GARY FAIGIN
  • ARTIST
    • Meet the Artist
    • PAINTINGS >
      • TRAINS & TOWERS >
        • FINISHED PAINTINGS
        • SKETCH PAINTINGS
        • DRAWINGS ON PAPER
      • STILL LIFES - 1990 TO 2001
      • CITY OF BILLBOARDS
      • SHELTER
      • COMPRESSION FITTINGS
      • CONCENTRATED
      • MOVING PICTURES
      • IMAGINARY LANDSCAPES
      • PLEIN-AIR LANDSCAPES
      • FIGURES + PORTRAITS
    • DRAWINGS >
      • STILL LIFES
      • SELF PORTRAITS
      • FIGURES + PORTRAITS
    • MURAL OF CYCLES
    • CURRICULUM VITAE
    • PRESS + PUBLICATIONS
  • AUTHOR
    • Meet the Author
    • READER REVIEWS
    • BUY THE BOOK
  • EDUCATOR
    • Meet the Educator
    • GAGE ACADEMY >
      • ART TOURS
      • STILL LIFE ATELIER
      • ART WORKSHOPS
      • EVENING LECTURES
    • CG ARTISTS
  • SPEAKER
    • Meet the Speaker
  • CRITIC
    • MEET THE CRITIC
    • ARTIST INDEX
    • ART REVIEWS BLOG
  • CONTACT
  • ARTIST
    • Meet the Artist
    • PAINTINGS >
      • TRAINS & TOWERS >
        • FINISHED PAINTINGS
        • SKETCH PAINTINGS
        • DRAWINGS ON PAPER
      • STILL LIFES - 1990 TO 2001
      • CITY OF BILLBOARDS
      • SHELTER
      • COMPRESSION FITTINGS
      • CONCENTRATED
      • MOVING PICTURES
      • IMAGINARY LANDSCAPES
      • PLEIN-AIR LANDSCAPES
      • FIGURES + PORTRAITS
    • DRAWINGS >
      • STILL LIFES
      • SELF PORTRAITS
      • FIGURES + PORTRAITS
    • MURAL OF CYCLES
    • CURRICULUM VITAE
    • PRESS + PUBLICATIONS
  • AUTHOR
    • Meet the Author
    • READER REVIEWS
    • BUY THE BOOK
  • EDUCATOR
    • Meet the Educator
    • GAGE ACADEMY >
      • ART TOURS
      • STILL LIFE ATELIER
      • ART WORKSHOPS
      • EVENING LECTURES
    • CG ARTISTS
  • SPEAKER
    • Meet the Speaker
  • CRITIC
    • MEET THE CRITIC
    • ARTIST INDEX
    • ART REVIEWS BLOG
  • CONTACT

"Knock on Wood" Biennial at Bellevue Arts Museum - December 2014

12/1/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Michael de Forest
Bellevue Arts Museum biennial puts wood on a pedestal - Published in Seattle Times, December 19, 2014

You’re being watched when you step off the elevator on the top floor of the Bellevue Arts Museum, where BAM’s Biennial exhibition “Knock on Wood” is on view.  A gigantic striped male head glowers at the visitor, spotlit against a darkened wall. The head  (“Mask” by Michael de Forest) is the curators’ way of announcing that this show, which features Northwest artists using wood as their principal material, is going to take you outside your wooden-object comfort zone.


The work of the 39 artists on view runs the gamut from straight-out fine furniture (Todd Coglin, “Writing Table”) to enormous, theatrical installations (Kimberly Trowbridge, “Physical Memory”), to paintings in which shaped plywood is simply used as canvas (Kiki MacInnis, “Deadhead”).  The best pieces are those which most successfully subvert our usual expectations about things crafted from wood, while the weakest pieces – particularly in the current company - are those which have the least to say beyond the skill of their construction, which in a show like this, is a given. 

A case in point is several groups of shaped wooden vessels, well-made and in some cases colorful, but leaving little room for viewer engagement or imagination.  I felt the same about the row of mounted faux-indigenous masks, neither the real thing, nor interesting enough on their own.  Contemporary artists have found multiple ways to integrate and absorb the powerful forms and ideas of native art, without simply “going native”, and two good examples are elsewhere in the exhibit.

