A gravity-defying solo show hangs in the air
BEING ‘THAT CRAZY LADY AT WALMART’ PAYS OFF FOR JESSICA DRENK
The Heather Gaudio Fine Art gallery in New Canaan first featured the transformational work of Jessica Drenk in a group show two years ago. Now it is giving her a solo show comprised of pieces, many brand new, made from materials as unlikely as they are common: pencils, plastic bags and used books.
The most eyecatching, by virtue of its sheer size and gravity defying structure, is the eightfoot tall, “Speleothem,” inspired by the dripped stalactites and stalagmites formed in caves. Drenk has shaped hers from thousands of shaved and carved Basswood pencils. The rising stalagmite sits firmly on the floor. But the plunging stalactite appears magically suspended in midair.
It dates from just 2017. Newer, and one that gallery associate director Rachael Palacios briefly calls a “bag painting,” is “Striae 2.” Actually, it’s more a flat sculpture — and a more pointed environmental comment — made from plastic shopping bags.
“We all collect bags.We probably have them in cupboard under the kitchen sink” says Palacios. “She (Drenk) was that crazy lady at Walmart, collecting the bags they have in their recycling bin.”
The Walmart bags tend to be in lighter shades, while the darker ones, some with logos still legible, came from grocery stores. Drenk has folded and flattened them into what on the gallery wall can appear to be a horizontally striped abstract painting.
“She makes it look like a topographical slice (of earth). Plastic is a byproduct of petroleum and petroleum comes from nature. It’s all circular,” says Palacios. “All her work is about the manmade and the natural and the relationship to nature.”
A couple of new pieces in the show are literally circular and explicitly evoke the natural world. They are “paintings” sculpted from used books that look like tree rings. Words that may have come from an old periodical index — itself kind of historical record — can be read on the edge of the twoinch thick slab.
Also fashioned from books are pairs of painterly pieces from Drenk’s “Bibliophylum” series and her newer “Compression” series. Viewed from a distance, all look like abstractions, done in soothing earth tones. Closer up, they teem with life.
The “Bibliophylum” are made of thousands of slivers cut from waxembedded books and pinned in a formation suggesting movement, perhaps of migrating insects. In two “Compression” pieces, curling pages radiating tentaclelike from their binding spines are caught and compacted in a sevenfoot wide “canvas.”
Drenk, who was born in Montana in 1980 and now lives in upstate New York, lists the Heather Gaudio gallery as one of half dozen across the country handling her work. Palacios says she is the kind of midcareer, contemporary artist the gallery tends to feature. She also says that the gallery tries to plan its exhibition calendar so one artist or show seems to flow into the next.
Immediately after the Drenk show closes Jan. 11, the gallery will feature the work of an unusual duo who also find inspiration in nature. They are not in midcareer though. They are Charles and Natalie Arnoldi, a father and daughter both working in California.
Charles, who recently was given a 50year retrospective survey at the Bakersfield Museum of Art, gained early recognition constructing paintings from sticks he foraged on walks in the woods.
According to an article on the Bakersfield exhibit, he moved on to using other materials, including metals and oils, and has done series of abstract paintings interpreting phenomena as different as potatoes and eclipses.
Palacios says that architecture is another of Charles’ abiding interests and that the show in New Canaan will include some of his newest work: abstract paintings based on the stonework of Machu Picchu, the Incan citadel in Peru that has been designated one of the new seven wonders of the world.
Natalie’s young career may be more unusual than her father’s. She is a marine biologist, actively pursuing a doctorate at Stanford. While her father’s works tends to be boldly colored and abstract, Palacios says Natalie’s “is completely different. She’s interested in atmosphere and light and fog and how light behaves in certain conditions.”
Her work is also representational. She’s done series of oil paintings depicting jelly fish, lighting strikes, sharks (many titled by their names, like Lucy, Faye and Hawkeye, suggesting personal encounters) and waves. Her canvases can be enormous.
The New Canaan show probably will include large pieces from her lightning, shark and wave series. “She’s a big surfer,” Palacios says. “She does these paintings of waves. They’re huge. You’re almost going to be engulfed by these waves.”
‘SHE’S INTERESTED IN ATMOSPHERE AND LIGHT AND FOG AND HOW LIGHT BEHAVES IN CERTAIN CONDITIONS.’