Exposed: Dual Perspectives in Paint and Pixel

The exhibition, Exposed, presents the two diverse perspectives of painter Mary Dorrell and photographer Thomas King as they venture through mountain ranges and foothills across untouched corners of the United States. The juxtaposition of these works provides the viewer with a reassuring reminder of monumental and microscopic natural wonders existing beyond twitter notifications and the concrete jungle. Curated by Rebecca George and exhibited by The Art House, a gallery and classroom for two-dimensional studio art studies, the exhibition’s opening reception included an illuminating lecture by guest art historian, Ginny Voedisch.  Art Institute of Chicago lecturer, Voedisch, discussed replication versus interpretation and concepts of timelessness regarding images of natural entities and wilderness.

Mary Dorrell’s fauvist color palette and lyrical brush strokes convey a contemporary perspective of ancient places. Her works articulate the aesthetics of falling autumn leaves and expansive valleys, but the pieces also evoke an impressionistic conveyance of the feeling of autumn, the feeling of beholding a vista. In painting, color blocks, and watercolors, Dorrell captures birch trees and beaches, bison and tree spirits. Her oil on wood piece, Tree Spirits II, reflects an ineffable, ambiguous spirituality in a Kandinsky-like conversation of color that flows with cadence and complexity.  

Tree Spirits II

In cohesive contrast, Thom King’s majestic black and white photographs on metallic paper shimmer with demanding fortitude. Stark and detailed, vast and intimate, these beautifully composed landscapes document King’s 9,000-mile journey across 15 sites of the American West.  The texture of the metallic paper lends an additional component of authenticity in the shimmer of the photographed water, snow, and sky.  Wild stallions and contemplative bison engender powerful energy into these photographs of Devil’s Tower, the Grand Tetons, Yosemite, and Yellowstone. These are monumental works for quiet rumination.

The Narrows

Up next for The Art House is Art By America, a national juried exhibition of two-dimensional artwork with awards up to $1,000. Participating artists will receive all sale proceeds. Click HERE to learn more. For additional information on exhibitions and courses offered at The Art House, please click HERE.

Artists Mary Dorrell and Thom King discuss magical places, their creative processes, and visually capturing powerful animals of the archetypal Southwest in the interview below...

A conversation with painter, Mary Dorrell: 

-You have described exploring wild and magical places of our natural landscape in your painting. Can you expound on this process?

Looking for the wild and magical is about being close to elements of nature and to my own internal spirit. I begin with slowing down enough to become quiet within myself. Allowing an opening into the un-manifested creativity; the resulting inspiration /idea always ties a connection between the meaning and the image. Much of my work has been about capturing the mystical elements inherent in untouched nature.  Once engaged in the process, I suspend the expectation of outcome which allows me to be purely in the moment, evaluating choices, both instinctual and conscious; decisions that maintain the conversation with the work as it progresses to resolution.

-Your highly textured oil on paper piece, Misty Verdues, is one of the most visually compelling works in the exhibition. Can you speak a little on the context of the piece? 

Misty Verdures (Wet Leaves) is a mono-type (oil painting on zinc plate, transferred to paper with a printing press) on being captivated by the randomly unique patterns of fall leaves on a wet ground. Throughout the making of this piece I was continually captivated by the texture and dynamic contrast.

Misty Verdues

-How do memory and elements of heritage affect the aesthetics of your work? Would you say they are the foundation of your painterly instinct? 

Memory and heritage weave the fabric that provides a foundation of who I am as an artist. I am compelled to create and have been since three years old. I like to think that my pioneer ancestors gave me the determination and connection to nature and that my distant Dutch heritage fuels the creativity and drives my instinct to represent the environment as it interacts with collective memory. 

A conversation with photographer, Thom King:

-Does the title of the exhibition, Exposed, allude to some intimate, raw quality of the rugged landscapes you photograph? 

I feel the title Exposed has many meanings for me; my love for photography began long before digital cameras, smart phones and social media. I learned photography on film, processing and printing photos in a darkroom. It was a multi-step process that really made you think about the image you were about to capture, from the composition of the image to the final print. For Exposed I wanted to return to the roots of landscape photography and the photographers whom I admire. Like in the days before digital cameras and Photoshop I tried to create the final image as much as possible with the proper exposure and composition in camera with minimal post processing in Photoshop. I thought of the process much more for this series than in much of my previous work. 

General Sherman Sequoia

-Can you describe your energy when photographing stallions and bison, powerful animals of the archetypal Southwest? 

The Bison are truly a majestic and impressive animal; they roam Yellowstone National Park and are often seen walking down roads creating traffic back-ups. (Oddly enough, they always seem to walk the roads in the correct direction with the traffic). Being within a few feet of a bison you get the sense of just how powerful they are, seemingly unaware or not caring that we are there. The real gem for me was seeing the wild horses, traveling a 14 mile unpaved road in southwest Wyoming I thought I would reach the end of the road before seeing any wild horses. Then in the distance I spotted them, a group of about 8-10 adults and one colt. I quickly began photographing them as we slowly moved closer. Much to my surprise they did not run away and only moved a little from the road as we approached. The true joy was getting out of the car and walking to within 75 feet of them, I felt like that was close enough for me (after all they are large and wild) and they seemed Ok with my proximity. After I felt like I had enough images I put down the camera and just watched, taking in the scene with all of my senses until they slowly moved away.

Read more on Mary Dorrell and her painting HERE.

Read more on Thom King and his photographs HERE. 

Photos courtesy of Thom King. 

