Artists put focus on ‘home’ in new exhibit
A dozen artists address the concept of home in diverse and sometimes surprising ways in Brandt-roberts Galleries in the Short North.
For the second time, and following the first sothemed exhibit in 2019, artists — all of them living in Ohio or having links to the state — have created 25 new works for “There’s No Place Like Home.”
“You’d think that they would all be landscapes and some are,” said gallery owner Michelle Brandt. “But some of the artists went a different way and I liked that they kind of mixed it up.”
First, the more traditional landscapes:
In one of his works, Mark Gingerich captures hay rolls on an Ohio field at sunset. Using oil and sand on gesso, Richard Lillash achieves a pastel, chalky texture in his companion paintings “Cottage Interior Early Morning” and “Cottage Interior Afternoon.”
David Reed manages a collage effect in presenting the trees in his small works “Toward Winter” and “Lakeside Contemplation.” In contrast is Janet Grissom’s “Three
Trees Over the Hill,” autumnal bare trees produced with thick strokes of paint.
The largest painting is Cody Heichel’s 4-by-5foot “Downtown Columbus,” an appealing street scene at dusk and possibly after a rain shower.
In Christopher Burk’s spare gouache on paper “Flooded House (Blue),” just the top portion of a house can be seen emerging from flood waters. Jolene Powell gives an abstract slant to her acrylic Hocking Hills scene “Solstice Series: Cold Moon.”
Bernard Palchick, whose artist statement describes his fascination with the history of ancient Ohio, has painted Indian mounds. “Landscape III,” his sunset scene of mounds and trees, is punctuated by two breakout boxes, repeating the image in a smaller, tilted fashion on top of the larger painting.
Palchick also painted “Circus Crow,” a biggerthan-life purple bird tugging at a red ribbon strewn over a branch. The avian portrait was inspired by a crow the artist sees at his home outside Columbus.
For Kendrik Tonn, home serves as a setting for his work, often involving models. In “Baily Seated with a Mask,” a nude man lounges in a chair in front of a fireplace.
Caitlin Cartwright boldly depicts female swimmers in her works. “Migration” — created of acrylic, latex, paint and a fashion magazine — stars a bright red woman propping herself up at the side of a lily pond.
For Jason Morgan, a simple kitchen object — a spoon repeatedly caught and chewed up in the garbage disposal — came to represent home. He painted it bigger than life in a neorealistic style, placing a buckeye in the bowl of the spoon.
And in some of the most pleasing paintings in the show, Marianne Miller paints chickens in a backyard, a clothesline with items flapping in the breeze and Columbus’ beloved Goody Boy Diner in the summer scene “Dining on High.”
Nestled in a corner of the gallery is another, small exhibition, “Intersect.” Here, Brandt presents works that were to have gone to the “Intersect Chicago” art fair early in November that was canceled because of COVID. Giving the artists their due, she presents the diverse works of Gavin Benjamin, Christopher Burk, Jeffrey Hirst, Elsa Munoz and Terry Rogers.
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