Kin Killin’ Kin and Attack

By Jud Yalkut

The masterful African American artist James Pate was born in Birmingham, Alabama, but raised in Cincinnati where he earned a scholarship to attend the Art Academy there through a Corbett Award. After attending Central State University and continuing to self-educate himself, he has since been a recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence grant and two Montgomery County Individual Artist Fellowships.

Widely know for his idiosyncratic Techno-Cubism style which fuses immaculate realism with spatial abstraction, Pate has, since 2000, worked on a powerful series of large charcoal drawings which decry the horrible problem of violence among black youth and the resultant terrorism. “In the middle of producing the first piece,” he writes, “I decided that as a personal, private protest I would continue to compose a rendering as long as these insidious acts continue.”

The Kin Killin’ Kin series has resulted in twelve outstanding pieces now on view at the EbonNia Gallery in Dayton through February 29, and the entire series has been given integral life by being acquired by the prestigious African American art collection of Arthur Primas. Curator Willis “Bing” Davis began discussing the exhibition of these works in 2008 in which “a master visual artist… had directed his artistic vision to one of the most critical social ills of our time … youth violence.” Mounted at the gallery in the fall of 2011, the suite of monumental charcoal works was visited by numerous church, school and governmental units ranging from youth groups to university art classes, with great demand encouraging its 2012 extension.

Writer Janyce Glasper has commented eloquently on Pate’s work: “Moving poetry, these realistic, fairly large charcoal drawings engage not just the viewer’s eyes, but the actively processing mind. One can almost taste the salty tears from visceral sadness … Touch the lifeless body that no longer has a heartbeat … In the aftermath of senseless bloodshed, there is nothing a viewer can do.”

Pate equates the senseless killers as Black equivalents of Ku Klux Klan terrorism with African American community realization that we “in a strange fruit kind of way, are doing the business of the KKK with our Black-on-Black violence.” The artist stresses this comparison with the depiction of “brothers in pointed hood in the ‘hood’.” In “Your History” the “king of the drug trade” aims a magnified drive-by gun at a traditional Yoruba head from West Africa, and “K, 2 Da K, 2 Da K, II” treats misguided leadership among black males in hooded robes, baring burning crosses and threatening guns. Bullets are masked in small rectangles as they are suspended threateningly in space.

The heroics of black union soldiers are symbolized in “Defenders of the Corner” but perverted by the current tendency to defend the corners of the drug trade. Pate questions: “What happened between the Civil War era and the present day that causes this degree of dysfunction?” Basing “Ku Klux Sphinx” on the legendary shooting off of the nose of Egypt’s Sphinx by Napoleon’s troops, Pate shows the debris falling onto a young girl jumping rope, an instance of “the innocent bystander as victim.” He relates this also to bombardment by debris of the victims of 9/11.

“3K” honors Pate’s favorite DJ, Jam Master J of the group Run DMC, gunned down in his studio and here pictured on the jersey of a masked current DJ, while giant gun hands protrude into the foreground from passing cars with hooded drivers. “Your History II” captures the mutual destruction of competing gunmen against a background drawn from scenes dating back to the civil rights era. “Your History III” plays on the double meaning of noble history and the water soaking of protestors against “the slang phrase that signifies the ending of one’s life.”

Pate further equates the senseless killer with a fractured Sphinx-nosed “Adolf Jackson” with Hitler’s equal determination to terminate the black race as well as the Jews, and also decries the onslaught of music with violent lyrics which encourages the mobster psychology in “K 2 Da K, 2 Da K” with a hooded background character declaiming into a mike while holding a gun to the temple of another.

The large oil painting “Turn of Endearment” projects hope around a multi-faceted character that progresses in rainbow tones away from a life of despair to the embracing of a youth with the definition of Sankofa (“looking back at their rich ancestry in order to receive the guidance to move forward”).

A concurrent series by Pate, which decries violence towards women called Attack, with rich monumental black nudes threatened by military warplanes, is showing at the Works on Paper Gallery of Sinclair Community College through March 7. This series also allows the viewer to appreciate the prodigious feeling and technique of this master artist whose works enhance the lifestyle and consciousness of our community.

The EbonNia Gallery is located at 1135 W. Third Street in the Wright-Dunbar area of Dayton. Gallery hours are 11a.m.-5p.m. or by appointment at (937) 223-2290. The Sinclair Works on Paper Gallery is located on the fourth floor of Building 13 at the corner of Fifth and Perry Streets in Dayton. Gallery hours are 8a.m.-8p.m. Monday-Thursday, 8a.m.-5p.m. Friday and 8a.m.-3p.m. Saturday. For more information visit www.sinclair.edu/arts/galleries.

Reach DCP visual art critic Jud Yalkut at JudYalkut@DaytonCityPaper.com.

Behind the Scenes of the 22cd Annual Works on Paper

By Shayna McConville

Beyond merely creating a piece of art, an artist has to navigate a situation in which to showcase his/her work to an audience.  Often, that situation is in a gallery or a museum, and often it is alongside many other artists.  A juried group show is a core component of an artist’s exhibition history.  Artists are invited to submit their work for consideration, frequently under criteria that may include a specific theme such as landscapes, a specific medium such as photography, or may restrict submission to those who reside within a certain radius of the exhibition space.

Exhibition organizers often invite jurors to participate in organizing the group show for many reasons: his/her status in the art world — a factor that can entice more artists to submit work and allow them exposure to someone not normally accessible, the expertise the juror can bring to the table, such as scholarship on a certain topic or material, and also his/her role as an objective outsider.  A proficient juror can strategize how to unify the many unique submissions into a coherent exhibition.

Dayton is home to a thriving arts community and to many opportunities to participate in juried group exhibitions.  Annually, calls for submissions come from Rosewood Gallery at Rosewood Arts Centre, which organizes exhibitions on the themes of sculpture, paper and landscapes, member exhibitions at the Dayton Visual Arts Center and the Dayton Society of Painters and Sculptors, and themed exhibitions at Rua Studio Gallery, to name just a few.

