Inherent: Susan Goethel Campbell, Barbara Cooper, Dustin Yellin
Lemberg Gallery
23241 Woodward Ave
Ferndale, MI 48220-1361
248-591-6623
www.lemberggallery.com
Tues-Sat 11-5
Jun 4 - Jul 9, 2005

Lemberg Gallery assembles a nice body of artists under one theme for their summer showing. The title “Inherent” implies that there is a focus on the essential character of a thing. While each artist works quite differently, there is something, ummm, inherent to each of them with which to draw a connection of sorts.

Dustin Yellin’s works at first appear to be fairly straightforward, blocks of resin with plants captured inside, amber-like. They are in fact not, but instead three-dimensional ink drawings accomplished through the buildup of layers of resin. It’s a creative method with elegant execution. These are lovely forms – organic both by design and by the process itself. The drawing has enough playfulness balanced by representational quality to offer a truly satisfying visual experience. (And they’re just plain cool!)

http://dustinyellin.com/

Like Yellin, Barbara Cooper builds organic structures in layers; she pieces together slices of wood laminate to form flower and tree-like forms. These are built from the inside out. As rings on a tree move away from the center, here too Cooper attaches new layers to the existing. The underlying form then affects the development of the outer. This is growth at her hands. And while we get to see the final form, even when she has given the piece an outer structure, Cooper always retains a cutaway view through that layer to reveal all that went in to the sculpture’s growth. Both Cooper and Yellin have achieved an elegance mimicking nature yet showing the artist’s hand at the same time.

Susan Goethel Campbell displays photographic compositions for this show. In many ways this is a significant departure from her drawn/inked work, but like her drawings they are done in black and white and while the drawings focus on water in vapor form (clouds), these focus on it as a liquid, specifically gushing geyser-like on the lawns of suburbia. In addition to the juxtaposition of water spouts on suburban backdrop, she has also added to some of the pieces a red line – giving the piece a title of “Water/line.” If we look to the overall theme of the show, we might ask what is the “essential character” of the places depicted? For what are the suburbs but artificial landscapes kept unnaturally green (though here in the grey of black and white) by water pumped in from parts far away. Environmental themes permeate Campbell’s work, and these seem no exception. Perhaps too, these not only talk about the artificiality of manufactured landscape, but about what it means to drain water sources to create green lawns and provide living space at the expense of the burning of an increasing amount of fossil fuels which in turn adds to global warming and thus the eventual rising of the oceans and perhaps such places falling below the new water line. If they are somewhat less visually arresting than her drawings, the surreal nature of these tremendous spouts of water does take one aback long enough to be engaged in the questions Campbell raises. As many of us water our lawns in the short but hot summer, perhaps these images might cause one to stop and think about all that keeps the grass green, if just for a moment.

Growth, form, and landscape. It’s summertime, which means we spent a lot more time outdoors. Lemberg offers up a few reasons to think a little more about the outdoors. Check it out. – Nick Sousanis
ws@thedetroiter.com

Mark(s) zine
http://www.markszine.com/
Bruce Andrews/Jack Collom/Dick Goody/Grace Graupe Pillard/A. Ibn Pori Pitts

Not only can you gain access to one of the strongest Detroit cultural venues without leaving your chair, but it happens to be the only way to get there. The Detroit-based web-magazine Mark(s) is the creation of editors Deb King and Ted Pearson. Since 2000, this quarterly publication has been “committed to promoting substantive dialogue between Detroit-based artists and the world.” The site has been focused on examining contemporary culture in this very contemporary format for a while, and it shows. With a clean layout and easy navigation, the site allows the focus to be on the artists, and not on the mechanics of the web. In this way King and Pearson have managed to utilize all the advantages found in print media, as well as taken advantage of the multimedia options and accessibility that the web provides.

Their most recent edition, June 2005, (Edition 6.01) is representative of the publication’s strength – contemporary work by a balance of Detroit and non-local artists. Of the five creators featured this issue, two are Detroiters, three are visual artists and two are poets. While their works are seemingly disparate, there is a strong connective thread of critiquing contemporary culture found in all of them.

