Review

"Cypress Cotton Candy", Pastel.

Mark Hennick

By appointment during daytime business hours.

Shaughnessy & Associates Photography Studio
2010 Baltimore #405 (fourth floor)
Kansas City, MO
913.909.6021

Hours: By appointment, Monday-Friday.
Runs through: Dec. 31.

Artist's site: http://www.markhennick.com
Gallery site: http://shaughnessyphoto.blogspot.com

In journalistic parlance, an "evergreen" story is one that can be run any time, because its subject or theme -- usually human interest -- is not tied to the larger world of current events.

Mark Hennick's pastel art is of the evergreen variety ... in more than one way.

His renderings of trees and fruit are timeless -- seasonal, certainly, but suggesting no calendar year. And the trees he favors are evergreens: cypresses, to be exact.

Hennick, whose show runs through December at Shaughnessy  & Associates Photo Studio, most often depicts the trees by themselves, in a wide expanse of green grass. (Cypress Cotton Candy, pictured above, is a prime example.)

That might come across as a metaphor for loneliness, but it shouldn't. These trees thrive in their solitude, soaking up an unseen sun. If there's a dominant feeling here, it's of contemplative calm -- a sensation heightened by Hennick's soft, soothing style.

The open-air theme of his cypress pieces is fitting, too, given that Hennick is also a sidewalk artist who returned to pastels in 2006 and has been exhibiting at art fairs and festivals since then.

His show at Shaughnessy & Associates points up one of the many non-visual reasons to love the Kansas City area's art scene, that being the level of support artists routinely extend to one another.

Photographer David Shaughnessy relocated to the Crossroads  just this fall, and it would be understandable if he wanted to use the (gorgeous) space to showcase his camera work. But he's offering the room for rent to other artists, providing yet another venue in the city's main art hub.

Like a good human-interest story, and like Hennick's serenely verdant pastel work, that co-operative outlook never gets old.

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