Donald Glover's Sober: Pinnochio's Perspective

Donald Glover, known more widely by his stage name Childish Gambino, recently released a music video for the single “Sober,” on his Kauai EP and I am ecstatic. Glover, who is also a former writer and actor for the NBC comedy Community, flexes his creative liberties in the simple yet compelling visual. What's resulted is an off-putting display of boy meets girl with an eerie and thought provoking question posed to the audience and artists alike.

I had a very personal connection to the piece initially but it wasn’t apparent to me why it had affected me so deeply. After describing the piece to my colleague however, the subconscious perspective poured out organically without much effort of my own.

In the very beginning, while the setting is being revealed to us in a slow pan you may notice that we’re back in a diner just as we had been in Gambino’s Sweatpants video back in 2014. Although, the two diners are of vastly different interiors with the Sweatpants diner being furnished with nice leather booth seats and classic countertop tables, the restaurant in Sober is simple, barren.  The leather booth style seats have been traded for plastic chairs and tables placed merely for formality's sake since this isn't a place for dining in. This specific change in setting indicates to me, a sort of breakdown or shift in direction, which may reflect the artist's state of mind at the times of production. 

The direction of this particular work is set as soon as our two protagonists, Gambino and the young woman, come into frame. We watch him arise from his seat across the diner to garner her attention any way he can. Gambino mimes the lyrics, using his hands to depict the bounce in the melody, as this very entertaining micro-drama ensues. He dances for her, awkwardly yet effortlessly. It’s as if his joints are attached to invisible strings that tug at their own will. Here he is: a puppet for a woman he doesn’t know and doesn’t seem to notice is completely uninterested in his attempts to entertain her.

Does this dynamic not sound familiar?
Don’t most artists who are seeking “success” drive themselves to entertaining a world of uninterested bodies who believe wholeheartedly that it is our purpose to entertain them? 
Don’t most artists believe they wholeheartedly want to entertain (even if they aren’t entertainers)?

After dancing, singing, and attempting something similar to magic tricks, Gambino is finally able to get a rise out of the object of his affection. She’s acknowledged his existence by smiling and stepping to his beat for just a short moment validating his creativity, before simply walking out of his space entirely. This short lived relationship exhibits some parallels to the relationship between the creator and his audience. Once you’ve had your 15 mins of fame (or 15 seconds now thanks to Instagram) the audience you've worked for disappears as if they had never been there at all, robbing you of the fulfillment you were seeking all along. An artist’s relevance could plummet at any moment that someone new enters the scene; but what are we to do?

What’s interesting to me is that Gambino handles this by placing himself back in the position from which he can always repeat this process. At the end of the piece, he returns to his original seat and slumps back into the skewed posture that he had sprung from; a stance that many of us are currently molded into, ourselves. 

How does one cope with impending career death? What if your career is the one thing that you love most? What boundaries do you think you could cross if your dream was at stake?

Perhaps Childish Gambino has figured it out. Maybe the secret is to continuously make yourself available to the world: sitting slumped in the same place where you found your audience originally. It may be abandoned most days but at some point some pretty young lady has to walk in and lend you the eyes you had so patiently waited for all along.

"Sic Transit Gloria Mundi": Industry of the Ordinary

 "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi" is the thought provoking, sometimes shocking and always engaging art exhibit at the Chicago Cultural Center created by the collaborative art team, Industry of the Ordinary. Industry of the Ordinary (made up of artists Adam Brooks and Mathew Wilson) is a unique art duo whose mission and vision is to push the boundaries art and to question the ideas of elitism versus the everyday or the ordinary. "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi" which loosely translates to "Thus Passes the Glory of the World", beautifully accomplishes the goals set out by IOTO using multi-media and performative pieces as a tool for destroying the line between art and everyday life. This exhibit uses music, sculpture, print, type and photography amongst other mediums to highlight both the fantastic qualities of the artwork with everyday objects and themes. At the entrance of the exhibit is an immense sculptural piece featuring a tower of brightly colored blocks standing on a bright red carpet that ascends up the back wall of the exhibit. Though the sculpture is massive and eye-catching, the shapes and colors are simple, sticking to black, reds and blues reminiscent of De Stijl; an incredible juxtaposition of the massive form versus the simplistic themes. Another piece, a striking photograph of the members of IOTO playing a game of table football against the backdrop of a dramatic wave on Chicago's North Avenue Beach, exemplifying the mundanity of table top football next to the power and wonder of Lake Michigan. There is an overwhelming room further along in the exhibit featuring simple portrait photographs of average people, household objects, toys and TV screens covering the floor and walls of the entire room, overpowering the viewer with what is commonplace.

"Sic Transit Gloria Mundi" is an interesting and informative study on the average existence of an everyday person and their interaction with exceptional, beautiful art. One of the projects in the exhibit was a wall of photographs taken by visitors to the exhibit with paper bags that had the words "I want to be Ordinary" printed on the front. To me this wall of photos was the most striking of all the pieces in the exhibit because it showcases these simple , bland words amongst a group of vastly different people who were anything but ordinary. The exhibit was an excellent insight into the world around us; how we can find customary order in a massive sculpture and find uniqueness and beauty in simple portraits of people holding the same paper bag. "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi" questions much, and leaves it's viewers with a varying amount of answers and some insight into art and the conventional world.

"Sic Transit Gloria Mundi" will be up until February 17th, 2013 at the Chicago Cultural Center. You can find out more about Industry of the Ordinary and the artists involved here.