Review

"It Was A Grey Day When She Hated The Gift I Built For Her," Colored Pencil and Gouache on Paper.

Christopher Bostwick
Do You Need a Friend to Go With?

Noon-7 p.m.

Wonder Fair: Art Gallery, Shoppe & Studio
803 1/2 Massachusetts Street
Lawrence, KS
785.393.8525

Hours: Noon-7 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday and by appointment
Runs through: Aug. 22.

Artist's site: http://bostwicks.wordpress.com
Gallery site: http://wonderfair.com

What happens when a printmaker takes machinery out of the equation and applies images to paper himself?

Good things.

Christopher Bostwick, a recent graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute, was an excellent choice as the first artist to have a solo show in Wonder Fair's new space. The colored pencil and gouache drawings that make up Do You Need a Friend to Go With? are awash in skewed humor and open-ended narrative ... meaning they're both visually interesting and fun to make up stories about.

Take, for example, today's featured image, It Was A Grey Day When She Hated The Gift I Built For Her. The image of a romantic cookout in the middle of a wooden half-pipe is odd enough to elicit a wry grin ... and then the mind is off and running, constructing all sorts of scenarios.

That fits, given the gallery's description of Bostwick's art as a set or stage, the theatrics of which are always implied, the actors never shown.

Then again, they don't have to be. Bostwick loads his works with enough detail, some immediately significant and some seemingly trivial at first glance, to fire the imagination. It's an invitation not only to engage, but to customize the drawings in each viewer's head.

Who knows? Perhaps scenes inspired by Bostwick's implied plays and films could end up in real productions some day., depending on how much time and energy someone is willing to invest in "fleshing out" the works.

Bostwick's decision to forego printmaking for drawing represents an investment from his end as well: the investment of hands-on creation. Rather than get everything just right before applying image to paper, Bostwick made the success of each piece dependent on a progression of individual strokes.

Then again, that's how the best stories get put together ... one detail at a time.

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