This social commentary is most direct in the work of New Jersey multimedia artist Grace Graupe Pillard. Pillard’s work also takes the greatest advantage of the web, as her piece, “Interventions” is a slide show of photos of everyday city streets upon which she has juxtaposed images of soldiers, people in hazmat suits, digital explosions, and more, all accompanied by a soundtrack of explosions, gunfire, and sirens. (At first this piece can cause quite a start – as perusing this quiet, static literary publication, all of a sudden we are confronted with a flash of light and a loud bang – definitely a wakeup call!) This gives a visual to our post 9/11 fears of further attacks and color-coded alerts. It’s a nightmare vision, which is perhaps all too real for folks living in many parts of the world. The fear of such a situation occurring here is used to justify our actions around the world today. Pillard makes an extremely effective use of the medium to create powerful, incisive commentary.

On display in Mark(s) virtual gallery are the paintings of Meadow Brook Gallery Director Dick Goody. Goody’s vibrantly painted works reference the art world and culture at large. On one hand, these stem from the academic landscape, but on the other hand are very much a critique of those same institutions. He walks the line between taking on formal issues, yet creating figures and environments so raw and bold as to make an Outsider artist envious. In this way, Goody lets his viewer connect to the paintings through the use of color, composition, simple figuration, but then through humor, clever titles, and surreal settings takes the viewer on a deeper intellectual journey. He seems able to point out how ridiculous we can be as a culture, while acknowledging how vital that culture is. This is both funny and deadly serious at the same time – just like the man himself.

Two poets offer up their works on Mark(s) this quarter. New Yorker Bruce Andrews presents “C-3” a suite of 17 (of course) of his tightly structured poems. Each one might be read as a list of song titles on an album. The words feel almost randomly situated, though one can’t help but draw definitive associations between them – which is of course what Andrews is after. One is able to get a feeling, almost an image, for what is going on, even if it remains difficult to put one’s finger on it. An example: “Manmade Sex Change/
pretty boy crossover”. There’s a nice sense of play at work here, that is shared by Coloradoan Jack Collom. Collom brings an extraordinary sense of word play to his rhyming work. An example: “Mimesis snaked its way home, contrary to/Your herpetological mirror-rhythms./ For whatever reason. I speak and you turn blue/ Although your hidden vixen hiss sings with ‘em:” While the words flow of the tongue quickly, and indeed reading is a snap, this simplicity conceals their complexity. Each line of the eight poems offers so much to unpack and decipher, that they demand further and closer readings. Each one perhaps allowing for an “aha!” moment.

A. Ibn Pori Pitts paintings are in a way a form of visual poetry. While they do present compelling visuals, Pitts neither sets up a particular world to draw the viewer in nor a specific optical experience, but assembles words, images, ideas, and symbols together to address racial issues merging the African American with the African. Ancestry and modern urban life collide on his canvas to create a very real experience. We read these like the poems and our lives themselves, from the fragments that is our past and current existence we stitch together a story that makes sense.

There’s a lot to take in this quarter in Mark(s). As an added bonus, ALL the past editions are archived – and neatly at that. This might mean you never leave the house again. - Nick Sousanis
ws@thedetroiter.com

This Week in Art: Clinton Snider “House”
Motor City Brewing Works4701 W. Canfield, Detroit
(Between Cass and 2nd)
313-832-2700
Every Wednesday Night

It’s Wednesday night and the artists have taken over the Bar! That is, for the last few months, sculptor Graem Whyte has been tending bar and bringing in artists to exhibit for one night a week at Motor City Brewing Works. Whyte has been long involved with the weeklong exhibition Five Artists in Five Days at the Detroit Artist Market, and like that event, these weekly “one night stands” in effect act as both an opening (where 95% of exhibition traffic comes through anyway) and a way to get people in the bar on an otherwise slow night.

It’s a wise mix of art and social gathering, and if this week’s turnout is any indication, it’s a solid success. The nature of a one night (art) stand, allows the artist to take some risks and try some things he or she might otherwise avoid at a standard art exhibition.

Case in point, this week’s exhibition: Clinton Snider is known for his Detroit landscape painting in which he captures the visage and feeling for the city’s forgotten places, as well as for his found objects – everyday items unearthed in Detroit’s abandoned buildings and exhibited most famously as a part of “Relics” with collaborator Scott Hocking. While Relics is about to see new life (at ArtCite Gallery in Windsor starting June 25, 2005 - for info click here.), Snider’s work for this one night only show borrows from it, and then proceeds in its own direction altogether. He’s taken household items long discarded, rusted, and in a state of decay and coated them (and in some cases made castings of them) with latex paint.