Rosewood Gallery is currently hosting its 22nd Annual Works on Paper exhibition, on view through March 9th.  Mary Gaynier, an artist whose primary medium is cut paper, traveled from Toledo to spend a day jurying Works on Paper, selecting from 290 artworks submitted by 106 artists.  Paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and sculptures filled the two gallery rooms, crawling up the gallery walls, covering tables and dominating every pedestal.

Gaynier’s process began by absorbing each artwork in these two rooms, slowly walking from piece to piece.  “I don’t want this to be a black and white show,” said Gaynier, as she kept finding herself returning to the more graphic pieces.  “Paper, at least for me, is such an intimate medium.”

She stopped at a large black and white drawing of a man and horse, a mixed media piece by Bonnie Kuntz.  “How will this piece fit in with the other pieces?”  Drawn to the perspective in the work, dramatic angles, lights and darks and general drama of the image — these characteristics began to emerge as qualities that Gaynier considered a unifying thread that could run through the exhibition.

The reality of juried shows is that the anchor, whether it be a piece of artwork or a theme the juror recognizes, makes the selection process move efficiently and guides the success of a coherent exhibition.  However, it also means eliminating artworks that do not fall under this prescription, and sometimes the most creative use of material or the strongest concept can be edited out of an exhibition.  As she moved through the works, Gaynier remarked that “a piece can be phenomenal, but not fit in with the other pieces … you have a limited amount to work with and it’s all about the whole.”

Rosewood Gallery Coordinator Amy Kollar Anderson, herself an artist, followed Gaynier, moving works around for the clearest view of each piece.   Kollar Anderson has a lot of empathy towards the jurying process.  “Not getting accepted into a show is painful … I know from personal experience,” she said.  “Shows do not dictate your worth as an artist. I can not tell you how many times I have seen work submitted, not been accepted, then return the next year and be selected for an award. The piece was the same, but the juror and the competitors were different, and it made a huge difference.”

Gaynier spent the next several hours drilling through the submissions, finally ending with 60 pieces representing the work of 46 artists.  Mentally exhausted but smiling, Gaynier had created the 22nd Annual Works on Paper exhibition, showcasing the talents of artists working with or about paper in the Dayton region.  The exhibition represented a range of work from the large-scale digital printouts of New York Times photographs by Sean Wilkinson to a steel, paper, and wood mobile by Matthew Burgey.

As Gaynier finished her process, Kollar Anderson began notifying artists of the fate of their artworks in the exhibition.  She documented a selection of artworks that had not been a part of Gaynier’s selection, posting on the gallery’s Facebook page an album titled “Some of my favs.”  One of the artists responded with “Thanks for posting these. I was devastated that mine didn’t make it but I don’t feel bad now!”

To learn more about some of the Dayton area organizations with juried exhibition opportunities, visit: Dayton Society of Painters and Sculptors (www.daytondsps.org), Dayton Visual Arts Centre (www.daytonvisualarts.org), Rosewood Gallery at Rosewood Arts Centre (gallery.ketteringoh.org), and the Rua Studio Gallery (www.ruastudio.com).

Shayna V. McConville is the Cultural Arts Manager for the City of Kettering. Visit her at Rosewood Arts Centre at 2655 Olson Dr. or visit the website at rosewood.ketteringoh.org. She can be reached at ShaynaMcConville@DaytonCityPaper.com.

Raw Power at the Dayton Visual Arts Center

By Jud Yalkut

The art of Dayton’s Issa Randall presents a Dramatic Moment as the raw power of street art that confronts the subtleties of the gallery space. Previous contemporary corollaries exist with the deconstructed and reassembled graffiti billboards referenced in the work of Mark Bradshaw, but in his recent work Randall defuses racial and cultural tensions into photomontage juxtapositions which mimic moralistic endeavors, and in other pieces literally burns in starkly iconic figures of unidentified victims of society’s brutality.

Randall’s exhibition at the Dayton Visual Arts Center, running through February 24, is part of the annual collaboration with Sinclair Community College and the Ebonia Gallery for the 19th “REACH (Realizing Ethic Awareness and Cultural Heritage) Across Dayton” conference, which this year features guest artists, a community art project of collaborative relief prints organized by Willis “Bing” Davis, and a studies conference on the theme of “In the Spirit of Developing Character” at Sinclair.

Randall received his B.A. in Communications from the University of Dayton and his M.A. in Photography from the University of Arts, London, UK. While there, he encountered Peter Ainsworth, an artist and Lecturer in Photography at Nottingham Trent University, who penned the guest essay for Randall’s DVAC exhibition. Ainsworth cites the “direct ability of photomontage to express a biting exposé of modern life” and references the sharply satiric work of Dada artists like Raul Hausmann, Hannah Hoch, and John Heartfelt. Randall himself absorbs the Dadaistic ideas of anti-art in his means of destroying the images scavenged from society as a form of “cultural cannibalism or cultural recycling.”

The unknown heroes of Randall’s imagery are “the passive victims of oppression,” now openly uprising around the world, or those proposed by revolutionary philosopher Noam Chomsky as “Unpeople,” rejected by society and subjected to unspeakable violations. Randall bemoans the constant honoring of “the captains of industry and the victors of war” and the little time spent “honoring the struggles of the victims.”

These “Unpeople” are delineated in roughly burnt outlines on layers and layers of reconstituted newspapers amassed by coats of the very wheat paste used by street artists or propagandists. These make a “tablet” which Randall then sets on fire to form the chaotic background, out of which he scrapes ashes to form figures, which in turn become the multi-paneled hanged “Unidentified (Male),” or the bent and hooded “Unidentified (Detainee)” and the bound and hung “Unidentified (Woman),” all 2011.

Ainsworth points out that “the torn newspaper ultimately renders meaningless any message in the original text as the actions the artist depicts float within a sea of disjointed words.” The gross assimilation of cliché and persuasion that characterizes the output of both the self-aggrandizing political rhetoric and the boisterous advertising world are subsumed into the texture of the main event, which is the recognition of injustice. “This action,” Ainsworth adds, “has an uncomfortable parallel in relation to images depicting people lying dead on the streets of an unnamed space: Afghanistan, Syria or Dayton, Ohio.”

