Visual Art League of Lewisville

December 11, 2007

11:30 pm

From the person who carved the Venus of Willendorf in 25,000 BCE to Christo’s The Gates in New York City’s Central Park in 2005, artists have sought new ways to represent themselves and their times. Artists take inspiration from religious beliefs, patron’s desires, political and cultural environments; from observing nature, the human condition, and world events; and from new technologies and art media itself. Focused on both external and internal notions, artists look always for innovation in their work. We are all driven to create, yet the visual and performance arts hold a special place in human life. When we experience or make art, we see ourselves and our world through fresh eyes.

As a juror I am honored to participate in the process of creative communication. My approach is one of respect and discovery, and ultimately of careful choices made by formal critique. I relied not only on critique of the visual elements and principals of design but also on big picture considerations, such as choosing varied media and subject matter. Finally, I looked at the body of work submitted by each artist, in most cases three pieces, to determine what the artist works to achieve or express overall.

J. Packard Wright’s acrylic painting Jammin’ is awarded Best of Show. The human figure captivates us time and again throughout the history of art, and in Jammin’ Ms. Wright gathers her subjects with the sophisticated drama of a Dutch Baroque group portrait. The composition’s shallow stage-like space, in which figures seem to emerge from the deep red shadows behind them, creates intimacy among the players and their audience. As in Baroque portraits from art history, at least one figure seems to acknowledge us: the pianist throws a smile over his shoulder in beat with the music, establishing a virtual line between his space and time to ours. The viewer is further drawn into the composition as its focal point; an empty chair, a standing man, and sounding horns point to an empty space that we seem to occupy. Wright’s painting is infused with vibrant life, including our own, and we look forward to those human moments she will portray in the future.

Jennifer Scott’s photograph Early Morning Rush in Florence is honored with the second place award. In this image Ms. Scott also presents a particular moment, yet hers is still and somewhat timeless. The composition attracts attention for its value contrasts between soft morning sun that invites and urges and deep sleepy shadows that cling to the last bits of night air and activity. Light falls rhythmically across the tops of buildings and café tables that recede into the depths of our view. A few people mingle in the middle background, but it is the lone, seated woman to the left of the picture that becomes the image’s subject. She appears inconsequential beneath the mass of building and repetition of table, yet she also looks to be satisfied and alive. In the spirit of the
Hudson River School painters who focused on nature’s sublimity, Scott chooses a frame in which the urban historic environment dwarfs her subject, and we are reminded both of our human insignificance and power.

Pauline Butts’ abstract oil painting Finding Endorphins is awarded third prize. Abstraction exists in the realm of idea and emotion, sometimes those we cannot name, and Ms. Butts handles her vision with beauty and grace. She skillfully organizes her composition with rippling lines and biomorphic shapes, sensuously shaded from dark to light in earthy hues and providing unity, balance, and rhythm. Butts’ organic shapes and fluid lines call to mind paintings by the Surrealist artist Joan Miró, who worked automatically or without conscious thought to reveal universal imagery that he believed existed in the unconscious mind. Similarly in Finding Endorphins a ground suggests dwelling and body, and a sky conjures up heart or soul. In the middle is imagination, reminiscent of the mind and of relationships. These areas together reflect our humanness, which takes many forms and is revealed sometimes mysteriously.

In Fresh Ideas there are handfuls of honorable mentions, but rightfully limited to two, I focused on a masterful watercolor painting by Cheryl Rose titled Round Pond and a whimsical, ironic photograph by Steven Schwartz titled Home School. Ms. Rose’s painting is striking for its light and space, each requiring advance planning and economy of brushwork. Remarkably, space seems to have been designed by stacking objects from the bottom to the top of the picture, with size being constant. A similar technique is used in Chinese ink drawings where the viewer actually creates space in his or her mind; objects at the bottom of the work are perceived as close and those at the top as distant. Mr. Schwartz’s image is composed and photographed as if to capture a real moment of activity. Exceptional in the symmetrical composition are the abstract quality of the books as squares of color, the contrasting textures of grass and information panel, and our discovery of the work’s ironic humor. The image Schwartz composes suggests an animal perplexed, intrigued, and perhaps bemused at our benign and naive resources, and yet the scenario hints that our effort to understand the animal disguises a desire to capture and control that which we finally cannot fully know.

While formal recognition brings joy and encouragement, the very act of making and exhibiting one’s art is the true achievement. One must commit to the artist’s life, and this devotion takes courage. Fundamentally artists work for the pleasure of creating and communicating, and the Lewisville Visual Art League is bursting with talented members dedicated to their work.

Tracee W. Robertson,
Associate Faculty, Collin County Community College

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