Exhibit features ‘truckload of art’
Many of the works in this new show are not only enchanting, but actually came from the Land of Enchantment — New Mexico.
Mainly by New Mexico artists, many with Oklahoma ties, “The Truckload of Art” exhibit is at JRB Art at The Elms, 2810 N Walker.
It was curated by Elizabeth Hahn, an artist and former Santa Fe gallery owner, with a masters in art from the University of Oklahoma.
Hahn captures the restless wandering spirit and geographical uncertainties of artists’ lives well in a “sort of” self-portrait, “Where Is She Going?” In it, we see Hahn’s bare legs in red shoes, with a blue suitcase and a Chinese takeout box, crowded between two men in slacks in an old bus or train station.
Dramatic black and white contrasts strengthen several charcoal on panel drawings with the power of paintings, by Michael Freed, who moved to Santa Fe in 1995.
Freed nails it with his “Tool Series” depiction of a “Claw Hammer” head, emerging from pitch blackness, and with an extreme close-up of pursed lips.
Geoffrey Gorman contributes a fine foundobject sculpture of a “River Otter,” constrained by wire and screwed to a metal stand, adorned with parts of old cans.
Like a kitsch, Pop Art totem pole, Santa Fe artist Max Lehman’s mixed media “Song of the Andes, Cha Cha Bunny,” has its own bizarre panache.
Sallyann Milam Paschall makes the most of a “Dot Pattern” and wax seeming to drip over an old “Receipt Book” page in two semiabstract encaustic collages.
More conventional, yet exquisite and extremely appealing, are a lead cast crystal “Iris Bowl” and “Small Frog Bowl,” by Charlie Miner, founder of Tesuque Glassworks in 1975.
The same might be said of two “Lace Orb” blown glass containers, and a “Double Helix Vase” by Terry Baker, who worked with Miner at Tesuque Glassworks.
Santa Fe and former Oklahoma artist Kate Rivers also is well-represented in the exhibit by two of her birdnest-like collages, made from thin strips of maps, notes and printed matter.
Nearly stealing the show, with several large, lyrical, nearly abstract explosions of acrylic color on canvas, is Caroline Farris, an Oklahoma City area artist who has shown work in Santa Fe.
Tiny monarch butterflies are found “Hiding in the Dandelions,” and in the multihued color scheme and feathery brushwork, of one Farris work, from her “Jewels of Nature” series.
The exhibit is highly recommended in its run through Oct. 27 at JRB.