 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
||||||
|
  Fence Line by Jack Spencer |
You won't believe it's a photograph, not if Jack Spencer's at the
camera You won't believe it's a photograph, not if Jack Spencer's at the camera By Erin Keever You could say that Jack Spencer is on a mission -- to push photographic printing techniques to new and increasingly expressive heights. Having experimented with oleopasto (a translucent tinted coating applied to prints that create textural effects) as well as asphaltum (a glaze that provides aging effects and enhances detail); his recent work on view at the Stephen L. Clark Gallery combines such mixed media with digital and silver gelatin prints. Spencer's current images are from an ongoing series titled, "This Land." Works such as "Yellowstone River" and "Fence Line" eclipse many overly familiar photographic homages to the West. Through their intensely luminous color and simple yet strong compositions (Spencer started out as a painter), he revels in the painting traditions of the "sublime" and "beautiful" American landscapes. Artists Albert Bierstadt and Andrew Wyeth come to mind. Even so, Spencer's landscapes are laden with vivid and saturated earthy hues, a result of layering and removing heavy inks and varnishes. In addition, he achieves a depth of mood apart from what is depicted. When told they are photos, some viewers respond, "No they are not!" Above all Spencer continues be remarkably flexible and innovative. He continues to expand his media as well as our expectations of how landscape is portrayed. "Jack Spencer: New Works, Mixed Media" continues 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesdays-Saturdays and by appointment, through Dec. 23, Stephen L. Clark Gallery, 1101 W. Sixth St., free, 477-0828. |
|
|
|
||
 Sunning by Rosanne Olson |
The Fourth Season: Works by Ray Donley and Rosanne Olson Austin Chronicle "And thus too, it happened, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before." – "The Masque of the Red Death," by Edgar Allan Poe A full array of masks, mostly implied with others as illusive as time or place, populate the paintings of Ray Donley and photographs of Rosanne Olson. Both groups of works suggest that the division between the profane and sacred can appear perfectly seamless. Conveniently, the dialogue established between their works appears to focus on personal mythology and relationship to the self. Donley is a painter who has fully embraced the figurative mode. A sense that all the portraits are both part of and separated by their participation in a secret society binds them in intrigue. Some of the figures are adorned with masks while others wear frontlets or have painted faces. Donley's painting makes excellent theatre as personas are exchanged between the figures. The paintings are communicable in large part because the viewer can grasp the characteristics depicted – avoidance, deceit, insecurity, and judgment. The figures seem to maintain that they are played by their roles. If, for instance, one of the figures unmasked the other, embraced and kissed, how would this act alter the other individual figures' intentionality? Rosanne Olson's work evokes a place between the subconscious and the incorporeal. Her masked figures are creatures of ambiguity and disguise, dancing the dance of seduction and leisure. These images, like fairy tales, compress and heighten reality, becoming a landscape between what is remembered and what is lived. Her masked figures derive meaning, even as they imbue meaning contextually within the landscape. How each image is perceived, like a mask, will change drastically depending on the perspective of the viewer as spectator or collector. Donley and Olson bring to their works fantasy, desire, and the poetic lure of many inner worlds. Being masked displaces meaning from who you are to how you behave, allowing the mask wearer to behave at once playful and sinister. "The Fourth Season" emerges as an exhibition full of metaphor for both disguise and liberation. |
|
|
|
||
 Self Portrait Distracted by Jennifer Balkan |
Artists To Watch: Jennifer Balkan By Julie Osterman To Jennifer Balkan, the atmosphere of a painting is as important as its subject matter. "My intent is to create a sense of movement and life on the canvas," explains the 34-year-old Texas-based artist. Her narrative oil paintings are inspired by everything from storybook characters to circus performers to thrift-store finds: Her In Transit series is based on a piece of pink luggage she acquired last year, and lately she's been painting well-loved doll heads and body parts, among other things. Although she's had an interest in drawing and painting since she was a young girl, Balkan majored in psychology in college and earned a doctorate in sociology at the University of Texas at Austin in 2001. After graduation, she traveled for a month in Europe, where her passion for art was reignited. She soon enrolled in courses at several Texas art schools, and later the Art Students League of Denver, and began painting feverishly-staying up nights while working full time as a demographer. Balkan quit her day job in 2002 and has focused on her fine-art career ever since. "From this point forward, I'm interested in trying to work from life-getting models to sit for me and creating pyschological dramas," she says. Balkan's work hangs in a group show at Bella Creo Gallery in Boerne, TX, this month. She is also represented by f8 Fine Art, Austin, TX, and www.jenniferbalkan.net. |
|
|
|
||
 Restorer's Daughter by Jennifer Bell |
Jennifer Bell By Robert Faires Artist Jennifer Bell, whose work is represented by Gallery Shoal Creek, is one of four artists showing in the exhibition "Nel Ricordo di Papa Giovanni Paulo Il Grande" ("In Memory of Pope John Paul II"), opening Dec. 18 in the southeastern Italian city of Altamura. The Canadian native, who is showing with established Italian artists Sodo Vittorio, Nardi Massimo, and Malvaso Vita, is neither Italian nor Catholic. But her paintings of the region, produced after Bell journeyed there in 2004 to help restore the crypt of an underground church, so impressed representatives of the Galleria D'arte I Tre Capricorni and the Catholic diocese of that region that they invited her to take part in the memorial exhibition they were organizing. After its opening in Altamura, the exhibition will travel to the cities of Gravina, Santeramo, Aqua Delle Fonti, Poggiorsini, and Spinazzola. Further venues across Italy are pending. You can also see some of Jennifer Bell's Altamura paintings a little closer to home, at Gallery Shoal Creek, 1500 W. 34th, and online at www.galleryshoalcreek.com. |
|