If a primary element of Relics and Snider’s paintings is to bring new life and find beauty in the discarded and abandoned, this approach does that as well, if by quite different means. For this collection of household items (a roll of toilet paper and a roll of paper towel, vegetables, flowers, a fork, a lock, masking tape, and a ball of string, to name a few) are transformed into something beautiful in their own way. They appear as 3-dimensional silhouettes decked out in pastel shades, that by Snider’s admission would do Martha Stewart proud. (Can you imagine the domestic decorator herself, shooting an episode of her show on location in Detroit? Picture her scouring abandoned buildings to find her materials with which to dip and perhaps offering the perfect way to ward off wild dogs with a cinnamon stick and a hint of lemon!)

Any comparison to Stewart’s palette aside, Snider accomplishes his aim – these objects have been rescued from abandonment and given new life. Viewers can appreciate them for their new properties, while simultaneously trying to unravel how they appeared in their original, uncovered form. There’s a sense of play and mystery, and once again Snider has shared his empathy for the forgotten with his viewers and made them look at things from an entirely new perspective.

One night stands like this offer more chances to show in the city, to thereby test out new ideas, and also the chance to catch up with friends and make new ones at the same time. It’s a nice time and quite beneficial for the community. (Rumor has it that a similar such event occurs weekly at Oslo and other places as well. Stay tuned.) Next week Adam Sobel brings his work to Motor City followed by Tonia Williams on the 22nd of June. Kudos to Whyte for putting this in motion, we hope it enjoys great longevity. Drop in to check it out, as Martha Stewart would say, “It’s a good thing.” – Nick Sousanis
ws@thedetroiter.com

Photos by Yuen Hom. (Thanks for the follow through Yuen!)

Julie Heffernan
Robert Kidd Gallery
107 Townsend Street
Birmingham, Mi 48009
248-642-3909
11-6 Tuesday- Saturday
http://www.robertkiddgallery.com/
May 5 through June 25, 2005

Robert Kidd Gallery serves up a delicious feast of paintings by Julie Heffernan with content enough to be digested over multiple sittings and promises to be engaging at every viewing. Each canvas encompasses a broad range of all that is the western tradition of image making. She blends portraiture, landscape, still life, all achieved with Renaissance paint handling in a surreal setting that is completely of today in its subject matter and sensibility.

Heffernan has titled each piece “self portrait” typically “as” something else including everything from a “wreck” to a “tumor” to a “mound of roses.” Her compositions consist of a nude, deftly painted Renaissance self-portrait, whose gaze directly confronts the viewer. At times the figure has completely disappeared, subsumed by the flowers, jewels, and fruit that are but some of the trappings of these wild yet quite orderly environments which also include fish, fowl, fairy folk, and tiny mouse (or ant) kingdoms. Heffernan’s illusions are as convincing as her settings are surreal. Scale, the juxtaposition of realities, etc, make sense in the way that out of place settings and characters go unquestioned in a dream. They obey their own internal rules.

There is the sense that as much as these paintings are tightly crafted from an academic background, they simultaneously come forth from something far more organic and visceral. Their creation seems to unfold much like a dream, you can imagine that this imagery starts out being one thing, perhaps a more straightforward self-portrait, but as the dream unfolds (the painting progresses) they evolved into something else altogether. We try to apply structure, meaning to it, even if it’s absent entirely. The dream analogy can extend to a further aspect of the work. Regardless of setting and other characters, a dream is a reflection of who we are, our attempt to make sense of ourselves, just as Heffernan’s paintings are self portraits whether her countenance appears or not. Heffernan can use her own image, the setting and symbols, to address her own identity and the broader cultural identity issues concerning women.

The merger of multiple imagery that works so well for invoking such dreamlike realms also hits upon the essence of postmodernism – that is using the tools, techniques, imagery of the past, and mixing, cutting up, appropriating in ways that speak to today. I often equate such postmodern practice with the methods of the DJ – mixing albums on a turntable. Yet for all the cutting and pasting in Heffernan’s work, there is an essential difference – her work not only looks like it belongs in a 17th century gallery in a museum, but she has mastered the skills of the artists of that time. In music terms, it would be like the DJ not just sampling the sounds, but learning to play all the instruments of the older tunes being played. To say the least, this is an incredible accomplishment.

