes wish we were a cloud — so large, so light, and so sleepy, the water vapor crystallizing around our dusty nuclei?
The canvasses of Aaron Morgan Brown dominated the gallery’s main room. Objects and people were defined by fields of colour; contours, though not sharp, were strict. They also evoked a serene, motionless state, even while depicting scenes of bustling activity or even acute human emotion. The pixie-haired girl in Ariel, sneering with impatience, seems to have been standing there ticked off at us forever. Hey, some people are just like that:
We feel that Brown is more at home with still-life paintings. In many of them, the stillness and tranquility jars with the out-of-place-ness (is there a German word for that?) of the objects in the scene, in effect using serenity to generate unease. Or not, what do we know?
Also huddled together were theatre geeks. Our eyes kept meeting those of this blonde girl who played the Southern preacher in the Laramie Project. Just so things wouldn’t get creepy, we decided to actually introduce ourselves.
"Hi. Whatever."
"I’m Erica." Erica will play Rosencrantz (or was it Guildenstern? Who can keep track?) in Hamlet at the Mac on August 12, if you’re into that sort of thing. She pointed us to Lori Norwood’s rough(LY?)-textured ceramic figures, which featured voluptuous, fleshy women captured during pregnancy and sometimes childbirth. Erica’s favorite was Genevieve:
What else can we say? Wish you were there! Maybe next time.
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July 19, 2009 at 9:14 am