Archive for December, 2007
Ben Nighthorse profile in Art of the 4 Corners, Fall 2007
In Durango, Jewelry, Native American on December 5, 2007 at 11:03 pmBig art versus bad art at DAC, Durango Herald, Nov. 30, 2007
In Durango, Mixed media, painting, sculpture on December 5, 2007 at 10:45 pm
Library Gallery show hits a broad spectrum
Judy Brey’s ceramic sculpture “Tiny Dancer” ($225) is part of the “Smaller Than a Breadbox” show.
The DAC Library Gallery is a small, cramped space like an attic, with a sloped ceiling and low-level bookshelves. For many years, local artist Mary Ellen Long and a committee that currently includes Louise Grune-wald, Deborah Gorton and Jane Steele have coordinated shows that are either art-book-related or small enough to fit the space.
“Smaller Than a Breadbox” is the obvious title of the current exhibition where local artists were invited to participate, including: Ed Bolster, Judy Brey, Mike Brieger, Sandra Butler, Debra Greenblatt, Ed Kruse, Grace Kruse, Cuatro Kruse, Jules Masterjohn, Maureen May, Karen Pittman, Joan Levine Russell and Amy Wendland.
The work hits a broad spectrum. Some of the painting is simply bad and an embarrassment to painters. But some of the work is Big Art in a small package, big ideas in small form.
Judy Brey’s “Tiny Dancer” is a small ceramic sculpture, one of her best. A female figure leaps, arms outstretched; toes and figures are spread; hair flowing. There is movement and motion in the work. The figure’s intentionally imperfect face, with mouth agape, adds to the humor and confidence expressed in the work.
Along the back wall is some of the best work in the show. Maureen May’s “Retrieving the Hand, Reviving the Heart” is a mixed-media sculpture that features a beautiful color pencil drawing of a hand, with visible veins and blood vessels; the drawing is torn and stitched back together with red thread, held up by wires and clips from a base that is wrapped in text.
A magnifying glass prompts the viewer to look more closely at the detail. Wrapped around the magnifying glass is a quote by Lao Tzu, “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with one step.” My hunch is that the hand is a drawing of the artist’s own and that the work speaks about a personal struggle creating art. May’s work is technically superior and equally thought provoking. I long to see more.
Also along the back wall is a small toy sculpture by Amy Wendland, “Unstill Life (Homage to Morandi).” The work features a wooden base, tiny wooden wheels and a pull cord. Atop the base are ceramic vessels, milk jugs and vases as seen in the still-life paintings created by Giorgio Morandi in the early 1900s.
Morandi painted the same object in the same place, just slightly moved. I love that Wendland made her Morandi vessels moveable, in little slots so they can be adjusted slightly. It’s a brilliant and funny commentary on the work of another artist.
A second person commenting on the work of another artist is Jules Masterjohn, whose “They Are All One Thing” mixed-media assemblage is an exploration of her experience writing the upcoming book about Stanton Englehart A Life on Canvas.
Englehart has said that his paintings are all one thing. Masterjohn’s assemblage features a tree growing through layers of shelves. The background is the universe with planetary objects mapped. The shelves are lined with the outlines of parcels of land and streets. Tiny river rocks fill the base. More than an exploration of Englehart, the work is about Masterjohn herself who just turned 50. The tree growing through the layers seems to me to be her, moving through the obstacles of life; rooted in a river, but reaching for the universe.
The strong work in this exhibit overshadows the weak, and the size of the art means one has to get up close and personal with the work. That’s a good thing.
Review
“Smaller Than a Breadbox” 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Tues-Sat., through Jan. 4, Library Gallery, upstairs, Durango Arts Center,802 East Second Ave., 259-2606.
artsjournalist@centurytel.netLeanne Goebel is a freelance writer specializing in the visual arts.
Emotional Chords: Ethridge displays two photo shows at Open Shutter Gallery, Durango Herald, Nov. 27, 2007
In Durango, photography on December 5, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Photos Clockwise from top:”Contemplating the Goddess” is from Ethridge’s “Solitary Voyagers” series.”Pieds” is from Douglas Ethridge’s “Solitary Voyagers” series, on display at the Open Shutter Gallery in Durango.”Tea Time” captures the aloneness one can feel in public. The photographer uses shallow depth of field, a technique that focuses on the man at the counter, while the rest of the shot fades out of focus.”Grace” is from the “Primordial Seas” series that captures the feeling of water outside the cabin door of the photographer’s vacation home in Washington state.
Two shows by the same photographer are on display at Open Shutter Gallery.
Ten 23″ by 34″ abstract photographs draw the viewer into splashes of color refracted in the movement of water from Douglas Ethridge’s “Primordial Seas” series. Two other rooms display 34 of his black and white images of people in differing states of aloneness from his “Solitary Voyagers.”
The most contemplative is “Primordial Seas” a series the artist began in 2006 from his cabin on Hood Canal in Washington state.
Ethridge began photographing the water he saw from his front door every day. He set out to make images that were impressions of how the water felt; some are calming, others intensely energetic. The work relies on Ethridge’s use of shallow depth of field, a technique when areas are intentionally put out of focus.
“The more abstract the images became, the more clearly they touched an emotional chord, becoming microcosms of the greater world,” Ethridge wrote.
The series is divided into four themes: Genesis, Apocalypse, Grace, and Illumination.
Genesis explores a stream of beginnings, the recombination of water and light into changing patterns. Apocalypse captures the unleashing of power. Grace shows the state of calm, yet beneath the surface restless energy remains.
