EXHIBIT / COLUMBUS METROPOLITAN LIBRARY VAST & VARIED
Wide- open call for entries results in diverse Art League show
When Chet Domitz and Sarah Fairchild were chosen as jurors for the 2017 edition of the Ohio Art League’s Fall Juried Exhibition, they didn’t set out looking for a specific style or subject matter.
“There was a call for artists, and there was no given theme,” said Domitz, a co-director of Hammond Harkins Galleries in the Short North.
Fairchild, whose work is represented by Hammond Harkins, lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Domitz said that the works submitted — about 90 in all — differed in medium, artistic approach and skill level.
“It was a great mix, and it was just left open,” he said. “The only requirement was that they be members of the Ohio Art League.”
The exhibit — featuring a final tally of 37 works by 24 artists — will be displayed through Nov. 17 at the Carnegie Gallery in the Columbus Metropolitan Library’s main site Downtown.
Despite the jurors’ open-mindedness, certain trends emerged during the selection process.
A number of artists, Domitz said, created their works by relying on an “element of chance.”
For example, Judy Rush’s fiber pieces clearly evoke ordinary objects, such as a bowl or a box, but they were produced using unorthodox means.
“She creates an object and throws it in the washer and the dryer,” Domitz said, “and then takes it out and sees what happens, and then responds to that.”
Robert Metzger’s photographs present close-up views of glitches in camcorder images — little visual blips that occur accidentally.
“He blows up on those unintentional details,” Domitz said.
Their origins notwithstanding, the photographs have an ethereal, otherworldly quality that feels wholly intentional. “Oyster,” for example, resembles a view of a solar eclipse, and “Wake” calls to mind a solar flare.
Also uniting several artists in the show is a penchant for arresting combinations of color.
In Christine D’Epiro Abbott’s mixed-media collage “DraperyStudy-Green-Tea,” a room in disarray is decorated in a hodgepodge of colors, with a purple armchair, a gray sofa, a yellowand-orange patterned rug and a yellow cup and blue saucer atop a brown table. The work is delightfully detailed.
Vividly colored
birds are depicted in found-and-paintedwood sculptures by Tamara Jaeger. “Yellow Beak Bird” presents a creature with a yellow, scissorslike beak, a purple face (with a punched-out circle for an eye) and a rectangle with a splotch of black paint to represent a tuft of hair.
Boldest of all is Peter Michael Stevens’ “WishWash,” in which seven multicolored mops are intertwined; the mop handles extend in all directions, like an upside-down tepee, and the mop strings
— in shades of purple, blue, red and other colors — fan out across a white surface.
Monochromatic works in the show might be less colorful but aren’t lacking in imagination.
Morris Jackson’s inkand-colored-pencil work “Meet a Bird,” for example, presents a thicket of weeds in which a quizzical bird encounters a caterpillarlike creature with a human head.
Brian Williams’ graphite-on-Bristolboard piece “Annie Oakley and Stegosaurus” offers a dignified yet surrealistic rendering of the markswoman posing proudly with a rifle while standing beside a dinosaur.
The exhibit might not have a clear-cut focus, but its takeaway is crystal-clear: Ohio Art League artists are a talented and inventive bunch.