Elemental themes in glass works
With jaw-dropping gorgeous colors and solid craft Lisa Chernoff’s fused glass works and Carol Estes’ acrylic paintings truly complement each other in the “Broadstrokes” exhibition at Framing Concepts. Joan Fenicle’s beautiful photography and oils are included in the show.
Since we reviewed Fenicle at the South Broadway Cultural Center just last year this review will focus on Chernoff and Estes.
Chernoff is a master glass artist who has a wonderful sense of color and is able to exploit the qualities of glass that have attracted artists to the medium for centuries.
All of her pieces embody transparency, translucency and the reflectivity of glass while expressing elemental themes like the nature of vision in works like “In the Sight,” consisting of a rectangular layered grid that creates an enormous sense of depth in less than an inch of thickness.
In “Gravitational Pull” Chernoff successfully tackles the astrophysical model of our solar system in which gravity tends to bend the space surrounding planets. If one can imagine the effect a few bowling balls might have lying on a well-made bed, Chernoff’s “Gravitational Pull” makes perfect sense.
Because Chernoff’s gravitational plane is made of glass she also addresses the concept of gravity’s ability to bend light rays and visually shift an object away from its actual location. The phenomenon is called the gravitational lens effect.
Chernoff also builds butterflies, stars of David, crosses and full threedimensional abstractions that seem to float down from the ceiling. Her work fits in beautifully with Carol Estes’ boldly colorful abstractions that take their aesthetic cues from Hans Hofmann’s “The Veil in the Mirror 1952,” Charles Sheeler’s “Skyscrapers 1922,” Kasimir Malevich’s “Dynamic Suprematism 1916” and Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss 1907/08.”
If you took the aforementioned paintings and added a shot of steroids you’d have a close approximation of Estes’ current style. In works like “Peacockness” and “French Bread” Estes really has captured the early energies of modernism as well as the neo-constructivism and color theory practiced by Hofmann.
In viewing a truly lovely Estes composition like “French Bread” one can imagine a sidewalk cafe in Paris and almost get lost in the abstract dance of rectangles against the structured white areas until a visual noise draws your attention to the boldred-way-too-big signature on the lower left. Ouch!
The artist signed this pristine painting so that her name could be read from a thousand yards with a rifle scope. Fortunately only a few other paintings suffer the same insult with most signatures either quietly subdued or nonexistent.
Having said that, her work is highly energetic and filled with wonderful color. Her compositions are interesting and overall this is an excellent body of work. The gaga glass works by Chernoff, who is successfully working in a challenging medium, and Estes joy with color make this a must-see exhibition. The crowded show would benefit from a larger space in a more museum-like setting.
Fenicle is a great photographer and has worked a few miracles in mixed-media. My two favorites in this show are “Abandoned,” a shot depicting an old wild horse and the ruins of an adobe hotel in Guadalupe, N.M., and “Manzanos de Placitas” depicting a stack of applefilled baskets inside an aging outdoor shed.