NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IN

Feb 11, 2011 by Tom C. Erb

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IN

Curatorial associate Tara Elliot is seen between Peter Diepenbrock’s stainless steel sculpture, ‘On Edge.’ Left to right on the wall are William Heydt’s watercolor, ‘Eric with Juan and Autumn on the Very Last Day of the Opera House Cinema,’ Norman Petersen’s acrylic ‘Grand Targhee,’ Katherine N. Forrestal’s untitled etching with spitbite, and John Redick’s acrylic ‘Breaking Wave.’ (Photo by Dave Hansen)

2011 Newport Annual Members’

Juried Exhibition

Through May 22

Newport Art Museum

76 Bellevue Ave., Newport

(401) 848-8200

www.newportartmuseum.org

By Daniel Combs/Mercury

This article originally appeared in Mercury on Feb. 9, 2011.

NEWPORT, R.I. — A gala of oohs and ahhs, sideways comments and jealousy-concealing snickers echoed throughout the Morris and Cushing galleries at the Newport Art Museum last Friday evening. The occasion: the opening of the state’s largest, most comprehensive show of contemporary art.

The Newport Annual, the museum’s yearly members’ juried exhibition, is a highly selective showcase. Of the 242 area artists who submitted to the show, only 72 made it into the exhibition after being approved by guest juror Maya Allison, curator at Brown University’s David Winton Bell Gallery. A total of 15 artists received recognition during an awards ceremony marked by pockets of enthusiastic applause and quiet murmurings of dissenting opinions.

“There’s a bit of an edge to the show this year,” Gayle Hargreaves, museum marketing director, coyly cautioned. In what seemed to many in attendance as an attempt to move away from a reputation of conservatism at the annual show, juror Allison seemed to favor pieces that decidedly provoked.

Take for instance the Best-In-Show winning sculpture “Pair of Fungi on a Log,” by Providence artist Kat Ely. A gnarled log taken from the forest floor sat simply on its whitewashed pedestal. Its sole company: the pair of foggy white fungi glued to its side, ghosts of their former selves, frozen in time. The elegant simplicity of the piece responds to the equally elegant philosophy Ely brings to the work.

“I’m interested in death…what happens in nature after a tree dies,” she explained, breathless after receiving her award. By capturing a moment of decay, bringing permanence to what would recycle itself into carbon, Ely’s work is a sobering attempt to ritualize the natural rot. Her funeral for decomposition was powerful enough for a crowning commendation from the juror.

Best in Show. Kat Ely created ‘A Pair of Fungi on a Log,’ from cast glass and a twisted arm of bark. (Photo by Dave Hansen)

Taking home the Newport Art Museum Award for his photo “Light Brush Strokes,” Providence-based photographer McDonald Wright is assured a future solo exhibition at the museum. Excited about the potential to present a more nuanced and panoramic view of his work, Wright explained, “I’ve been locked in a black and white world for so long … I’d like to play with different subject matter; I plan on starting to add my own coloring to the prints.”

His winning photo, a testament to the beauty to be had on a physical piece of film, displays an adroit manipulation of light. The small wave crashing over rocks in the Blackstone River is struck with an ethereal quality. The water looks like it could just as easily be a bundle of bright fiber-optic cables, or else the silvery fur of a polar bear.

“It’s not accidental,” Wright continued, “it’s that element of timing. With photography you live for the moment and get lost within that moment.”

Taking home the Providence Picture Frame/Dryden Gallery Award for painting was Portsmouth artist Erika Sabel’s large canvas “National Anxieties (When Consequences Seem Insignificant).” Tucked into the corner, Sabel’s piece tells a powerfully emotional story. Lavender and yellow teardrops streak through a sky that dominates 75 percent of the canvas. In it is suspended a

Lisa May’s three-dimensional piece, ‘A Mighty Catch,’ made from cast paper, received the Roderick O’Hanley Award. (Photo by Dave Hansen)

beautiful house: simply, it is home. Its windows are the only source of direct light in the piece. Its now vacated lot lies far below, a dark rectangle that marks the spot of former resistance that could not be maintained. Surrounding this vacated lot are unidentifiable techno-looking shapes. Harsh angles, violent reds present a claustrophobic storm of the daily struggle. The house has finally given up and wisely withdrawn from the grid. In a written statement, Sabel notes that, “When asked about my work, I usually dodge the question best I can because hearing viewers’ interpretation of my work is more rewarding. … For me, this piece deals with the emotional turmoil associated with transition. …Devising a visual representation for such struggles is part of the challenge I enjoy.”

In a night of necessarily subjective celebrations, there seemed for every winner an unheralded equal. One such work was 10-year-old Avery Boruch’s vibrant psychedelic painting “Loligo 10.” Boruch, the youngest applicant ever admitted to the Newport Annual, said she felt “really excited and happy.”

“I didn’t know what the painting would be when I started; it just developed on its own,” she explained. The Portsmouth Middle School fifth-grader’s trippy forest fire displays the technical expertise and aesthetic judgment of an old soul. Her development will be riveting to watch.

“The Witching Haunt,” Jamestown resident Casey Weibust’s monoprint, is a fragmented, small grayscale image that nimbly toys at the notion of representation. It seems to be a staircase birthed from a frenetic explosion of feathers. Upon closer examination, you lose the illusion of object within the abstraction. The print rests upon the border of non-representation. In doing so, its emotion outclasses its rendering; violently dismal, it breathes frustration.

Weibust’s aesthetic philosophy shines through her work, a characteristic that radiated from the entire exhibition. “I have a vision that I start out with that I’d like the print to be, but I’d always rather follow the feelings of the piece,” she explained.

She’s following something good. So, it seems, is the Rhode Island arts community.

This article originally appeared in Mercury on Feb. 9, 2011.