Gallery Review: Shasta College Annual Faculty Art Show

Alice Walker said: “If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for!”  As I jot down my first impressions of this exhibit, I find myself asking this question of most of the works shown: “What is it for?”  I make a preliminary tour and manage to come up with a few words to describe my reactions: why?...what?...blah!...boring!...cute!...dead!...and ouch!

WHY would Susan Schimke go to all the trouble of rendering lovely charcoal portraits of her family, then cover them over with encaustic so that you can’t see them?  WHAT is Richard Wilson trying to say?  Drew Burgess’ huge acrylic paintings of boards and bricks on pastel confetti backgrounds are BLAH!  Lorelle Lindquist’s black and white photos are BORING.  Shari Borkin’s happy chicken wearing two slices of bread in the guise of a sandwich is Sesame Street CUTE.  Drew Burgess’s’ dried up, discolored lemons in a box are DEAD!  And then there’s Shari Borkin’s “Paint Lickers” – OUCH!  When I look at it, it hurts.

My first impression duly noted, I retrace my steps and spend some quality time with each work of art.  Susan Schimke’s charcoal “Portraits of the Schimke Family” begin to take shape behind their beeswax coverings. They peer ethereally out from some inaccessible plane of the universe, waiting to be released. The encaustic is beautiful.  The art work beneath is yet to be discovered.  I try to write an intelligent appraisal, but the only word that come to mind is – “nothing”.  The dominant work in this part of the gallery is a larger-then-life acrylic painting on canvas by Drew Burgess - “Blackberry Hollow”:  A small brick wall with a hinged board appendage and a “lost” plank of wood in the foreground float on a huge color-speckled pastel blue background that reminds me of the squares of craft paper you buy at Michael’s for… I don’t know what it’s for, but it doesn’t look like quality art media to me. The only thing that gives life to the painting is a paper-thin halo of intense color barely peeking out from the sides of the brick structure, as if trying to say “Here we are! Let us out!”.  Both of Mr. Burgess’ large acrylic paintings, “Blackberry Hollow” and “Lost and Found” are in the same genre: small pieces of wood or brick structures in limbo on pastel confetti backgrounds. Are you pulling my leg, Mr. Burgess?  I move on.

John Harper’s printmaking series of “Burntscapes”, waving brown and ochre grasses and cloud forms burned into paper, are simple and refreshing after the pastel confetti experience. They briefly recall childhood memories of the California hills, covered in golden grasses disappearing softly into endless clouds. Four works – they all look pretty much the same. I have read them better than any of the other works in the exhibit: they are very obvious. Yet, that nagging word, “nothing”, keeps coming back to my mind. These are only memories. Once seen, they no longer have anything to say.  If they were on my wall at home, I might not even see them.

I see several acrylic works on canvas that I immediately recognize as Richard Wilson’s: squares on rectangles. The artist disputes my description, but to the “naked” eye, let’s not kid each other: that’s what they are. To be fair I spend some time with these to try to fathom what the artist is trying to say.  After all, many uninformed art lovers, such as I, might say: “Anyone can make squares on rectangles.”  Try as I may, I draw a blank. I am obliged to refer to what Mr. Wilson, himself,  has told us about his art.  And so I know that the simplified, symbolic portrayal of an object, building, or bit of nature is what inspires him.  He seems fond of translating them all into rectangular forms. His stated “Celtic influence” is taken to extremes. The compositions are at least playful – something like playing with a child’s blocks and putting them in different places.  Mr. Wilson defines his art as  “spiritual”.  I cannot agree: my conception of “spiritual” is beyond man’s physical environment.  And squares seem to me to be the antithesis of the spiritual – our physical world represented in one, solid, uninteresting, never changing form – rectangular.  The artist plays a bit with his geometry, subtly shaving the sides unevenly, or placing them out of line by a fraction of a centimeter. The colors are grayed, the rendering immaculate – still, squares on rectangles any way you look at them. I feel the need to pick a favorite, with that greater need – to find “ something” in these works still nagging at my conscience.  What I really want to do is move on and forget the forgettable.  But I persevere:  “Routang” wins!  Good! Now I have done justice to the artist.  I come to the conclusion, however, that had I not had some previous insights from the artist himself, I would  have seen only those squares on rectangles!  I still can’t differentiate the building from the flower.  Why doesn’t Richard Wilson speak to the viewer?  There is no communication from the art itself.  And communication, in my opinion, is the sole reason for making art.  I feel left out.  Would I purchase one of Mr. Wilson’s works to decorate my home? NO. I could copy them just as easily.  That disturbs me.

Fighting off a growing concern about where I fit as an artist in today’s art world, I move down the  hall to a great splash of color that explodes in bright blue pieces all over the wall!  This impressive piece of art by Shari Borkin is called “Paint Lickers.”  It is a multi-colored, mural-size work, dominated by thick strokes of acrylic: purple, red, orange, green, blue and purple again that march across the central piece, on which are glued bright blue “melted” glass bottles which climb out of the painting onto the wall toward a dirty artist’s palette high above, like fat blue footprints trying to escape from the work. A good painting to escape from. Someone once said  “who said art must be beautiful!”  I did.  If it is not thought-provoking, inspiring, or beautiful to look at, I’m not interested. I march to a higher ideal. This work is the booby prize of the exhibit.  It gets right in my face and literally screams UGLY!   I don’t like it and I can’t avoid it.

