Modified Arts, April 28 through March 12, 2011
The complexity of this show’s purported subject matter, displayed in the exhibition’s title, “What Goes on and What Takes Place”, is not apparent in the simple and uncomplicated forms presented. Ironically, this show was billed as a prolonged look at the process of each artist through a blog of the same name. But, in the end we have only the finished work to muse upon and no great insight into the aesthetic, theoretical or emotional mechanisms of these artists; with the possible exception of Martinez, the blog’s original author, who so overworked her subject that all mystery is driven from her final product.
While it fails on the “exploratory” note, there is still plenty to appreciate through the enticing works on display. Carolyn Lavender greets you upon entrance to Modified Arts with a collection of photos, pencil drawings and pen and ink collages featuring a variety of inquisitive faces, both animal and human, through which her sentimentality runs wild. In her massive centerpiece, “Portrait”, she tiles small pencil drawings of animal mug shots, ranging from lion to titmouse and ocelot to ostrich. Her intense attention to detail is evident and engaging. Each of her other pieces showcases her driving connection to things with a limited lifespan, up to and including the weathered pink flamingo she delicately photographed and framed. One photo montage in particular, entitled “Accidental Composition”, is a smattering of life forms in which the careful organizing and layering of the disparate photo clips belie her title and tell us that this work of art is anything but “accidental.”
With thoughts of the tangible in mind, we leave Lavender to encounter Mary Shindell. Her varied pieces move seamlessly from L.E.D. representations of cactus spines, to a video capturing the sketching of slender seed pods to a towering panel of digitally created saguaro cacti. Shindell, like Lavender, is inspired by and is herself a creation of the surrounding desert climate and its contrasting feasts of color and monochrome droughts. Although drawing is Shindell’s traditional form, she constantly updates, renews and expands her practice as evidenced by the juxtaposition of traditional drawing with digitally produced prints and modern lighting that weaves through her exhibition. The most potent expression of process that the show has to offer is in Shindell’s video through which we can see her drawing process from beginning to end, even listening to the scratch of ink quill on paper.
With thoughts of the tangible in mind, we leave Lavender to encounter Mary Shindell. Her varied pieces move seamlessly from L.E.D. representations of cactus spines, to a video capturing the sketching of slender seed pods to a towering panel of digitally created saguaro cacti. Shindell, like Lavender, is inspired by and is herself a creation of the surrounding desert climate and its contrasting feasts of color and monochrome droughts. Although drawing is Shindell’s traditional form, she constantly updates, renews and expands her practice as evidenced by the juxtaposition of traditional drawing with digitally produced prints and modern lighting that weaves through her exhibition. The most potent expression of process that the show has to offer is in Shindell’s video through which we can see her drawing process from beginning to end, even listening to the scratch of ink quill on paper.
The dramatically thick and detailed works of Shindell do nothing to prepare you for the intensity and chaos of Sue Chenoweth. Chenoweth’s works, which she expressed once in a Graduate Class visit as “cartographic timelines”, are about a very specific place in Chenoweth’s memory and the story that animates that place. Her eccentric nature is represented by any single artwork through which she shares her dreams about everything from fire, ghosts, and global warming to oceans, volcanoes and the sensation of transforming into a great white shark. Her artist’s process is mildly available in the outlying edges of several pieces where she has left penciled notes and scribbles visible under the paint.
A subscriber to the theory of visible processes, we now visit Monica Aissa Martinez. Her focus is the inner workings of her own body; painting fragmented versions of herself in rainbow colors with bones, brains and organs exposed. She explores the connections of mind, body and spirit through exposing what is usually hidden and illuminating the important structures that make our complex bodies work. Most interesting about Martinez’s work is the way she subtly fits small lightning bolts, fingers of energy, to the larger works. In her centerpiece, “Creative Structure — I am, Yo soy — Estructura Creativa”, I am searching for the energy lines which emerge from the ankles, fingertips, head and uterus of the subject. In these mini-bursts of electricity, my mind is searching for the significance and energy that seems to be otherwise devoid, despite the exposed process that Martinez used to create it.
These four artists have disparate styles, mediums, subjects and forms. I believe their simplicity is deliberately deceiving, but may perhaps be better left to speak for itself without the guise of being process based work. On the surface, this show is simply attractive and eclectic, but spending time with these artists will draw you into their worldviews and introduce you to their shared, sophisticated view of transience that is only available below the surface and just out of view.