Randall is an active artist of protest, like Mexican muralists Sequieros or Orozco, echoing the prolific skeletons of Posada who inherit all walks of human life, and the immortalized atrocities, the oppression, torture and execution of prisoners in Goya’s “Disasters of War” etchings, as Ainsworth references. The four suspended dark figures of “Unidentified (Males)” are universally the “Strange Fruit” of lynching, the vanquished and the oppressed opposition, those considered dispensable to the success of the ruling forces.

Photographic techniques are employed in the elements comprising the wall-bending compositions which Randall self-applies as site-specific to the gallery walls. The earth-moving apparatus with its gigantic claw arm plows through the detritus of an industrial world in which hidden figures are concealed for dear life in “Progress” (2010) (from an edition of six varied compilations of photocopies). Wrapping one large corner is an amalgam of two large photocopy compilations, one entitled “Don’t Burn the Trash” (2010) with its fleeing man, upturned dumpster and flaming conflagration, and the other “Threat” (2010) with a Billy club-wielding policeman confronting angry black rioters.

Waves of flame and swirling words of paper pursue a screaming figure in the sweeping “Die of Nothing but a Rage to Live” (2010), as the explosive but meticulously arranged photocopy sheets echo the walls of a metropolis replete with protests and revolutionary postings. Each corner of the large gallery space is involved in this complicity of panoramas of violence. Approaching the front window is the “Nice Arm” (2010) montage of a projectile-tossing orange-T-shirted individual with white masked face and head bandana seemingly threatening the window itself. As Randall has written: “To destroy the image of what is or isn’t art, is to change those notions of what we call art… If we destroy ‘common wisdom’ then we can make anything.”

The Dayton Visual Arts Center is located at 118 N. Jefferson Street in downtown Dayton.

Gallery hours are 11 am-6 pm Tuesday-Saturday. The rear gallery has a fascinating DVAC Member’s Show called “Character Studies” juried by Randall and DVAC director Eva Buttacavoli. There will be a reception Thursday, February 23 at DVAC from 5-7 pm with a gallery talk by Randall at 5:30 pm, followed by a reception at Sinclair’s Triangle Gallery in Building 13 from 7-9 pm. The REACH Studies Conference will be from 8:30 am-4:30 pm at Sinclair’s Ponitz Center in Building 12. Registration and information on the website (www.daytonvisualarts.org) or call (937) 224-3822.

Reach DCP visual art critic Jud Yalkut at JudYalkut@DaytonCityPaper.com.

A Glimpse of Street Art from Detroit to Dayton

By Shayna McConville

Artists have integrated site-specific artwork into architecture for centuries, commissioned by churches, cities, and patrons, to add a visual complement to their buildings.  In recent history, Diego Rivera’s fresco murals adorned municipal and educational sites, Gordon Matta-Clark cut into whole abandoned buildings and Jenny Holzer’s LED texts wrap around cultural centers.  Parallel to this history, street art has blossomed and thrived, with notable names such as Banksy, JR and Swoon making their mark on decaying and crumbling walls. Fueled by current social and economic conditions, this new breed of artists has reappropriated abandoned buildings as starting points for their work. The building is the blank canvas: it represents not just the work’s base but also its integrity.  These artworks often mirror community issues of foreclosure, urban blight and economic hardship — powerful reasons to reconsider an abandoned structure and its transformation.

Attracted to areas of undeveloped possibility, artists have pioneered the rejuvenation of communities.  Within the last decades, Philadelphia saw the efforts of artists like Jane Golden of the Mural Arts Program and Isaiah Zagar of South Street successfully catapult the city into a tourist destination for public art.  Braddock, Pennsylvania, a steel-town outside Pittsburgh that currently retains about 10% of its peak population, is now recognized for its tough-guy mayor John Fetterman who uses his city’s abundant vacant and cheap housing as a magnet for artists.   Perhaps most well-known in recent memory is Detroit, where artists have been migrating to take advantage of what one could describe as a lawless frontier: grand old houses that were once extravagant are now derelict, space is plentiful and the drastic transformation of a once wealthy city into one in dire straits has aroused a romantic optimism for many creative thinkers.  On a recent visit, several “unpolished” initiatives struck me and helped me to find the unexpected in my own town, Dayton.   In particular, I was impressed by the well-established Heidelberg Project, and the rapidly changing Moran Street.

The Heidelberg Project, Detroit

The Heidelberg Project, an evolving environment started 25 years ago by artist Tyree Guyton, was inspired by a deep connection to a place troubled by urban blight.  Guyton saw his lower eastside Detroit neighborhood crumble in the decades following the 1967 Detroit riots and began to transform Heidelberg Street by painting abandoned houses in signature bright polka dots and building large-scale found object collages.  It’s a short distance from downtown Detroit, but with acres of vacant lots and deteriorating houses, the sense of a forgotten city fills the distance.  Once you arrive, you are transported.  Guyton has created a whole new world: beyond the playfully decorated abandoned houses and freestanding sculptures, there is the feeling of a playground with a serious humanitarian message.  The street and sidewalks are painted with words, shapes and bright colors, and trees are decorated densely with stuffed animals, shoes and signs. Even shopping carts are perched some 30 feet in the air on the tip-tops of tree limbs.  The Heidelberg Project started as a personal attempt to save a disappearing street.  It has since developed into a tourist destination with over 275,000 visitors annually, a point of controversy with city officials for upkeep and safety, and a nonprofit educational program that strives to enrich community through art appreciation and expression.   More information can be found at www.heidelberg.org.

