Yesterday making final preparations in the Underground Galleries for tonight's First Thursday Exhibition opening, I was overwhelmed with the impact of the work we are showing this month.
Featuring Hank Kaminsky:
These are commemorations, nautilus, dreadnaught, signs of an
artist’s presence. “I have been here.” Like a heart carved in the skin of a
beech on the trail, Kaminsky has left his mark.
Rockstars of Fayetteville:
On that same artistic trail we
might find Kai in the back studio stacking stones, “building a relationship between the art and
the observer.” How did he do that?
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| On View Now at Fayetteville Underground |
Ed Pennebaker, glass master:
Ozark Topography
has erupted within a gallery space, interrupted that space and re-defined it,
re-arranging nature in a distilled form. Pennebaker has placed luminous and
lithic monuments among us.
Brenton Smith's Mesozoic Mahogany:
Continuing the theme of timeless space, Brenton Smith’s opii in mahogany brings the delicacy of a paleo cuisine to heroic scale for our artistic nourishment.
All this surrounded on gallery walls by pre-literate runic glyphs of colored
porcelain made by Siegele and Haley, intimate and cool forest pastels by Judy
Maurer, elemental acrylic studies by Steven Schneider, and the layers and
scratches in paint that constitute
Douglas Randall’s investigations into the ultimate truth of landscape.
Around the corner you can go sailing with Cheri Bohn's latest creation:
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| Bohn Voyager |
. . . or continue and find some new directions in wood by John Sewell:
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| Jungle Sunrise |
Why do we artists make these marks and stack these stones?
Cairns
A leaner,
old and bleached and bare,
presiding where
the young and grey-bright shafts
are rooted in the bank,
watches over all the
winter water conversations:
rocks alive with light rippling
and soothing lyric,
sounding questions, “who was here?
to find this shale and sandstone carpet
worn by time and friction,
hear the blue silt-prompted teal
and lucent liquid chuckle,
dropping gently in between colossal chunks
of fallen mountain
piece;
here to lose the shoulder bag and sense of purpose
lying prone and prone to dally,
belly cool on rock and gravel,”
while the sun burns through
to heat the near side skin.
And who would place
one stone upon another? useless act,
no reason – leaving cairns and towers,
six foot stacks of bold and fragile stones,
these urgent sculptures, positively offered
signs along the trail.
Were their hands aware
how temporal the task, like thatching roofs
or beating gathered stalks of grain?
MM Kent
8-31-15
