A quick look at the show in video taken during the opening event.
Art becomes an adventure again. Armed with Jean Hoefler designed German spaceman from 1968 marketed under the "Plong!" brand for courage we head back to New Berlin, to see what there is to see. Just like the bear going over the mountain.
Newly designed entry to the Golden Artist Colors main facility. I still have yet to go see the mixing vats! but try to never miss an art exhibit at the big Sam and Adele Golden Gallery housed within. And this was a marvelous show to get back into the swing of things with. We go to look for ideas to apply to our own methods, ways to strengthen the game. Learn from what they have figured out, and Susan Roth was a great teacher for the hour or so I was present for the exhibit's opening reception event.
For more information on the exhibit please visit the SAAG website at https://www.thesagg.org/
For information on The Golden Foundation for the Arts and their world-class Artist in Residence program visit https://www.goldenfoundation.org/
And for the latest on the miraculous materials being produced by Golden Artist Colors visit https://www.goldenpaints.com/
"St. Jerome's Library", 1987, acrylics on canvas and correctly placed smack-dab in the middle of the Hero Wall to get that immediate reaction. Susan had an instant fan in me at the way her works defy the squared off corners rule which most painters feel obliged to follow. These careen beyond the "square" of focus onto the walls in an organic manner. Confining them to a squared off perimeter wouldn't work. They'd bust the frame apart.
"Amethyst Necklace (V)", 1990. My favorite of the batch, and what looks like it might be cookie dough is a specially blended acrylic Volcanic Pumice Gel ...
I get moonscapes out of it. I get moonscapes out of everything which encourages my brain to concoct something on its own, and savored the encounter.
Trying to demonstrate how much stuff is troweled onto this, yet it's only just the right amount. Any more and it'd be too much, any less it'd be unfinished.
"Two Cities", 1989 with acrylic and fiberglass on canvas.
Enjoying the aluminum architectural struts used to house the energy.
"Don Juan", 1987. The dry, arid plain of Spanish Almeria.
The other "Show-stopper from across the room" ...
39 Steps, 2019, with as much drawing packed into it as a Piranesi prison view. I'm getting 19th century landscape photography out of that upper left corner ...
Susan's surfaces are all about a shifting interplay of texture and line, with one usually overlapping the other, drawing the viewer's eye across the landscape of the canvas' breadth.
"Temptations of the Heart", 1987 and something of a collage with canvas being applied upon the canvas and flavored with the acrylics. For that matter I found Susan's works to be totally cross-discipline in nature without being demonstrative about it: They are both paintings and sculptural, or physical in nature. You occupy space with them as much as you look at them, and they certainly aren't flat.
"John of the Cross", 2017 and another work employing collage technique without saying so.
"Malta", 1989.
Islands.
Bays and mooring piers.
"Figure of Speech", 1987 and from the name of the show I'd anticipated a gallery of these. Imagine my surprise.
Gotta bolt that thing on in there or else that stuff's going flying across the room. Put an eye out with that heavy canvas duck I bet.
"Pandora's Box", 1987 and I get more cartography out of this. Reminds me of looking at a thermographic map of NYC.
Rivers and channels.
And the hat! "Cezanne's Hat" in fact, 1989. Troweled on slicks of acrylic gone dry into a glossy sheen of rainbow sherbet ... Not sure why dessert foods entered into this but there you go.
Delicious. I want a dish of that to go please.
Susan at left with hands in pockets. We did get to chat for a minute (place was packed) and she confirmed that the works were created & allowed to take shape long before their aluminum sided housings were contracted to contain them. She spoke of the freedom to pursue the forms as the paintings evolved, confirming my suspicion that as squared off regular four-sided polygons they would have forever been unfinished.
"Masters of War", 1996. We need this painting now more than ever.
Laying a wreath of flowers.
The show must be seen in person to truly experience the magnitude of the ideas the works contain, and runs until Friday March 13 2020, open during the GAC facility's regular business hours. Catch a plant tour as well while you're at it ... I want to see them mixing vats! pumping out that Pumice Gel.
Visit the SAAG website at https://www.thesagg.org/ for gallery details and start planning the trip.
It's the Propeller Barn! On the way back to my Utica NY studio ... A couple years back I had a vision of this barn in flight powered by the giant fans there at center right, cows in space suits and all. Now I want to see it as an artwork. Piloted by Plong! spacemen.
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