Moran Street, Detroit

Several miles north of Heidelberg Street, Moran Street, bordering Detroit in the small city of Hamtramck, has seen a very recent economic change.  In 2010, the city asked for permission from the state to file for bankruptcy, and shortly after foreclosure signs and abandoned homes multiplied.  Two residents, Gina Reichert, an artist, and Mitch Cope, an architect, decided to save their neighborhood one house at a time. The pillar effort is The Power House, at the corner of Moran Street and Lawley Avenues, a house they bought for $1,900 in 2008.  They have since transformed the house with pastel colored stripes, solar panels and other tools to sustain it and keep it off the grid.  The Power House now hosts an international artists-in-residence program.  Thanks to this and other initiatives of Cope and Reichert, Moran Street became the focus of a recent intervention by Juxtapoz magazine, in which they helped fundraise to support Cope and Reichert’s nonprofit and to transform houses along Moran into public art projects.  At 13184 Moran, artist Swoon’s wheat-pasted prints cover the front and side facades in her graphic renderings of people and their lives. Around the back of the house is a three-dimensional collage made entirely out of bits of dormers and elegant window structures salvaged and arranged by sculptor Ben Wolf.  The effect is subtle, elegant, and devastatingly beautiful. Learn more at www.powerhouseproductions.org

East Fifth Street, Dayton

Inspired by the initiatives in Detroit, I was delighted to find echoes of similar creative endeavors here in Dayton.  Driving along East Fifth Street in the historic Huffman District, I noticed one abandoned house covered in graphic patterns of ants crawling over the front façade, their spray-painted black bodies accentuated by a golden abdomen.  Investigating the neighborhood a little further, Terry Street revealed a beautifully painted panel boarding up the front door of a vacant house in yellow, turquoise, magenta and white patterns on a brilliant blue background of negative and positive abstract shapes. These discoveries resonated with a sincere effort to create something beautiful out of something forgotten.  Unfortunately, no internet research or asking around has revealed the artist and nature of their endeavors.  I hope to see more.

Whether recognizing a value in a building left behind, working on a large-scale or experimenting beyond a commission’s criteria, each of these examples has an ephemeral life determined by the realities of their locations.  Parallel to the artist’s freedom to experiment on a devalued structure, the awe and discovery of experience as a visitor, is extraordinary.  The attention drawn to Detroit’s art scene by glossy magazines and journals is well beyond the notice paid to Dayton, yet the earnest spirit is a part of why these works are successful.  From a strategic plan to save a neighborhood, to an artist making his/her mark on a devalued place, these efforts send a stimulating breath of life into what others have left behind.

Shayna V. McConville is the Cultural Arts Manager for the City of Kettering. Visit her at Rosewood Arts Centre at 2655 Olson Dr. or visit the website at rosewood.ketteringoh.org. She can be reached at ShaynaMcConville@DaytonCityPaper.com.

A unique exhibit opens at Miami University Middletown

By Jud Yalkut

It is always a great pleasure to discover exciting new work in a previously unexplored venue within the perimeters of one’s area. A juried exhibition entitled “Big Spaces and Large Planes” opens the 2011-2012 season through February 9 with the ongoing collaboration between The Arts Council of West Chester & Liberty and Miami University’s Voice of America Learning Center in West Chester, Ohio.

Filling the cycloramic entrance walls of the VOA Learning Center are splendid examples of works by southern Ohio artists from counties and towns ranging from West Chester and Cincinnati to Wayne and Butler. Jurors for this curated exhibition were Andrew Au and Ed Montgomery, both Art faculty of Miami University Middletown, Miami B.F.A. Vickie Waltz, and Miami BS/M.Ed Nancy Woody. The juror committee commented: “Regardless if the piece is representational or abstract these works are dynamic and interesting because of the spaces and planes in the composition.”

Bonita Williams Goldberg has been influenced in her visionary landscapes by the work of Helen Frankenthaler, Georgia O’Keeffe, Diego Rivera and Wolf Kahn, with whom she has studied as well as former Cincinnati artist Michael Scott. Her vibrant color sense and broad impressionistic forms are tempered by crystalline sense of space that often recalls the formalistic open Southwest compositions of O’Keefe. In “Red Sky Reflections” the verdant red ground and sky are trisected by yellow-green, almost amorphous masses of forest growth, while “Cherry Passions” features yellow puffy trees fronting layers of red and reddish-brown forest, all set off against a brilliant yellow sky.

Most evocative of the O’Keefe influence are the panoramic yellow and brown hills punctuated by a bolus of blue sky like an O’Keeffian pelvic opening. The sweeping concavities of valley depressions lie in receding layers of colors ranging through brown, yellow, green and pale green before resolving into a creamy white sky in “Infinite Presence.”

Jolie Harris explores painterly space in a more abstract manner that recalls a subtle Joan Mitchell abstract expressionist touch. Studying at the California College of design in Newport Beach, Harris was late in her practice of painting because of years engaged in various business ventures. Now, with studios in both downtown Cincinnati and in Delray Beach, Florida, she has in recent years continued her studies at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and Art in Provence at Deullifit, France.

Harris’ “Shifting Heat” has luminescent arcs of blue-white intersected by areas of red reds and yellows, while “Orange Crush” has tracings of red, orange and yellow in pale articulated spaces like a light reversed Clyfford Still. “Ebb Tide” has broad waves of aquatic color, foam-like splashes of white and orange, and receding atmospheric planes, while “Sancere” sends effervescent bubbles into blue fluidity from a gyrating core.

Gently flowing wisps of color surmount low arching hills in “The Sky Searches for the Prairie Below” by Oxford-resident Amy Mitchell, who works in many media including pen and ink, watercolor, oil, acrylic, cut paper illustration and graphic illustration. Donna Gingrich from British Columbia earned her education degrees from Morehead University with a Masters from Xavier University in Cincinnati. Her work in this exhibition was inspired by a trip across western Canada during the summer of 2010, as reflected in the pale brown trees emerging from the impressionist verticals in her “On the Aspen Trail” with its thickly textured white clouds in a deeply azure sky.

In a complementary departure from painterly style, the fiber works of Michele Lee evolved from her being raised on a small Ohio farm with a love for animals “and a desire to create beautiful things.” After receiving a baccalaureate degree in Art Education from Arizona State University in 1980, a 2005 summer workshop at Miami University with fellow artist Linda Kramer developed her growing interest and skill in quilting, now conceived with ethnic fabrics, smooth buttons, natural elements like feathers and tree branches, and “anything else I can sew or glue together to create my work.”

Lee’s skill in fiber art is here demonstrated with her Western mesa hills flowing through fabric waves of hills over scattered brush and enveloped by deep quilted tones of intense and circuitous blue in her “Departure.” “Stripe Revolution (Full)” is an intricate diamond Mandala with luminescent reliefed squares highlighted by black-and-white checkered frames within an intensely faceted border of secondary striped triangles.