Ed Wicklander, for one, pays homage to one of oldest sculptures in existence, the Willendorf Venus.  His carved wooden “Willendorf Column” features a mix and match of various protruding feminine forms from the ancient statue, without every quite resolving where one body part ends and the next one begins.   Peter Millet presents a set of female-inspired wooden abstractions even more removed from their original historical sources, but we are still aware that these are evocative (and sexy) shapes with a complicated pedigree.  

Many of my favorite pieces were enormous in scale, perhaps because these artists were freed from thinking about their material in a conventional or simply functional way, which after all is the way we employ wood most of the time; it’s our domestic outer skin, and everyday tool.  Scott Trimble has always thought big; his piece here, “Cascade”, is a wooden waterfall that pours down from the ceiling in waves of increasing amplitude, its surface a weave of curved strips; I watched mostly male visitors trying to tease out the secrets of its construction.
 
Whiting Tennis has contributed a huge all-white bas-relief portrait of two dumpy Ballard warehouses (“White Façade”) with their patched and sagging front walls presented in loving detail; I walk past them every day, and was oblivious until now to their peculiar charms.  

Laura Buchan’s fierce and inspired Museum of Natural History-style mounted skeleton (“Cetus”) is actually no creature in particular, but she uses the highly finished surface of her grained poplar to suggest the fluid motion of a sea animal through water, as well as the flow of blood through bone.

And don’t miss Tailu Miyasaka’s “Night Blooming”, an unprepossessing pile of scrap wood blocks in the shape of a giant bee hive, out on the roof courtyard.  Handsome but not exceptional from the outside, the structure reveals another sort of experience entirely when you squeeze inside and look up.  Daylight filters through the narrow chinks between the blocks in hundreds of tiny shards that are surprisingly luminous and animated, like fireflies.  
Using scruffy lumberyard debris to create an all-natural light show and a shrine to second chances?  Now that’s woodworking.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    FAIGIN ART REVIEWS
    ​​A collection of reviews, featuring mostly NW artists, galleries and museums, on KUOW Radio from 2000 to 2012, in the Seattle Times from 2014 to present, and in other publications, as noted, beginning in 1993.

    ​SUBSCRIBE: To receive  an email notice of new Art Review Blog postings, please use the Contact Form.

    RSS Feed

    ARCHIVES

    February 2018
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    August 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009
    June 2009
    May 2009
    April 2009
    March 2009
    February 2009
    December 2008
    November 2008
    October 2008
    September 2008
    August 2008
    July 2008
    June 2008
    May 2008
    April 2008
    March 2008
    February 2008
    January 2008
    December 2007
    November 2007
    October 2007
    September 2007
    August 2007
    July 2007
    June 2007
    April 2007
    March 2007
    February 2007
    January 2007
    December 2006
    November 2006
    October 2006
    September 2006
    August 2006
    July 2006
    June 2006
    May 2006
    April 2006
    March 2006
    February 2006
    January 2006
    December 2005
    November 2005
    October 2005
    September 2005
    August 2005
    July 2005
    June 2005
    April 2005
    February 2005
    January 2005
    December 2004
    November 2004
    October 2004
    September 2004
    August 2004
    July 2004
    June 2004
    May 2004
    April 2004
    March 2004
    February 2004
    January 2004
    December 2003
    November 2003
    October 2003
    September 2003
    July 2003
    May 2003
    April 2003
    March 2003
    February 2003
    January 2003
    December 2002
    October 2002
    September 2002
    August 2002
    July 2002
    June 2002
    May 2002
    April 2002
    March 2002
    February 2002
    January 2002
    December 2001
    November 2001
    October 2001
    September 2001
    August 2001
    July 2001
    June 2001
    May 2001
    April 2001
    March 2001
    February 2001
    January 2001
    December 2000
    November 2000
    October 2000
    December 1993

Proudly powered by Weebly