Art Roundup: A painter tells tales of depth and surprise (excerpt)

by Timothy Cahill
Staff Writer, Times Union

Diminutive delights

In describing the art in the Fulton Street Gallery’s new “Small Works Exhibition,” juror, Ronda Jeffer uses the word “intimate” twice and compares the 37 pieces on display to “charms on a charm bracelet.”

Such language captures precisely the pleasure of diminutive art pieces. Small works don’t have personal space issues. They entreat the viewer to come close, lean in, with secrets to tell and surprises to share.
There is something disarming about a gallery of pictures all under 15 inches, the show’s maximum image size. The difference isn’t just one of physical scale, but psychological experience. You absorb smaller pictures at a glance, and their quick accessibility promotes a natural feeling of belonging: You’re “in” the pictures before you know it, having surrendered the usual detachment larger images demand.

Delmar painter Rob Longley’s ‘ “Passing Them By” is a case in point. The small black-and-white, abstract canvas evokes shadows falling at the edge of day, and its lines of indecipherable background text strike the heart like the voice of a departed loved one. This all happens in an instant, but it takes a couple of minutes to articulate the painting’s effect.

The same is true of much of the show. Albany photographer Chris DeMarco’s “Hudson River” produces a very pleasing disorientation, with its broad, monochromatic foreground and slash of light in the upper right. Justine Metcalf’s pen drawings have an elusive familiarity, while Eleanor Sweeney’s Polaroid delicate color photographs of a tomato, a plum and a green eggplant make you feel the presence of the fruit in your hand.

M. A. Papanek-Miller uses the “first-hand” nearness of the small format to tickle the eyes with her series of painted collages. “Clearer Spring IV” is typical; like a cottage chock full of furniture and decor, it crowds imagery ranging from a mallard duck to an ice-fishing tip-up to geometry tangents. What is it about? I don’t know, but the scumbled surface and unexpected juxtapositions are rewarding in themselves.

The 22 artists in the show represent a broad geographic sample. Teresa Currie and Gwenn Mayers join Longley and DeMarco from the region. Of the rest, four exhibitors are from New York City, while the remainder hail from Seattle, Pittsburgh, Toronto and smaller cities in Wisconsin, Missouri and Utah.

In Fulton’s back gallery is “Pieces of Six,” works ranging from sculpture to drawing to collage, all made from specialty paper chosen by curator Deborah Webster. Dana Rudolph, Willie Marlowe, Lori Lawrence, M. Patricia Murray, Dorothy Englander and Jane Ingram Allen interpreted the meaning and substance of the handmade paper with spirited inventiveness, making for a delightful little show. …

Article from the Times Union (Friday, December 6, 2002)

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