Turning my back on the blue footprints, I am delighted to find a work that strikes me as beautiful.  Just in the nick of time. I was getting discouraged.  there on the wall is a lovely “piece of light” – a simple natural wood frame with a glass front enclosing rippling waves of opaque plastic, intertwined at intervals by a thin, supple piece of wood of the same color as the frame. The light falling on this piece makes it appear as if lighted from within. Nancy Lynn Toolan’s “Billow” is simple, light , and full of life.   I can’t take my eyes off of it. It lifts my spirits. What is the difference between this simply constructed multimedia piece and the simple squares of Richard Wilson?  why does one hold my interest indefinitely, while the others close all the doors to me? I can only venture an answer. Light is sublime. It represents something beyond the material, it draws me higher. It is what I seek to render in my own art, physically or symbolically, and what I seek to attain in my spiritual life. “Billow” is my favorite of the show. It is a light in the darkness.  Ms. Toolan’s other work, “Ebb”, is less interesting. Its opacity is too dense.  It doesn’t give forth light. It pulls me deeper as I try to discover what it has to say, but it doesn’t let me in.

Encouraged by “Billow’s” fairy presence, I look around for something else to like. I am not disappointed. Bob McGill’s’ “Encounter”, a large black and white acrylic abstract, has my attention. This piece, although containing for the most part, shades of black and gray, has intervals of soft white breaking through, like sunlight coming through a hole in a wall, or rays of light finding their way through a dark cloud.  It is interesting.  It moves. It reminds me of a personal favorite observation of mine:  “Light always expels the darkness, but darkness can never extinguish light.” It is a fact of physics. Of such is hope. There is a lot to think about in this painting.

There is also a lot to think about in his other painting, “Gate,” but that one disturbs me. The colors he chooses in this acrylic work, and their position in the painting make me uncomfortable.  Did the artist deliberately break the “rules” of composition and color?  The intense reds that dominate the piece are not unpleasant, but there is too much of it. It is too powerful for me.  The yellow intrusions of color are in the "wrong places", and make me uneasy. If “good” art provokes feelings, this piece certainly lives up to the reputation, giving it credibility, but I don’t want to remain in its presence.

Almost at the end of my gallery tour now, I find the “pièce de resistance.”  My resistance!  Drew Burgess has put together a strange multimedia piece that I cannot find it in my heart to appreciate. In “Daedaius Meets the Angels”, there is no higher call to angels, only an elongated wooden box, the upper outer face of which consists of a rectangular piece of wood painted in the now-familiar insipid flecks of color, to which is attached a door.  The bottom part of the box is a glass-enclosed collection of rotten leather-brown lemons!  What would greatly improve this work would be to make the door long enough to embark both the top and the bottom of the work – and to close it!

There is more… a couple of “cute” works: a three-dimensional “Chicken Sandwich” by Shari Borkin that looks too friendly to eat and an “Alice in Wonderland” wood and glass composition called “Pilgrim”, by Drew Burgess, that has movable doors and windows and shutters covered with black and white newspaper articles.  There are a couple of extremely boring “shoe” photos by Lorelle Lindquist, more undiscovered wax works by Susan Schimke, and Shari Borkin’s “Have You Had Your Garlic Today?”, which (I have to say it) is not even as good as my 7-year-old granddaughter’s art.  That word, “nothing” comes to mind.  Yeah, “nothing on the wall” would look better!

The Shasta College Art Gallery is a small, but very nice gallery.  It is open and light, the art is professionally displayed and lighted, the shows are hung with taste and there is always sufficient information on the artists and their views, not to mention the added advantage of the presence, in this show at least, of the artists themselves.  One can always look them up if more information is needed. There are benches where one can sit and consider the exhibited works or take notes.  Students come and go from their classes, but they are never noisy. They are friendly parts of the gallery.

Whether I appreciate the artists here exhibited or not, this is one of my favorite galleries in Redding.  The shows – one way or another - are always interesting or educational.  About this faculty show, I wish I could be more positive.  I’m struck by the lack of originality, and disappointed overall with the quality of the art.  I consider that a work of art lacks originality, although it may be different from what anyone else is doing, when anyone could copy it.  These artists/instructors invariably inspire much better art in their students than what I see here from their own hands.  That is to their credit. As for their art….Richard Wilson stated that “great art is an artistic medium that most people misunderstand” unless they study. He ventures further to say that not everyone can “belong”.  If that is so, then I do not belong!   I do  not want to belong to this contemporary world of art.  I make my judgments as one who seeks in all things a higher good, an Absolute, without which I believe nothing – art included – is worth the effort.  As I look at these works of art, the questions “ What is it for?” is ever-present. Is it only playful?  That’s OK.  Is it a deep expression of each artist’s intimate self? Fair enough. Could it be that the artists are only pulling my leg? Or is it a clear  expression of the time in which we live?  In my opinion it is the latter. The world we live in has lost touch with its traditions and its direction. There is no depth. We are  headed for disaster, and I would like to see art that is part of the cure for, not the symptoms of, society.  I agree that art is a fascinating source of  history and reflection of current events, but today’s art misses the point completely, the point being that this world is not our “real” place.  I value more art that seeks a higher spirit and communicates its findings to others. This is also an elitist world that “not everyone understands”, but I generously hold that no one should be excluded.  It is a better place.

Addendum: I respect any artists’ freedom to express himself as he believes and I’m excited to live in a time when this freedom is afforded more than at any other time in the past. In art, as in life, I say "let the chaff grow along with the wheat."  A time will come for reckoning. Yet, I’m personally dismayed by the   current direction of the world and the arts which reflect it. Lest we   find ourselves too deeply mired in the mud, no longer able to see the final goal, let’s keep the light in our lives and in our art – for the peaceful inspiration of all who see it.