Porcelain sculptures strive in vertical form
The thrown porcelain sculptures in saturated colors in a Gayle Singer show seem to have grown tall and totemic overnight.
Singer’s “Interwoven” exhibit runs through May 28 at JRB Art at The Elms, 2810 N Walker.
Singer’s exhibit is on view along with acrylic paintings by Kathy Rodgers and Beth Hammack, and jewelry by Jaye Talvacchia.
Singer described her vertical forms as a platform to convey “the expressionistic and gestural qualities” of “abstracted totemic sculptures.”
Rich reddish and pale yellow shapes interrupt circular gray-black shapes ending in something resembling a smokestack in the first work of Singer’s series.
Vivid yellow-green circular shapes are “interwoven” with gray-black in numbers five and six from the series by Singer.
Deep blue dominates numbers three and seven, with only minimal contrasting elements, while red and black balance each other well in number 12.
More dramatic is number two, in which Singer places a large, circular, pale yellow shape, like a factorymade lemon, between gray-black elements near the base.
Singer is a retired ceramics professor emeritus at the University of Central Oklahoma whose work has been shown and collected widely.
Birds, repetitive blobs of color and other decorative effects bring to mind the art of Gustav Klimt in the acrylics of Oklahoma City artist Kathy Rodgers. Tiny, jewel-like dabs and larger blotches make Rodgers’ “Mercy,” “Contentment” and “Instinct” particularly reminiscent of Klimt’s work.
Flowers fill a vase and densely dot a field in Rodgers’ “Joyful” and “Rising Strength,” but dots and dabs are used more abstractly on white in “Eternity.”
Birds and blossoms are nicely spaced out on delicate branches, creating a feeling of “Paradise” on earth, in Rodgers work of that title.
Much more loosely worked and semiabstract is Rodgers’ “Double Image,” while deep background blues make flowers stand out, forcefully, in Rodgers’ “Music.”
Orchestrating elements of drawing, painting and blank space, with great artistry, are the large acrylic canvases in Beth Hammack’s “Resembling Reality” show.
More realistic imagery enters the picture in the top left corner of Hammack’s “Pawhuska Dilemma,” and in a loosely indicated figure “Inspired by Manet’s Fifer” in a second painting.
A longtime Oklahoma City artist and designer, Hammack said her art is “simply images, memories, and moments in life reassembled on canvas.”
The Singer, Rodgers and Hammack shows are highly recommended. Also on view is a show of jewelry by New York City artist Talvacchia.