Review

"Colorful Wall," Photographic Print on Tile.

Pamela Scott
New Works

By appointment during business hours.

Kaw Valley Arts & Humanities
756 Armstrong
Kansas City, Kansas
913.371.0024

Hours after Second Friday: Wednesday-Friday, by appointment during business hours.
Runs Through: Feb. 3

Gallery site: http://www.kvarts.org

Preki, the former Kansas City Wizards star, sometimes used this aphorism to describe the roles on a football team:

"There are those who paint, and those who carry the paint."

Translation: "There are people who score goals, and people whose job it is to take the ball away from the other team and get it to the goalscorers."

(And lest you think that Preki was being a diva, you should know that he embraced both roles and had more career assists than goals, 112 to 79.)

Pamela Scott also paints and carries the paint ... and, like Preki, does both in a metaphorical sense.

Scott, whose new works are part of the current group showing at Kaw Valley Arts and Humanities in downtown KCK, is dedicated to her own art but also collaborates with other artists to present their visions in new ways. (I first met her in that latter role, during a show of Sylvia Augustus' work at the YWCA's Sixth Street Gallery and Corner Coffee Cafe.)

Scott's solo work is made up of photographs, both film scans and digital shots, printed onto tiles. The resulting pieces, such as Colorful Wall (pictured above) take on the appearance of paintings.

Scott's use of tile gives her work a texture and a reflective quality markedly different from those of any print on paper. They brighten the room where they hang, adding color through light as well as pigment.

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.

That's the "those who paint" part, then. The most recent example of "those who carry the paint" can be seen on the west wall of the main KVAH space.

That's where you can see  Scott's collaborations with Antonette Nicotera, one of the other artists (along with Ronald Smith) in the current group show. The tiles, onto which Scott has scanned Nicotera's colorful acrylic paintings, face Nicotera's solo work and provide shining counterpoints to the canvases.

So, to return to the football metaphor: In this friendly match, credit Scott with both a goal and an assist ... and give everyone the win.

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