Also included in “Big Spaces and Large Planes” are: the loosely graphic paintings of Cathy Fiorelli who shares studio space with eleven other artists at the Middletown Pendleton Art Center; the perceptive works on femininity of Pattie Byron from West Chester; the Kente Cloth-inspired art quilts by Miami University-educated Linda Kramer; the mixed media of Oxford’s Maureen Nimis with her cut paper and photographic work; the small works by Catalog & Slavic Librarian at Miami University, Russian-born Masha Misco; and the jewel-like small photographs of Denver-born Cincinnati resident Brian Luman whose exploration of urban crevices is fueled by his skateboard and camera.

The Miami University Voice of America Learning Center is located at 7847 VOA Park Dr. off Cox Road in West Chester, Ohio. For hours and more information call (513) 895-8862 or visit www.muohio.edu/voalc.

Reach DCP visual art critic Jud Yalkut at JudYalkut@DaytonCityPaper.com.

Awe-inspiring Ohio Modern architecture in our own backyard

By Shayna V. McConville

Defining a relatively new city can be a challenge — its significant characteristics, invisible under the cloak of young buildings, tend to go unnoticed by those living, working and passing through. Returning home to the Dayton area after many years of living on the East Coast, a fresh set of eyes has led me to discover the beauty of this area, particularly the City of Kettering.  Over the past several months, I have listened to residents stumble in their descriptions of Kettering’s character, with responses veering towards the residential nature of the city, the lack of a central corridor (a downtown), and the scattered “hubs,” including the Fraze, Kroger, Town & Country and the parks.

Kettering happened quickly and efficiently. Driven by Dayton’s dramatic population surge during and following World War II, when military and industrial manufacturing was booming, and returning veterans and migrating workers flocked to the city, Kettering flourished, and was officially incorporated as a city in 1955. The attributes of the mid-20th century fed into the fabric of Kettering: the creation of new interstates and roadways, the prevalent automobile industry and the home-owning nuclear family.  The aesthetics and use of new materials, popular design elements, and creation of a suburban environment reflect the pattern of the built environment of the post-war era.

These characteristics have not gone unrecognized. In 2010, the Ohio Historic Preservation Office of the Ohio Historical Society (OHS) published a survey on Greater Dayton’s architecture from 1940 through 1970, otherwise known as Ohio Modern. The survey and associated report were completed by Nathalie Wright and Kathy Mast Kane, historic preservation consultants from Columbus, and Steven Avdakov and Debbie Griffen of Heritage Architectural Associates, a historic preservation architectural firm with offices in Wheeling, WV and Miami Beach, FL. The survey came about at the “50- year benchmark,” generally used as a standard by historic preservation organizations as defined by the National Register of Historic Places and the National Historic Preservation Act. To my delight, Kettering is heavily represented in examples of housing, churches, schools and commercial development.

Kettering’s architects and builders were ambitious in utilizing Modern design, taking advantage of “new” popular building materials such as concrete and aluminum, and experimenting with different methods of building layouts. Avdakov, the principal architect of Heritage Architectural Associates, noted the positive spirit of Kettering’s architecture.
“The schools in Kettering were exceptional,” he said. “Their architectural forms — which included campus plans and pod buildings — reflected both the progressive innovations which were occurring in education and the overarching optimistic spirit of post-war prosperity.”

From the 1940s through the 1960s, this kind of construction flourished. The building in which I currently work in is one example: a 1965 elementary school converted into an arts center in the 1980s. The building retains its characteristics from the 1960s, with brightly colored porcelain enameled steel panels, aluminum-framed windows, a sprawling one-level plan and even original signage in the hallways. Like many buildings in Kettering — particularly the schools — my workplace was not razed to make way for new construction, and instead was renovated to meet our present-day needs.

Two other well-known Kettering buildings are examples of the architecture used to catch the eye of passing motorists.

“In the ‘50s and ‘60s we were the premier midwestern automobile city when the cars were designed to look fashionable and fast,” said Terry Welker, City Planner for the City of Kettering. “Kettering created the homes and architecture to match.”

The Fox Kettering Theatre, built in 1967, at 1441 E. Dorothy Lane and Turrell’s Phillips 66 Service Station, now known as Dye’s Automotive, at 2560 Woodman Dr. and built in 1959, embody the characteristics of the “Googie style.” Googie incorporated futuristic “space age” design based on abstract or geometric shapes (such as the triangular shapes of both buildings), exaggerated signage and a sense of weightlessness exemplified in the upward jutting rooflines and significant scale windows. It was a merger of design, architecture and Pop Art — all very effective in attracting the attention of the many folks driving in and out of the suburbs.

Welker describes Kettering architecture as embodying its time but with the embedded values of the Midwest, a “very cool in a ‘60s ‘jazznik architecture with sunglasses’ kind of way with a thin layer of ‘unpretentious Midwestern.’” Beginning in the 1950s, ranch and split-level homes became popular. Open floor plans had minimal partitioning, often eliminating the floor-to-ceiling wall between a dining room and living room. Recreation rooms accommodated the increase in leisure time, a garage or carport was common, and a minimal use of ornamentation was a typical trait of the Modern house.

On the other hand, the community-oriented buildings of the mid-century, including ecclesiastical and civic structures, demonstrated the exceptional details and traits of Ohio Modern. The Government Center at 3600 Shroyer Road, which houses the administrative offices for the City of Kettering, is a Brutalist-style Modern building (from the French béton brut, or “raw concrete”) and was designed by local architect Eugene Betz. Raw, cast-in-place concrete was textured with diagonal repetitive lines and the building’s triangular floor plan and a dominant geometric roof give a sense of a landed spaceship, greatly differentiating from its neighboring residential, educational and commercial buildings.

These examples only skim the surface of Kettering’s architecture. Welker said, “Once you start looking, you’ll see it everywhere.”

And it’s true. The buildings and their details are plentiful; this is a gem of exceptionally preserved architecture and showcase of the mid-twentieth century’s modernity.  Perhaps when describing Kettering to others, we will now include these two words: Ohio Modern.

Learn more about OHS’s study and Ohio Modern at www.ohiohistory.org.

Shayna V. McConville is the Cultural Arts Manager for the City of Kettering. Visit her at Rosewood Arts Centre at 2655 Olson Dr. or visit the website at rosewood.ketteringoh.org. She can be reached at ShaynaMcConville@DaytonCityPaper.com.