If we could somehow ignore Heffernan’s content (as impossible a task as that is), the paintings hold up strictly on their compositional strengths. Everything in the landscape, no matter how seemingly random, is placed and oriented with great intentionality. While Heffernan’s scenery is essentially still, she uses the elements of the composition (such things as branches, decorative leaf patterns in the background) to create optical movement. The eye is allowed to journey outward but always directed back towards the center. The detail she creates gives us multiple opportunities to rest upon, explore at length, and then move on to the next.

Heffernan brings a lot to each canvas, yet they are never busy or overwhelming. Simply satisfying and endlessly engaging. This is not a show you can afford to miss. – Nick Sousanisws@thedetroiter.com

Secret Hideout Gallery
Bryant Tillman
Friday, June 3, 6-9:30pm, Hideout Gallery
"Painting: New Work by Bryant Tillman"
2424 W. Grand Blvd., Detroit,
Note: Enter gallery through side grey door in front of the
parking lot.

The emails had been coming for some time; painter Bryant Tillman kept extending an invitation to his “Secret Hideout.” Finally last Friday night my schedule aligned with visitation hours, and I found my way there. With a quick slip of the secret password, I was inside Tilmann’s lair, his Fortress of Solitude (truthfully more Green Hornet’s nest than Batcave.)

Comic book analogs aside, entering Tillman’s no longer quite so secret hideout (see Nolan Simon’s “outing” of him in this week’s MetroTimes.) is yet another example of what makes Detroit such an interesting place (not all unlike discovering a basketball court in a loft, see recent editorial )

Tillman’s gallery is also his studio, and he has his large abstract paintings on display on the wall, with accompanying pastels arranged near their big brothers on the floor, and looser sketches on an adjoining wall. He cleverly cordons off the art work with a tape measure (no velvet rope in the secret hideout!)

While most of the work is new, it is nice that Tillman has included a few of his earlier pieces from the Coletrane series. This is an excellent addition as it really helps the viewer understand Tillman’s progression – where he’s been and how that ties into the place he is now. (For more on his previous work, see past review.)

The Coletrane series involved linear abstractions (think musical staffs) with the hint of more representational, mechanical objects (suggestive of car grills) lying somewhere below the surface. In this new body of work, the linear rhythm and repetitive structure predominant throughout the Coletranes has all but evaporated, giving way to an all over composition. The strands of color have moved diagonal and the realistic form has emerged prominently from the background. Tillman uses this well-defined, dimensional, curved shape (appearing as futuristic machinery) to slice through his more organic brush strokes. Abstraction and representation merge with surprisingly harmonious results.

Tillman offers a description of his forms as agricultural machinery threshing through the fields. Once he puts it that way, it is not hard to see these as close-up, uniquely cropped (pun unintended) views of a literal thresher in the field, particularly so in his pastel works. Yet the other worldly reality Tillman has constructed (futuristic machinery, an almost organic palette) is far less important than the movement and the overall optical experience. The composition of colored bands or plant stalks send us moving ever upward and to the right, with the threshing form, much like a real thresher, continually funneling our gaze back inward. It’s a nice balance of movement with plenty of moments to rest upon and enjoy (his handling of the representational is as impressively tight as the abstraction is loose – the machines have the curving elegance of an automotive designer’s handiwork.) There is a certain joyfulness achieved through the combination of color and upward movement in the composition.

The sketches on hand are also of note – in one particular instance, Tillman paints a sailboat impressionistically, its billowing sail echoing the mechanical form cutting through his larger paintings. Whether dealing with abstraction or representation, Tillman always seems to have a solid grasp on movement. In fact, whether intentional or not, the collection of sketches collaged together (salon style) allows for a movement to happen between the various works.

Tillman’s created an air of mystery and a bit of fun with his promotion of the secret hideout. But moreso he gives up the goods to those who venture inside. It’s worth finding your way here and discovering yet another of Detroit’s hidden gems (though hopefully not for much longer!) – Nick Sousanis
ws@thedetroiter.com