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  Image: Erin Keever, Photo by Andrew Loehman for AA-S |
Arthouse at Jones
Center:
Going West By Jeanne Claire Van
Ryzin When Erin Keever went in search of the American West, she found many things. She found Katrina Moorhead's miniature swimming pools crafted from discarded Styrofoam computer packing blocks lined with tiny, colorful dollhouse tile. From Kyle Wadsworth, she rustled up some cacti cast in plaster and also in bright red rubber that are mounted on wheels. She discovered a pair of giant pistols in a shade of light cartoon blue by Bill Davenport and a tumbleweed cast in bronze by Bale Creek Allen. And she also found Wadsworth's very large wall silhouette of a rifle-toting cowboy that's delineated by pink insulation tape and Teresa O'Connor's miniature diorama with black and white horses perched on itty-bitty cliffs. Keever wasn't looking for anything specific when she started her curatorial road trip last fall. Really, she just set out to answer a question: "Why are so many artists of my generation still fascinated with the concept of the West?" says the thirtysomething native Austinite who confesses that her family actually spent more time road tripping in Mexico than they did north of the border and west of the Mississippi. The answer? Actually, there's several of them as "Going West" features the work of 10 Texas-based artists. And Keever, in the first exhibit she's put together at Arthouse, blends everything adroitly together. She sums up the vivid show this way: "There's a critical edge to this work, but it's not cynical. Or maybe it's really more in between critical and celebratory." Indeed the romantic myth of the American West -- with its heroes and magic and promises of self-transformation -- doesn't fool these artists. But they don't deride their own weakness for it either. After all, "We all know better than to hang onto myths, but we still do it," says Keever. Like O'Connor. The Houston-based artist taps into the quintessential little-girl horse fantasy, but weirds it up. Her mini-diorama "Epic Horse," with its tiny toy horses, Styrofoam cliffs and fluffy pink clouds, at first seems purely cute. But installed on a gallery wall, just above an expanse of chair molding along with a dining chair placed in front, suggests that the diorama is really Western-motif wallpaper come alive --- or at least morphed into 3-D in some "Alice in Wonderland" fashion. Johnny Robertson also plays with the bigness and smallness that the vast Western landscape evokes. In a pastel palette he paints cropped views of the sky, images based on photographs he took from a car window on a road trip from Texas to California. No telling where in the West these views are, just big expanses of light-filled sky dwarfing anything beneath it. The landscape takes center stage in Mungo Thomson's 30-minute video "American Desert (for Chuck Jones)." Thomson digitally removed the figures and sound from classic Road Runner cartoons created by Chuck Jones. Instead of Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner, we get a sequence of cartoon desert scenes, brilliant in their saturated TV-land colors. To interrupt the silence -- lest you get too lost in nostalgia for the Saturday morning cartoons of your youth -- Thomson adds a few sporadic audio segments: a train roars by, rocks fall and birds tweet. Like the artists she chose for "Going West," Keever admits to succumbing to the seductive imagery of the American West and pondering the power of its attraction. While an intern a few years back at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (one of several competitive internships she had in her graduate and undergraduate years), she would spend the occasional lunch hour losing herself in the mega-sized 19th-century Western landscapes of Thomas Moran. "I liked the way the paintings just enveloped you, pulled you in," she says. In essence, she liked the journey they took her on. "Going West" will take a road trip to other Texas venues within the next year. In the meantime, Keever is enjoying the journey of its run at Arthouse. Perhaps that's because for a moment at least, she lassoed the ever-elusive American West. jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699 |
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 Image: Jill Pankey, Boots & Babes, oil on canvas |
Nudes and not at art gallery By Jessica
Jimenez On a gray Texas winter day, F8 Fine Art Gallery's latest exhibit, "Breaking the Mood," offered a satisfying array of brilliant color, distracting one's attention from the chilly weather outside. Nestled in the chic part of West Sixth Street, F8 is a relatively small, yet classy gallery presenting featured artists in a sharp, professional manner. This particular exhibit engagingly mixes humorous paintings of women posed in quirky scenarios with photographic portraits of nude women. Jill Pankey's glossy and vibrantly colored oil paintings focus on women whose bodies lie outside society's usual mold of young, model-like figures. She celebrates a range of female body types, particularly older women, through expressive use of movement and color. Pankey presents the women in somewhat courageous situations. In one lively piece, she depicts five, cross-legged elderly women laughing and smiling, comfortably wearing nothing except a darkish red drape and distinctly colored cowboy boots. Fellow painter James D. Pendleton utilizes oils and watercolors to reflect the mystic nature of outdoor beauty. The dreamlike feel to his works is meant to mirror Pendleton's remembrance of the particular settings. Amy Griffin's gelatin prints of New York City encapsulate the everyday life in its splendor; whereas Richard D. Griffin's fascination with the nude rests in showing humans as they are. Last, Steven Dale Oleson's allegorical photos perplexingly incorporate different images, projected onto enlarged color prints. "Breaking the Mood" continues 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday through Feb. 28, 1137 W. Sixth St., 480-0242. |
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