By Shayna V. McConville

The Dayton Circus Collective space in the former Yellow Cab Company building.

Trains frequently rumble by above the two-acre plot of green space at the corner of Fourth Street and Wayne Avenue.  Between the elevated tracks and the park below, colorful murals bridge the gap between transient and static. Started in 2008 by a group of artists called the Dayton Circus Creative Collective, Garden Station was initiated out of a need for a community garden and experimental public art space in downtown Dayton. Now it is a destination committed to urban agriculture, education, art and DIY sustainable practice.

Tirelessly supervising the needs of the park and guiding its future, full-time volunteer Lisa Helm has spent her days and weekends leading groups of other volunteers to create a vibrant green space that attracts the curious, the artistic, experienced and novice gardeners, and those that simply want to be part of a dialogue in homegrown food and art. Influenced by the creative process, outsider art and design integrated with architecture and earth, the space has hosted weddings, a Sunday farmer’s market during the summer, band performances, fundraisers, theater productions, drum circles and more. Garden Station is flourishing as one of the most dynamic and unique gathering places in Dayton.

Garden Station is just one of the many initiatives that have materialized recently in Dayton, sparked by an energy to create from scratch a solution to the common desires of a community.  Without the fuel of volunteer time, donated material, scavenged resources, and the abundance of affordable or vacant accessible locations, this and other efforts would simply not exist.

Across the street and beyond the overgrown sidewalk, housed in a deceptively modest one-story building last occupied by the Yellow Cab Company, is the home of the Dayton Circus Creative Collective. Walking into the building is an experience of contradiction: the lobby is a perfectly preserved room decorated decades ago with carpeted walls now embellished with paintings and other two-dimensional works; a platform and chairs are placed around the garage’s hydraulic lifts; the greenish hue of florescent lights hum from room to room.

Contending and transforming the well-defined characteristics of this building is not the point of the Circus; this 7,000-square foot space was established to host artist studios and year-round events, exhibitions, art and craft workshops, music festivals, performance pieces and an easily accessible destination for a dialogue with other creative people. The Dayton Circus began in 2006 by the organizers of the popular “Sideshow,” an annual downtown Dayton event showcasing the region’s visual and musical talent in derelict buildings and donated spaces until settling into their new year-round home.

Completely sustained by its volunteer members, the Circus strives to give artists a place to be inventive and the encouragement to experiment with ideas and test their abilities.
“For me, the Circus has always been about ideals,” said member Jeff Opt. “We are trying to make Dayton a more creative and interesting place to live and to draw in members of the community through art that might not otherwise connect.”

The home in the Yellow Cab building is dedicated to being a safe place for artists and audiences and for providing a space outside of the established fine art galleries and museums. As Opt put it, “even as someone who helps put on our events, I am still amazed at the amount of new things I see on a regular basis, just because we try to be so open to everyone.”

Just a few years ago this block of Fourth Street was a no-man’s-land, making the pedestrian journey between the Oregon District and the Cannery unappealing. The lot that Garden Station currently occupies had been vacant for over 40 years and was a homeless camp and a railway car storage yard.  Several yards further east on Fourth Street, where the Yellow Cab building sits, semi-truck parking dwarfs the small side streets and dark lots.  Now on the first Friday of the month, this area is alive with live music, art exhibition happenings, and crowds of people stimulated by the vitality of these destinations.

The investment of time and honing of resources to sustain these initiatives is demanding, and the life span of these and other DIY projects vary greatly. Bringing the vision of a downtown urban garden and an artistic hub mark a huge niche in the local community and the support for the Circus and Garden Station is evident in their high attendance. When visitors remark they had no idea that something like Garden Station, for example, could exist in Dayton, Helm is thrilled to respond, “Let’s make Dayton the kind of place we want to live.”  Thanks to these efforts, the corner of Fourth and Wayne is a testament to the wealth of our creative Dayton.

Learn more about these initiatives at www.daytoncircus.org and www.daytongardenstation.org.

Shayna V. McConville is the Cultural Arts Manager for the City of Kettering. Visit her at Rosewood Arts Centre at 2655 Olson Dr. or visit the website at rosewood.ketteringoh.org. She can be reached at ShaynaMcConville@DaytonCityPaper.com.

By Jud Yalkut

Bart Vargas, “The Visible Spectrum,” 2011, latex paint and epoxy resin on panel.

Bart Vargas is a Minneapolis-based artist who has shown internationally, most recently at the 2010 Fourth Beijing International Art Biennale (BIAB) in China. Both a painter and a sculptor, Vargas received his M.F.A. from the University of Minnesota with his work featured in the MFA Thesis Exhibition, “Everybody is an Astronaut” at the University’s Katherine E. Nash Gallery in the Regis Center for the Arts.

Many of the colorful and semi-geometrically based pieces from that thesis exhibition comprise Vargas’ latest show called the “Alchemy of Art” at the Dayton Visual Arts Center running through December 30.

With his earlier sculptural pieces like the large and complex “Rhombicuboctohedron” (2010), combining as its name implies several mathematical solid structures, Vargas has extended his long-term fascination with “exploring the artistic potential of trash and recyclable materials … using pattern, repetition and form … to build sculptures and installations that have blurred the identity of these everyday materials.” He is determined that his creations “act as artifacts and evidence of the early 21st century,” and his use of discarded materials serves as a wry commentary on extraordinary consumption “in an era of limited resources.”

Likewise, his paintings are re-workings of found and recyclable materials and are fashioned from latex paint and epoxy paint on wooden panels. This use of uncommon industrial materials as aesthetic mediums imparts a sense of texture and impasto that mimics relief work and bring depth into the illusionary converging perspectives that comprise individual panels.

Vargas notes that the cross-cultural master of world mythology, Joseph Campbell, observed “that people do not want to understand life; they want to experience it as fully as they possibly can.” The artist equates this with his art being a celebration conveyed by “their energy, movement, color and form” leaving the painting’s surface and entering a space or “even better, the viewer.”

The works in “Alchemy of Art” are all assembled from individual panels, either rectangular or irregular, creating active wall mosaics of interactivity in what can comprise variable dimensions which make the installations site-specific. Vargas is gently insistent on mounting his own pieces, with an active intuitive relation that imparts a distinct individuality to each installation.

