Diversity Plus
By Christopher A. Yates
The Columbus Dispatch
November 4, 2007
Thought-provoking show challenges, rewards visitors
ZANESVILLE -- In her juror's statement, assistant curator Megan Lykins Reich of the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland writes: "Great art is as diverse as the people who make it."
She clearly let artistic plurality guide her selections for the Ohio Art League Fall Juried Exhibition, which taps a large swath of visions, techniques and mediums.
Rather than finding unity in conceptual themes, the show at the Zanesville Art Center derives strength from diversity. Each piece stands on its own merit.
The effect is a bit disconcerting at first. Yet, the demands and challenges of looking carefully at each piece quickly yield rewards.
Sarah Weinstock's videos Smoke Moves and Rise stand out. Tapping a powerful metaphor for both death and purification, the works focus on ghostly trails of smoke. Cleverly placing white smoke against a black background in one video and black smoke against a white background in the other, Weinstock forces viewers to consider the differences. The experience is meditative and hypnotic. Viewers are connected by the twists and turns of smoke to their mortality, the environment, religious practices and the possibility of transformation.
Obsessive-compulsive mark-making becomes meditation in Sarah Blyth-Stephens' pen-on-paper 60 Hour Search for Affirmation. Heavy black circles -- on top of one another -- become organic, growing masses.
Other pieces inject what seem to be traditional styles with new conceptual possibilities: Tom Ward's painting Shift looks like abstract expressionism, but the mark suggests computer pixelation. Robert Metzger's photo Candy Land looks like a color-field abstraction but might represent the sky. Jen Adrion's simple painting of dots, I'm Lovin' It, looks like minimalism, but the title suggests a social critique of the recent McDonald's ad campaign.
Mixed or unusual materials take center stage in several works. The strongest is Rachel Fout's bird's-nest-and-ceramic She Doesn't Sing Anymore, Michelle Lewin's glass-and-paper Ravelled and M.A. Sullivan's assemblage Writer's Shrine.
Pieces that move traditional craft beyond function include Behrle W. Hugguch III's pewter Skeletal Structure and Amy Mallat's textile Quilt Top -- Log Cabin.
With 49 pieces by 45 artists on view, the show is rich and dense. Visitors should expect to be challenged.