by D. Dominick Lombardi
It was one year ago that I first became acquainted with the work of Stephen Cook and OneWay Gallery. Being in Narragansett, I was not expecting to see much beyond the stereotypical sails and sunsets in any ‘art gallery’, so I was completely taken aback by Cook’s versatility and vigor as a contemporary painter.
His one-person exhibition featured a number of varied principles and directions, and I instantly read his art as having been created by an energetic and reactive young mind inundated with expressions of socio-cultural information and imagery. So I began to take notes for a review seeing that moment as a great opportunity to get to know the artist and his work.
After the review was published in The Huffington Post, I took a close look at the gallery’s roster of artists and found a contemporary culture that was pertinent and energizing to me in these crazy times. Also at that time, I was beginning to work on a series of curated shows that focus on the powerful presence of line in contemporary art. Line has defined many an art movement: Automatism in Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism; the planes and passages in Fauvism; and what would Picasso’s Guernica (1937) be without the texture and enhanced dynamics that his lines created?
In a few brief emails I proposed my exhibition idea to Cook, incorporating a few of his artists with artists I was considering for the second installment of the exhibition and we quickly found common ground. The series of exhibitions are collectively titled Where to Draw the Line, with the first opening last March at the Walter Wickiser Gallery in New York City.
For this second iteration of Where to Draw the Line at OneWay Gallery I have selected the art of thirteen artists beginning with the work of Stephen Cook. For this exhibition, my focus was on his mixed media paintings that had the greatest emphasis on line to either suggest form, or in certain instances move the viewer’s eye slowly and deliberately through the picture plane, thus adding the element of time. Another artist in the exhibition is Rebecca Mason Adams. She utilizes a black and white palette to present her near photographic paintings of what looks to be unsuspecting subjects. While capturing those quiet moments of sleep or daydreaming, Adams uses line as a bold pattern adding a graphic element to punctuate the immediacy of the moment. Don Doe offers two works on paper that are heavy with gestural line projecting a very surreal brand of Cubism. By employing obvious references to the painter’s physical process with somewhat kitschy symbolism, Doe shows us the lone creator in the confines of the studio that can corral the body but not the mind. Similarly, Cecilia Whittaker-Doe breaks down landscape painting with a sort of Cubist approach, only here we see more sweeping changes in the emotional or spiritual content. Whittaker-Doe also is sending us a message about the fragility of the landscape, the history of the changes and the power of that perception with her distinctive use of line.
S. W. Dinge uses line to punctuate any given composition. In so doing, his work speaks to us directly and intensely as it projects its terms and conditions. This personification by way of language gives his work its distinctive quality of animation and movement while the buoyancy of the forms is the first thing that attracts us. Grant Hargates compositions are filled with line. They form shapes, create patterns and define intimate settings with a boldness and honesty that is universally cross-cultural in its references. In a way, his symbolic gestures vacillate between a complex codex and rapid representation giving his work its timeless immediacy. Tom Huck’s raucous representations are reminiscent of the early days of underground comics like ZAP. As he inks in line with great skill and boldness, Huck brings us to the persistent underbelly of human nature and frailty where the rougher side of reality wreaks with loose libidos and relentless ruination.
Sarah Jacobs creates art that celebrates the cultural spectrum that covers our planet. Despite trends toward homogenization, gentrification and modernization we can still revel in the fact that we have a wealth of history and heritages that can both blend and contrast as seen in the lines and layers of Jacob’s art. Don Keene’s paintings are bold Expressionistic renditions of a ‘Red Light’ district that lurks in the subconscious. Evading time, place and definition, these vignettes represent a freedom of will from judgment while the colors and lines that portray unabashed passions saturate the composition with frenzied force. In my work I use line by way of one-of-a-kind- stickers to represent ubiquitous trends in popular culture. Each of the stickers are done as automatically as possibly, while their inevitable placement on a subtly over painted vintage album jacket or freshly constructed sculpture is meant to be a sort of crossover contamination.
T. Michael Martin incorporates line in his multi-media compositions in various ways. They might create recognizable shapes, define boundaries or edges or create texture and movement depending on their placement, position or prominence. His work has references to astrology, mathematics, physics and even transcendence bringing a certain level of otherworldliness to the fore. Creighton Michael takes line to a far more physical level in the third dimension, literally making the line sculptural. Michael is able to expand the language of line in space where shadows create form and volume. As a result, we see line as subject: distinct, dimensional and dynamic. Michael Zansky literally burns his lines directly into paper with a propane torch. Using ancient history and cultures as his guide, Zansky brings forth commonalities that will both enlighten and alarm, while his narrative combinations create mystery, mayhem and an all out assault on the senses and sensibilities of the viewer’s mind and memory.
The Where to Draw the Line exhibition that runs through October 14th at OneWay Gallery will hold an artist reception on Friday, September 14th from 5-8pm. The gallery is located at 140 Boon Street, Narragansett, RI.