Several of these assembled pieces are titled “The Multi-verses” and all date from 2011. “The Multi-verse 2” is made up of six square panels in a vertical configuration, each panel glistening in its industrialized color glory with converging vortices of variegated brilliant hues. Each panel creates its own sense of space and in configuration makes reference to its neighbors like parallel universes. “The Multi-verse 1” imparts a similar effective configuration, and both assemblies draw the viewer within to enjoy the richness of color and surface gloss with which the latex and epoxy resin media radiate.

“Multi-verses 1 and 2” respectively begin and end the sequence in which the works are hung, and the piece simply labeled “The Multi-verse” (2011) appears fifth before the end of the sequence. Larger, it is formed of a matrix of six vertical and five horizontal panels and its total effect is of expansive space punctuated by three seemingly random darker-toned panels amidst a sea of gently restrained softer but nevertheless converging segments. Red and pink, orange and brown, and blue/purple and black float within their neighbors in a freely-ranging random configuration that keeps the viewer’s eye engaged.

“Dichotomy” (2010) is larger configuration of elements which vary from the rectangular to the rhomboidal to jagged irregularity, all relatively unified with black and white stripes augmented occasionally with the surprise of stripes of red, blue, and green, and one rectangle of rainbow stripes. Some panels depart from the white ground and introduce shades of pale blue or khaki tan, with Vargas playfully introducing internal patterns in some panels and even occasional freely-applied smears of paint. “The Imperfect Universe” (2010) appears like a companion piece, but with more multi-colored stripes on the variegated segments, color having invaded the total field of vision.

The largest work in Vargas’ “Alchemy of Art” is the sprawling “The Visible Spectrum” (2011) which breaks away from constrained space into an irregularly stepped progression of radiating color panels progressing through the spectrum. The color groupings seem to diminish slightly in size as they move through the rainbow, with the red variations consuming a larger area, the orange group unexpectedly dipping below the horizon as it were, and the blue and purple tapering off to the right as the total configuration almost consumes an entire wall.

The Dayton Visual Arts Center is located at 118 N. Jefferson Street in downtown Dayton. Gallery hours are 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, but the gallery will close at 2 p.m. on December 24, and be closed December 25. Call (937) 224-3822 or visit www.daytonvisualarts.org for more information.

Reach DCP visual art critic Jud Yalkut at JudYalkut@DaytonCityPaper.com.

By Jud Yalkut

Tom Hawley, "Flying Clock" (2009), Maple, walnut, soid brass rods, etc.

Two Ohio artists, Tom Hawley and Doug Fiely, with fanciful realizations in their respective mediums, are displaying their creations at the Springs Gallery in Yellow Springs through Dec. 14. In this unique encounter, we see the decorative wood crafting of Hawley with his clock configurations and bowls balanced against the acrylic paintings and fine art prints of Fiely.

Tom Hawley is a resident of Yellow Springs who received a bachelor’s degree in environmental design from Miami University in 1980, was an adjunct professor of Color Theory and Photoshop at Wright State University (2004-05), and was the art director of Ohio Magazine (1983-85) with an award for best magazine cover from the Regional Publishers Association. As a graphic designer turned woodworker, he has produced sculptural works on the theme of flight that also embody clock mechanisms, providing a surreal take on functional art.

Hawley fabricates his wood pieces preferably from trees that have already fallen.

“I prefer to keep the healthy trees upright,” he has written, “so the materials I use are usually the by-products of a storm, or a razed building.” He studies the wood initially and lets “the patterns I see in the shape and grain suggest a theme and then shape and finish to create forms that accentuate that theme.”

The simplest forms which emerge from his detailed work are the series of bowls defined by their utilitarian use, which allow Hawley to fully reveal the natural beauty of each piece of wood, all finished with numerous coats of tung oil hand-rubbed into the wood. A 15-inch diameter “Walnut Bowl” was fashioned from a large walnut tree cut down next to the Antioch School, a “Catalpa Bowl” came from a wind-felled tree uprooted in 2008 by the Frank Lloyd Westcott House in Springfield, a felled tree provided the material for a series of “Bradford Pear Bowls” with silky finishes, and a “Sycamore Bowl” was salvaged from a tree in Glen Helen ravaged by Hurricane Ike in 2008.

His “Ocufoil” series (2010) of pieces are aerofoils or hydrofoils containing an oculus (Latin for an”eye”) analogous to a lens bonded to withstand the force of a 3,000-rpm lathe, with resin cold-cast into the wood. “Ocufoil-2” was influenced by the form of a sand dollar and fabricated with bands of walnut, hickory and maple; and the long driftwood-like form of “Oculus-13” evokes a squid.

Most well-known of Hawley’s creations are his fanciful sculptural working clocks. The “Pea Clock #3” (2004) was from a series Hawley designed for his niece as a place for her to organize her colored pencils, which here form a splayed array of colored “feathers” around a Seiko quartz clock above the bird-like body. “Gandalf’s Clock” (2009) is grandfather-sized, exclusively made of Westcott House catalpa wood and inspired by Wright’s organic designs with a Seiko clock revealed only directly through a magnifying lens. Hawley’s “Flying Clocks” (2009) with wings are partly made from maple wood. “FC1” and “FC2” both have a resin, parabolic lens over the clock face; “FC2” has white maple accents in the catalpa bezel. “Flying Clock-3” is a scaled-down version, originally made for a woman as a gift to a pilot who saved his passengers, including her brother, from a plane crash caused by equipment failure.

Doug Fiely has a master’s degree in printmaking from Bowling Green State University, taught for 30 years in Ohio’s public schools, and is currently a professor of art at Defiance College. His varied work in acrylic painting as well as in ceramics is informed by his technical knowledge of the printmaking medium and his penchant for dynamic composition and forms. His spontaneous style is dictated by his belief that “the life of an artist is a careful balance between freedom and control, between chance and planning, between memory and careful observation.”

“I begin each work by applying modeling paste on the surface of the canvas,” Fiely said. “Usually working directly from observed subject matter, I begin cutting lines and texturing the semi-dried paste.” This analogy to the printmaking process is then covered by acrylic stain and the paintings are built up layer by layer.

