Artists, invited friends mix up their talents
For the AJC
Friday, July 17, 2009
Marcia Wood is a gallerist with eclectic taste. The work she represents ranges from the most sensuous of paintings to conceptual video. When she asked the artists participating in this group show to bring a guest, even more variety ensued.
It’s fun to play guess-who-brought-whom. A shared interest is evident among many pairs. The prize for unpredictability goes to conceptual photographer Jason Fulford. He chose Lance Ledbetter, a former WRAS DJ whose Grammy-winning record label Dust-to-Digital specializes in historic American vernacular music.
Courtesy of Marcia Wood Gallery
‘Trucker’s Embrace’ by Lorie Corbus, a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design, is a mixed-media painting on canvas that the artist completed this year.
"Summer Guest House"
11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturdays. Through Aug. 1. Marcia Wood Gallery, 263 Walker St. 404-827-0030, www.marciawoodgallery.com
Bottom line: An eclectic array of Georgia and national artists that includes gallery regulars and new faces.
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Although Ledbetter is not a visual artist per se, his recordings are unusually artful in their presentation and often paired with art books. For a project called “Take Me to the Water: Immersion Baptism in Vintage Music and Photography 1890-1950,” a CD of rare gospel and folk recordings is nestled inside the front cover of a book of vintage photos of baptism by Jim Linderman.
If games are not your thing, it’s fine to take each work one at a time. Herewith, two of my favorites:
“Inhale/Exhale: Officials Beat the Nakeds 10 to 10.” Monica Cook has established a reputation for painting self-portraits and nudes that merge the elegant and the grotesque. The 1996 SCAD grad brings both to this 5-foot-long drawing on Mylar. It depicts a cadre of women in soldierish/dominatrix uniforms grappling with a group of terrified naked women. Some of the “officials” are blowing up their prey into balloons. Others throw darts at the hovering fatties, who explode into a shower of body parts. This, with time out to embrace the very phallic oxygen tank.
If the epic battle and its perverse eroticism bring to mind self-taught artist Henry Darger’s “The Story of the Vivian Girls…,” the New York-based artist’s crisp realism and beautiful technique give the piece its wink-and-nod tone.
“Trucker’s Embrace.” If the images on Lorie Corbus’ Web site are any indication, this 2002 SCAD grad is equally adept at the tight descriptive realism of earlier work and the softer style evident in this painting. It reminds me of Fairfield Porter, but with an edge.
The edge is the scene depicted therein. A couple dressed only in long underwear and dark panties lean against a tree in a tight embrace amid a desolate forest lit up by a pink sky. Were they driving together in the logger’s truck nearby, or did one discover the other en route? Like Cook’s drawing, this painting is strange and seductive, in part because it is well-made, in part because it makes ample room for viewers to exercise their own imagination.
Catherine Fox blogs about art and architecture at www.artscriticatl.com.
