New show has a Little of Everything
Published in the Weekly Volcano, Sept. 3, 2015
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“Love Forty,” acrylic on cotton rag by
Hiawatha D. Courtesy B2 Gallery
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The difference between what B2 Gallery is
calling it’s “Pop-Up” shows and its regular shows is 1) the Pop-Ups don’t run
as long and 2) the art is more reasonably priced. As for the quality of the
art, there is little or no difference.
The Pop-Up running through Sept. 26 features art
by Hiawatha D, Leah Fitts, Francesca Fuller, Joe Gallagher, Hossein Peigahi,
Becky Knold, and jeweler Delores Weir. It’s a fun show.
Peigahi’s colorful and stylized landscapes
dominate the large front room. They are playful and simple with few details,
and look a lot like they could be children’s book illustrations. One of his
nicest pieces is “Twin Barns of Nisqually.” The barns are ghostlike in pales
tones of yellow, blue and green that are almost white. They seem to be
shimmering in the heat. They sit on a field of hot orange grass.
Also by Peigahi is a little 12”
x 12” untitled landscape that is pseudo-pointillist but not as precise as the
pointillism made famous by Georges
Seurat. Above this painting is “Garden,” an oil and monotype of about the same
size with flowers depicted in large strokes as if the pointillist dots from the
painting below have blossomed into fast strokes like a section ripped from a
Van Gogh. His “Summer Day” has marvelously hot: orange, blue, pink and green colors. Near it is the hottest and best of his paintings,
a Giclée print called “Fall” picturing a single line of trees with orange
leaves on rolling hills that are almost the same color as the leaves. This is a
stunning little painting.
Hiwatha D’s acrylic-on-cotton-rag paintings of jazz musicians look more like
illustrations than serious paintings, but they grow on you in a wonderful way.
These musicians (as well as the people in all his other paintings) are almost
genderless, and they don’t have faces, hands or
feet. They are decorative and nicely composed. His other paintings are scenes
that have the feel of the jazz age. Among these is a matched pair, “Bastile”
and “Love Forty” — a man in one painting and a woman in the other, seated in a
bar with wine glass and bottle on the table and their chins rested on
see-through hands. The contours of these figures are nicely curvilinear, which
is stylistically enhanced by the see-through aspect of the hands. His other paintings depict
groups of people in urban settings.
Fuller is showing a set of paintings of flowers
with metal sheets screwed to the surface, combining delicate flower petals in
transparent washes with minimalist abstract forms created by the metal sheets.
The combination is original, startling, and quite attractive.
Fitts’ work is mostly abstract. She has nine
paintings of expressive circles and lines and other highly gestural marks on
fields of shallow , amorphous spaces and one outstanding landscape of a line of
trees with almost identical clumps of orange leaves and sky and ground that
look like the background on her abstracts but more nuanced. (I understand that
my description of this painting might read like my earlier description of
Peigahi’s “Fall,” but the only thing they have in common is that they are two
of the best paintings in the show.
Gallagher’s paintings of humorously surrealist
bodies, faces, fish, octopi and mermaids are colorful and childlike, although I can see that to many viewers they may
look ominous.
Knold is showing a group of paintings from her
recent show at B2. They are all nice paintings, but not among her best. The richness of texture and the contrasts of
thick-thin, opaque-transparent that is a trademark of much of Knold’s paintings
are not so much in evidence here.
Weir’s jewelry nicely combines tribal and contemporary looks with images such
as faces and complex beadwork.
Summer Pop Up at B2, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Tuesday-Saturday, till 9 p.m. Third Thursdays, through Sept. 26, 711 St. Helens
Avenue, Tacoma, 253.238.5065.
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