FORGING CREATIVITY
‘Hot Iron’ exhibit features wide array of sculptures
The Harwood Art Center is hosting “Hot Iron: Tucumcari Iron Pour,” with 54 works by 14 artists, through Jan. 26. The Harwood Art Center is featuring two shows, but due to the size and scope of the sculpture installation, this review will focus on the highlights of the “Hot Iron” group exhibition. I do recommend visiting the “Verge” painting and sculpture exhibit by Margaret Holman Fitzgerald in the front gallery.
Iron has always been a magical material. The world’s mythologies are brimming with tales of sorcerers and blacksmiths who drew vessels, amulets, tools and weapons from their fire-breathing alchemical forges.
The “Hot Iron: Tucumcari Iron Pour” installation, curated by Candy Nartonis, is a visual knockout offering a wide array of subjects, styles and motifs ranging from abstractions like corporate bank logos to animals, architecture, children’s clothing presented as prayer flags and plant forms. This is one of the most interesting sculpture shows I’ve seen in a while.
Elizabeth Fritzsche began her career as a highly skilled ceramic artist who specialized in traditional Japanese Arita porcelain techniques. From there she evolved into a porcelain and/or iron sculptor.
Her “Good Boat” and “Milk Temples of Antya” are beautifully finished in casein, a milk-based painting medium that has an affinity for iron like no other type of finish. Fritzsche uses a milk-colored casein on both works, lending them a ceramic aura.
In the “Milk Temples of Antya” Fritzsche began with wax sheets with which she built architectonic rooflike forms. She then incised the wax with Sanskrit calligraphy. The Hindu word “antya” literally means “end” or “final” but often serves as a boys’ name as well as a place name.
With its raked sand base the multi-element sculpture takes on a monumental scale and is presented as a stand-alone floor piece.
The use of casein on cast iron has coincidental roots in Lapp and Finnish mythology as found in the epic poem “Kalevala.” As the story unfolds on the origin of iron, three celestial maidens bestow the earth with white, black and red milk. As iron is coated in this heaven-sent mana, fire becomes its enemy, so iron is driven into hiding where inquisitive humans later discover it in marshes and under tree roots.
The story alludes to bog-iron, which has heavenly origins in the form of iron-based meteors that bury themselves just below the earth’s surface and were the earliest and most sacred sources of smelted iron. The fact that milk-based casein is one of the most durable coatings for iron art objects is purely coincidental.
Speaking of iron hiding among
tree roots brings us to “Rooted,” by Robin Speas, who skillfully placed a house atop a bowl with its bottom exuding roots galore. The resulting free-standing construction narrates the importance of a sense of place and how connected we are to the concept of home, especially as a symbolic container of self.
Speas’ output includes the impressively detailed “Capitol Carousel — Go Around Again,” a work with political implications that I lack the stomach lining to delve into.
Topaz Jones was most likely not thinking about any of the above when building the wall-mounted “Tears Fall Like Rain” installation on the north wall of the gallery. The wellconceived and well-executed piece is made of teardrop-shaped elements cast in bronze, iron or porcelain. Is Jones referring to meteors, milk or the recent election? You be the judge.
From an exhibition design standpoint, Jones’ work is beautifully counterpointed by John Robert Craft’s “Switchback,” a stunning large-scale wood-block print on the south wall of the gallery. Craft is not a printmaking sculpture-party-crasher; he also offers “Two Unit Point Bar” in cast iron.
Artist and curator Nartonis give viewers “Maxed Out” and “Abandoned in Place.” Both works are boat-based and use seeds. In “Maxed Out,” a boat hull overflows with black rice. It is reminiscent of the Native American technique of wild rice gathering wherein a shallow-draft canoe is paddled through marshes. Successful harvests might result in an overflowing canoe. Fecundity and plenty are also emblemized in “Abandoned in Place,” with several boat hulls partly buried in black sesame seeds.
This show is filled with gorgeous work like George Salas’ “Awakening” in iron and stone, Sarah Madigan’s breathtaking “Komodo Dragon” and Eleanor Trabaudo’s prolific outpouring occupying indoor and outdoor space like Mickey Mouse’s out-of-control buckets and brooms in his role as a magician’s assistant.
Give me more! This is a wow show through and through.