Archive for January, 2010
(ARTKC365) Tales Told in Paint: Jenna Tomlin
Tomlin’s art is worth the drive. It’s introspective and expressive, heartfelt and thoughtful, calming and challenging all at once. And Amanda Martin, Gas Light’s owner and director, has used one of Tomlin’s painting to pull off one of the best presentations I’ve seen in a while.
(ARTKC365) Underneath it All: Steve Rimmer
Rimmer, who is largely self-taught and didn’t take his first art class until age 50, calls his learning style a blessing and a curse … and is quick to give credit to another artist who helped him find his visual voice.
(ARTKC365) Sofa, So Fun: Adolfo Gustavo Martinez
Other pieces riff on everything from Cubism to the Shroud of Turin — a wide range, granted, but Martinez pulls it off in every case. And if there’s a streak of fun-poking in this line of paintings (and there is), Martinez comes by it honestly. After all, the entire series was born in response to what Martinez saw as an absurd situation.
FIFTH / FINAL FRIDAY CALENDAR DIGEST
Snow on Wichita’s Final Friday doesn’t affect events closer to Kansas City’s center, including Lawrence. New work and KCK film fest are up this weekend, along with Fresh and Local at Room 39.
(ARTKC365) Young Man with a Brush: Tommy Creach
Tommy Creach is a junior at Shawnee Mission North High School, making him one of the youngest artists ever featured here. But Creach, whose show of paintings and drawings opens tonight at OneVillage a Community Church in Roeland Park, has already figured out that art doesn’t have to be self-referential to be deeply personal.
(ARTKC365) Tile Style: Pamela Scott
And while tile has size limitations, Scott’s technique turns that into an asset. The resulting divisions within her pieces allow for slight skews and gaps when they are mounted, and those negative spaces become integral parts of the whole. On a base level, these are mosaics as well as photographs.
ABSURD LINKS TO PEOPLE
Mark Cowardin says he sees these nine sculptures as a reminder of the link between man and nature — they are absurd links to people, made of machined surfaces and making direct reference to industry.
TEA, STARS, GRAVITY, STONES
Join Samantha Persons for a tea party discussion tonight at the Urban Culture Project Space, a gallery supported by the Charlotte Street Foundation. Besides galleries and studio space, CSF is well-known for its awards. Review is anxiously awaiting the 2010 Visual Artist Award Fellows to be announced tonight. Other current events …
CONCEPTIONS OF IDENTITY
The experience is rather like walking in on a child’s birthday party, or into used car lot, the space is so filled with lights and bright colors, with balloons and strings of plastic bunting. The seven pieces in the exhibition use these, and similar materials, with such repetition that they give the viewer the ability to take one long look into the mind and identity of the artist.
(ARTKC365) Scene Setter: Rebecca Pashia
Pashia, a founder of ARTichokes as well as a permanently featured artist there. also knows when to throw in a good action sequence … even if it’s only implied.
(ARTKC365) Circles, Swirls, and Spaces Between: Jeanne Bangs Kasten
All of the works, no matter their shape, radiate a strong sense of balance. It’s easy to see how the eye could get drawn into any of them and linger, giving the mind time to process other matters.
(ARTKC365) Sequel in Steel: Asheer Akram
As with the previous edition of his privately conceived, publicly released revelation, it falls to each viewer to interpret the signs — and symbols — of Akram’s times.
(ARTKC365) Light Mettle: Lanna Gaines
Gaines, who shares the show with her husband, Robert, favors images of nature — oil landscapes and drawings of birds, like the “Purple Wren with Seed” pictured above. Her landscapes are suffused with light (n). Her fine, deft drawing technique gives volume to the birds’ feathers, making the creatures seem so light (adj.) that one can picture them perching on a finger and then taking flight.
(ARTKC365) Forging Nature: George Rousis
Given freedom and guidance, metal takes all sorts of fanciful shapes under Rousis’ ministrations: from jewelry to sculpture, wall hangings to home furnishings.
IMAGES FOURTH FRIDAY PREVIEW
Mel Chin is in Lawrence, Kansas, January 22 and 23 at the Lawrence Art Center, and Signs of Life in Lawrence is opening a new exhibition, January 22, too. See a few images of what to expect there and in Wichita.
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