Review

"Illuminated Ruins," Pencil on Paper.

Jordan Albers

6 a.m.-10 p.m.

Black Dog Coffeehouse
12815 W. 87th St. Parkway
Lenexa, KS
913.495.5515

Hours: 6 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 6 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday, 7 a.m.-11 p.m. Saturday, 7 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday.
Runs through: Jan. 31.

Artist's Site: http://jordanalbers.deviantart.com
Gallery site: http://www.bdcoffeehouse.com

If we always and truly meant the superlatives we use, the world would be a hushed and wide-eyed place. Instead, those words too often come out of our mouths neutered and lame, stripped of both power and potency.

We say "terrific" without fear, "awesome" without reverence and "amazing" with no loss of direction in our thinking.

But to characterize Jordan Albers' drawings and mixed-media works as "fantastic" is more than fair. The back hallway at Black Dog Coffeehouse (where Albers works as a barista, by the way) is hung with images which could only come from a fertile imagination given to — what else? — flights of fantasy.

Not the idle daydreaming sort, mind you: Albers is a visual tale-teller, creating wordless and otherworldly narratives that are part science fiction, part organic magic and at the same time, entirely resonant with the "real" world.

Take, for example, the piece atop this post, the mechanical-pencil-on-paper Illuminated Ruins. The central character, rooted in a purposeful tangle of graphite strokes, is both alien and understandable, an object of empathy as well as of detached fascination.

It would have been easy for Albers to mine only that visual vein, producing a show full of variations rather than variety. But while common threads run through his work, they weave different stories each time.

To me, the most important characteristic of art is that no single drawing/painting/sculpture/what-have-you is the same as the last, Albers writes. Any experience you will ever have changes you, develops you, and shapes you into a new person, and with this frequent development comes a constant change in perception. Ergo, the perception you have on reality or elsewhere is the driving force behind your development as an artist.

This is why I create art. Not to express ideals and philosophies to others, nor for a certain recognition given to me simply by being an “artist,” but to discover myself, the world, and my relationship with it.

The central figures in Albers' art, then, are as fully human as we viewers in one key respect. They are shaped by forces not of their own making, and each is the product of a different (even if only slightly so) "upbringing."

Albers might not have set out to teach it, but that's a lesson worth taking away from a show which is, in every good sense, fantastic.

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