Photo: “tv kills u,” mixed media painting by
Liza Brenner
Published in the Weekly Volcano, Sept. 24, 2015
"Happy Hour" mixed media painting by Liza Brenner |
This year’s faculty and staff art exhibition is one of the better shows
they’ve had in quite some time and the best faculty exhibition since I’ve been
reviewing them.
The first thing to strike the eye when entering the gallery is Joe
Batt’s installation, “Oculus.” It is a dramatic, inventive and skillfully
executed grouping of a stoneware sculpture and hanging mobiles made of wood and
painted with pastel. It’s a slight variation on a similar installation readers
may remember from Batt’s show at Salon Refu a year ago. The stoneware figure is
a young boy dressed in white sweats and white running shoes with pale blue toes
and Velcro straps. He’s wearing some kind of charcoal colored visor over his
eyes. The mobile hanging above him is a group of eight satellites made of
plywood and lightly colored with pastels. I love the worn-wood look of the mobile contrasted with the pasty white of the
figure. Batt is also showing three nicely done mixed-media
digital collages which expand on the themes of “Oculus.”
Liza Brenner is new to the SPSCC faculty and the South Sound arts scene - a most welcome newcomer. Her three mixed-media paintings with collage in this exhibition are a
joy to look at. They are comically surreal with odd juxtapositions of people
and objects that do not belong together — the juxtaposition of disparate
elements being the very definition of surrealism. Her “What Makes Hannah Snell
So Appealing?” (what a wonderful title!) is a picture of a 16th
century man wearing a red smoking jacket in the interior of a house. Sharing the house with him are
monkeys, one riding in a baby carriage and one wide-eyed monkey hanging from
the ceiling and holding a camera, a modern camera of a type that did not exist
when men dressed like the one in the painting.
Brenner’s “Happy Hour with Friends” depicts a couple seating at a table
having a friendly drink. In front of them is a
group of deer, and on the wall behind them are portraits of people, presumably
the friends of the title. The deer and the portraits are all contour drawings
done with a brush and fairly heavy paint. All of her paintings are roughly
executed in a nice manner.
More decorative are Jane Stone’s
oxidation-fired ceramic tiles, each mounted in groups of two, three or four and
each grouping united by theme. There’s one with images of flowers, one with
landscape scenes with bodies of water, and a two-tile set with a crow and a
bird’s nest with eggs. All are delicately painted; my favorites are the streams
of water.
There are three paintings by Nathan Barnes, two of which I have reviewed
when they were in previous shows, and one new one that is a double-faced
portrait of his sister, a pianist. There are clever references to pianos. His
painted constructions are always inventive and beautifully crafted.
There are also some great works by Daniel Meuse
that are dark and ominous, and works by Colleen
Gallagher, Liza Mellinger and Nicole Gugliotti. I wish I had space in this
column to write more about all of them. But you don’t need to read what I have
to say; just go to this show and see for yourself. You’ll be glad you did.
South
Puget Sound Community College,
Kenneth J Minnaert Center for the Arts Gallery, Monday-Friday, noon-4 p.m.
through Oct. 30, 2011 Mottman Rd. SW. Olympia, 360.596.5527.]
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