4th annual wood show at The American Art Company
Review by Alec Clayton published in Art Access, June 2003
(a shorter version of this same review was published in the Weekly Volcano)
"Sister of Envy," cherry with ebony rim, gold leaf, by Jacques Vesery. Photo courtesy The American Art Company
Now in its fourth year, the North American Wood Invitational at American Art Company has become a highly anticipated annual event and one of Tacoma’s shining art events.
There are parallels between the increasingly popular art of wood turning and the continued popularity of glass art. The latter exploded in popularity when Dale Chihuly and artists associated with the Pilchuck Glass School brought worldwide attention to the art of glass. At the heart of the glass explosion was the experimental nature of the art coming from artists associated with Pilchuck. They took a crafts tradition that had previously been associated with pretty doo-dads in curio cabinets and made of it an art form worthy of museum and gallery exhibitions. Perhaps less spectacularly, the art of turned wood has done much the same over the past decade.
American Art Company held the first of its annual wood shows four years ago. The current version of this invitational exhibition, which features the top wood artists from all over the country, includes more than 85 pieces by about 30 artists.
Most of the pieces in the show are turned wood, which is wood shaped with the use of a lathe, in a tradition similar to that of wheel-thrown ceramic pots. Like both traditional and contemporary ceramics, turned wood generally takes the form of vessels (bowls, vases and pots), with here and there a more sculptural form showing up. They differ from ceramic pots only in that they are painted and/or varnished wood instead of glazed clay, which means that there is a comfortable familiarity to most of the work. Despite the derivative nature of turned wood, however, a tremendous amount of variety and innovation can be seen within the limited repertoire of traditional shapes in this exhibition.
Not everything in the show is turned on a lathe. There are a few pieces that are carved and/or assembled, and there are a few pieces that veer far outside the traditional vessel shapes, such as Connie Mississippi’s decorative toadstool-looking creations, Bruce Mitchell’s "Tall Grass" and Todd Hoyer’s "Suspended Sphere" series, all of which look like minimalist sculpture.
Mitchell’s "Tall Grass" is a clump of carved grass blades such as one might see on the bank of a pond. Graceful and beautifully tapered redwood blades fan out like reeds blowing in the wind from a black base. The solidity of the redwood belies the airy feeling of the blades.
The three pieces in Hoyer’s "Suspended Sphere" series each feature a wooden sphere, about the size of a softball, crimped as in a vise between two massive forms. In one the massive forms are tree trunks, in another they are boulders, and in yet a third they look to be industrially manufactured egg shapes. All, of course, are wood; and with the largest being a mere 21 inches high, they look much more massive than they are. The variations in surface treatment among Hoyer’s three pieces point out something that seems to be typical of many of the artists in this show: Either they revere the natural properties of wood, carving and shaping in ways that are respectful of the wood grain, and finishing with clear varnishes that intensify the natural wood colors; or they go in an exact opposite direction with paint or other coatings that make the wood look like stone or glass or metal. Hoyer’s "Suspended Sphere I" celebrates wood. He split, turned, gilded and burned a 21-inch tall slab of mesquite, leaving it in a highly polished but natural state, but with a gilded wooden ball suspended between the two parts. It looks like a tree trunk with a large knothole and an upward-spiraling grain. But the suspended sphere makes it a natural impossibility, and the top section blends into an unnaturally square top slice that is burnt black. "Suspended Sphere II," mesquite and wire, uses a similar form, only in this one the sphere is suspended between two halves of an industrial egg. And the third piece in the series uses a similar form but painted gray to look like stone.
Mississippi’s "Dream Landscape" and "Dream Landscape II" are kind of flat and kind of rounded globs of wood with sensually meandering in-and-out forms like a plastic disc that has been melted. Painted on the surface are snakes and desert plants in a harsh green with black and red. The snake and the plants, painted in a style reminiscent of Mexican folk art, squirm and undulate in response to the contorted forms of the wood.
Not surprisingly, there are also a number of pieces in the show that look suspiciously like glass art straight out of the Pilchuck School. I suspect that some of the artists, particularly Derek Bencomo and Stephen Gleasner, were direct influenced by Northwest glass art.
Gleasner’s colorful and highly polished urns look like they are sheathed in thick sheets of molded, clear glass. The depth of his swirling swathes of intense reds and blues and greens is jewel-like. Marbles come to mind. Or the metallic sparkle of custom cars. And it is impossible to look at Bencomo’s floral shaped vessels without thinking of Dale Chihuly (or of sanded and varnished cypress stumps found in a Louisiana swamp).
Since most of the works are vessels of one sort or another, most of the forms are naturally abstract. But they are abstract forms derived from nature, with references to birds, grasses and — of course — trees. There are very few outright representational forms. One of those few is Donald Derry’s "Water Bull Spirit Vessel." This vase is fat at the bottom, in swirling tones of a fiery red. It tapers to a long neck in a dark blue that lightens to brilliant cobalt as it stretches upward. On top, as if skewered there, rests a comical little bull’s head in red with blue horns. The mixtures of the comical with the elegant, and the intensity of color, make this piece a joy to behold.
And speaking of intensity of color, I must mention Jacque Vesery’s "Sister of Envy." This tiny cherry wood urn rests on its side, seemingly off balance. The dark teal surface is covered with carved leaves; and the inside surface, painted with gold leaf, is so bright it looks like there is a flashlight burning inside.
If Derry, Vesery and Gleasner’s colors are startling in their vibrancy, Merrell Saylan’s flat vessels are equally astounding in their dull luster. Saylan apparently gouges the surface of her forms while turning on the lathe in the same way a potter will create grooves on a plate thrown on a wheel. Her art takes the form of plates or platters split in the middle and pieced back together slightly out of register. The swirling grooves follow the circular form but do not quite match where the two halves join. They are painted with milk paint, a down-home kind of paint made from old curdled milk or cottage cheese, lime and earth pigment for color — and handed down from generation to generation over centuries. Her colors have the dull luster of old signboards left out in the rain.
Other artists worth noting include Bill Luce, Trent Bosch, Christian Burchard, John Skau, Betty Scarpino and Michael Peterson.
© 2002 by Alec Clayton