His imagery in painting is drawn from his life experiences, friends and family, and the rural environment as in the green, sandy-white and terracotta forms of pots and vessels in “Pottery Barn” (2009); the vertical “Red Barn” (2011) with pale blue roofs, a pale gray sky, and smattering of textured birds in the foreground; and the planes of pale blue, pink, creamy yellow and green below the line of barn and village in “Ohio Summer Scape” (2011). Birds are a recurring theme particularly in his series, which includes “Summer Crows II” (2011), and his sometimes boozy vision of people is epitomized in “Tipsy” (2011), with his subject’s red hair and low-cut blue dress, arms crossed over an angled burgundy cup.

It is refreshing to see a number of Fiely’s remarkable prints in this show including: the dynamically contrasted angles of the woodcut “Grain Shacks” with its centripetal sun and deeply grooved fields; the charismatic commedia style of the “Street Players” with its checker-jacketed accordionist and ghostly mouth-harp player and the vividly autobiographical intaglio “Studio Portrait” with the musing seated artist surrounded by musicians, angelic women and a playful child in a fanciful studio.

The Springs Gallery is located in King’s Yard at 220 Xenia Ave. in Yellow Springs. Current seasonal hours are Wednesday through Sunday, noon to 7 p.m. and on the third Friday (“Fling in the Springs”) from noon to 9 p.m. For more information call the Springs Gallery at (937) 409-5047 or visit www.springsgallery.blogspot.com. More of Fiely’s work can be seen on the first and third Friday of each month through Dec.18 from 5-9 p.m. and “Second Look Saturday” from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Visceral Gallery, 1105 Central Ave., in the Pendleton Art Center in Middletown. For more information on the Visceral Gallery, call (937) 409-0069.

Reach DCP freelance writer Jud Yalkut at JudYalkut@DaytonCityPaper.com.

By Jane A. Black

This view of Relics and Constellations reveals part of the site-specific installation by Paul Catanese currently on view at Wright State University.

What happens when you mix pixels and printmaking with Laurie Anderson with Joseph Cornell? You get something like the current show at the Robert and Elaine Stein Galleries at Wright State University, which is a solo exhibition by Chicago-based artist Paul Catanese. Several bodies of work are represented in the exhibition, with a large part of the gallery given over to a site-specific installation that goes by the same name as the exhibit: Relics and Constellations.

Relics and constellations — their connection, I think, is about the passage of time. What we see in the stars is actually light long past, and a relic is a remnant of something long gone. It’s a fitting theme for time-based art, a new-ish nomenclature for film, videos, performances and installations that require, capture or manipulate time. In my experience, another way to look at it is that it takes time to understand, which is to say, it grows on you.

Catanese doesn’t use the phrase — that’s just my take on it — but classifies his work as “hybrid.” That label makes sense on a lot of levels. Not only is he combining traditional and new media, but his art often reads as scientific; concerned with identification, cataloging and comparing data. He also stretches the notion of what might be considered an image or object, opening up new worlds in the way that identifying genomes and understanding brain chemistry rocks our previous notions of how things work and where they belong. He describes his work as “protean, problematic and unresolved.”

This thread of experimentation and pushing limits extends throughout most of his work. During the full week of installing the show, with its many plug-in features, “I found out the wattage limits of the gallery,” said curator Tess Cortés. She met Catanese at an interactive media conference about seven years ago, and has been following his work since. “It’s appealing how he combines the technology and the tactile,” she said.

For me, that idea is most evident in the installation piece, which includes overhead projectors throwing large tracks of light filled with silhouetted objects onto the walls. It was a real “ah-ha” moment when Catanese talked about his influences during his public lecture, mentioning the seminal performance artist Laurie Anderson and the iconic maker of boxed assemblages, Joseph Cornell. In Catanese’s artistic language, the objects themselves are not the subjects; it is their shadowy shapes frozen on the wall, in relation to each other and the high contrast of light space. In addition to being fascinating to behold in and of themselves, this work also makes one think about the difference between the real and the virtual, or, as Cortés said, technology and the tactile.

As tempting as it is to plop down beside the projectors and rearrange the objects, one must not; however, there is an interactive opportunity in the first gallery. The 2004 series of modified Gameboy consoles are meant to be touched. To see Catanese’s painstakingly created digital pictures, scroll with the arrow buttons. These are the most intimate of the objects in the show, seen by one person at a time. “Intimacy,” said Catanese, “is the most overarching idea. My early work focused on the browser, which is an intimate space. Its glow creates an intrinsic intimacy.”

On the second floor of the exhibit are some two- to four-minute videos of a project he pursued in the Arizona desert during a recent residency. He went there with the notion of using space as a subject matter and proceeded to shoot off rockets. This proved untenable, and in the end he was uncomfortable with the rocket imagery anyway, with its militaristic connotations of power and dominance. Speaking of the work, he said, “You have to have the confidence to say ‘That failed spectacularly!’” All was not lost: The work became “less about the rockets and more about smoke and howling wind.” The videos capture that billowing smoke, as well as employing undulating Mylar to mirror and distort the landscape. It is a lyrical outcome to the project, even if it wasn’t the original intent.

Also on the second floor are framed prints. These images of aquifers and celestial bodies — white lines on deep, black surfaces — also used computer-based tools rather than traditional drawing/etching materials. Most were created with a Wacom tablet, an electronic drawing pad tethered to the computer. During the lecture, he talked about trying a Livescribe pen — a computer-in-a-pen that captures what you write and what you hear — but it was not as successful a methodology. “I broke it to get the X/Y data out,” he said. The celestial series is ongoing, and acts for Catanese as “an eye removed from the earth.”

This is another way of accurately describing this show, in my estimation. It’s about seeing and interpreting what comes to the mind by way of the eye. “I have lots of ‘floaters’ in my eyes,” Catanese said. “They are like my own personal constellations.”

Jane A. Black is a fiber artist and the executive director of the Dayton Visual Arts Center. Visit the gallery at 118 N. Jefferson St. or visit their website at www.daytonvisualarts.org. Follow her on Twitter @lookingabout. She can be reached at JaneBlack@DaytonCityPaper.com.