No images from the Illumination theme appear at Open Shutter, where the artist captures the raw elements of pure energy in which nothing but light remains. This is an unfortunate exclusion.
The editions are archival inkjet prints captured with a traditional film camera. But the results are photographs that look like colored pencil or pastel, with delicate fuzzy lines and sudden crisp, sharp areas that sparkle. In “Genesis 11″ and “Genesis 18″Ethridge captures streaks of light in the water.
“Solitary Voyagers” is also a powerful series. Images like “Suspend,” “Runner” and “New in Town,” where an individual’s shadow is captured among the afternoon shadows of buildings and columns and benches are unsettling. They reach into that space within us all that longs for companionship.
Other images in the series such as “A Curious Girl,” “Tea Time” and “Contemplating the Goddess” capture solitariness in a group. And since most of Ethridge’s images are faceless, “Curious Girl” stands out. The girl stares into the camera while those around her are softly out of focus.
Images that didn’t work for me were: “Babushka Bikers,” “Crossing Over,” “Anticipating the Journey” and “Shopping Fatigue” where the people seem to be interacting, linked in some way, in contrast to the idea that we are all at some point a solitary voyager.
Ethridge is an accomplished photographer and once again, Open Shutter brings to Durango the high quality work of an artist who presents images that are ambiguous in time and place and motivate us to respond to the image and finish the story.
Prices range from $475 to $1,300 depending on size and framing.
Review
“Solitary Voyagers” and “Primordial Seas” photographic shows by Douglas Ethridge, through Dec. 5, Open Shutter Gallery, 755 East Second Ave., 382-8355.
Artsjournalist@centurytel.netLeanne Goebel is a freelance write specializing in the visual arts.
This lounge singer’s a cowboy, Durango Herald, Nov. 27, 2007
In Country, Durango on December 5, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Greg Ryder plays Western music from the 1850s to songs he’s just written in the Diamond Belle Saloon on Saturday.
Greg Ryder sits alone with his guitar on a small stage at the Diamond Belle Saloon. He wears a smudged, off-white, cowboy hat that’s a bit small for his head, a crisp white shirt, wrangler jeans and brown cowboy boots. His light brown mustache is thick on his upper lip.
He strums his acoustic guitar, and his baritone fills the Victorian room. He chats familiarly with the customers, calling many by their first name.
The bar is lined with cowboys in wide-brimmed, fancy, felted-fur hats. One buys Ryder a shot of tequila and before Ryder sips from the shot glass, he says that the magic juice will help him sound great.
But the magic juice has nothing to do with the way Ryder sounds. A lifetime of singing has helped him hone a voice that is reminiscent of Marty Robbins. In fact, but for a wider nose and blue eyes, Ryder resembles the country and western crooner who wrote and sang ballads like “El Paso.”
During his set, Ryder follows an original version of a Marty Robbins song with a Gordon Lightfoot tune, a song by Ian Tyson, a Merle Haggard song and a cowboy melody from the 1850s. The music is familiar, yet original.
“He doesn’t copy songs,” customer Chris Christiansen from Gilbert, Ariz., said. “He interprets them.” Christiansen and his wife, Denise, are Ryder regulars. They call themselves Ryder groupies.
“He has a great voice,” Denise added.
Ryder is also a songwriter who performs his own music, Western folk in the tradition of some of his favorite songwriters: Freddy Neal, Bob Dylan and Gordon Lightfoot. His latest CD, which is out soon, will be all original songs.
Ryder grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, the middle child of his father’s second marriage, he said between sets on Saturday.
He has an older brother and younger sister. He says he’s been a singing cowboy since kindergarten and credits his mother and her brother with always singing and playing music.
Because he grew up surrounded by music, it was only natural that performing became his way of life.
Ryder moved to Vail in 1971 so he could ski and play music. He came to Durango in 1979 and has been skiing and playing music ever since.
He doesn’t have a day job or another career, and he was never interested in pursuing the political life of professional theater (which he also loved) or the music scene in Nashville.
Besides, there isn’t any snow in Nashville.
Ryder is as talented as any singer on country radio. His deep baritone resembles contemporary country artist Josh Turner, though Ryder’s rendition of “Long Black Veil” is far superior.
Just don’t ask him to perform a contemporary song.
“I’m not a request guy,” he said when a woman asked if he knew “Fields of Gold” by Sting. “I don’t play music that other people want to hear.” He laughed and then smiled a charming smile.
“I always pick songs that weren’t hits, but were probably the best song on the album in my opinion. And I’m pretty opinionated,” Ryder added.
When Ryder sings the audience listens and enjoys. When he harks back, Hoagy Carmichael, Hoyt Axton and Marty Robbins must smile from their cowboy heaven.
It isn’t the magic juice that makes Greg Ryder sound great. It’s the passion of a singer and songwriter who knows exactly what moves him and stirs his soul.
Even if it is a soul he claims is cracked and dried like dark red Naugahyde.
Review:
Greg Ryder plays and sings at 6 p.m. every Wednesday and Thursday and on Dec. 1, 15 and 22 at the Diamond Belle Saloon,699 Main Ave., 247-4431. He also appears at 6 p.m. Dec. 8 and 29 at the The Office Spiritorium, 699 Main Ave. 375-7260. To buy his CDs, visit gregryder.com.
Artsjournalist@centurytel.netLeanne Goebel is a freelance write specializing in the visual arts.
