Inner ear at PSB; dragonfly buzz; Modigliani?

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

By Henry Sweets

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Many of Rachel Kunkle Hartz’s paintings, currently hanging at Pearl Street Bagels, feature one sharp image – a found object or a distinctly scripted skier – set within dreamlike backgrounds that are sometimes bright, but often brooding.

Each painting features a hand-written artist statement printed on some sort of office invoice. It says that one of her artistic and life goals is “to recognize how much we will reap from life when we allow ourselves to be consumed by the moment.”

The statement, which mentions a need “to slow down, to be here now,” and reminds that much can be learned through “listening to the secrets of nature,” smacks of Henry David Thoreau.

In a quest to listen with an “inner ear,” Thoreau said, one lets go of distracting details and numbing habits until awareness becomes deep. The sensory information that eyes, ears and mouth send to minds are bolstered by a deeper organ that scans and understands that information, without over-thinking it.
They are a snapshot of that deeper knowledge, they try to understand that deeper knowing.

But at the end of the day, heady interpretations of art are unnecessary. Kunkle Hartz’s paintings speak to the viewer because the viewer can understand them without thinking too hard about what they mean. We are merely invited to participate.

Her statement closes: “Art has a magical quality, the more people that digest it, the longer it lives.”

Kunkle Hartz’ paintings will be on display through Feb. 15, with an opening reception from, 7 to 8:30 p.m., on Friday at Pearl Street Bagels, 145 W. Pearl.

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Susan Thulin’s “Circle of Shadow and Light” are colorful, childlike explorations of a mystical buzzing creature – the dragonfly – and the fragile mystery with which it charms people.

One painting depicts dragonflies and human hands, but others are abstract and nearly non-representational.

It is evident in the paintings that emotion and feeling were conjured by the artist and channeled through her brush strokes. This can easily translate into a big mess visually, but an experienced painter like Thulin operates within aesthetic boundaries to create something quite lovely, despite haphazard visual elements.

Her collage-like texture is created with an acrylic medium and found materials, and off of it rises bright colors that are incongruous enough to pop from the painting, but appropriate enough to meld into and bolster the overall aesthetic. The paintings are downright intriguing, and even intoxicating.

“Airborne” is full of shapes, splotches and small fields of color that mimic one another, but that exist each on its own plane.

In “Black Hole,” a buzzing, abrasively mottled brown orb hovers to one side of the painting, with calm, rich colors extending in the background.
The paintings hang in the Center for the Arts’ Theater Lobby Gallery, 265 S. Cache St., until March 4. Catch the opening reception at 5:30 p.m., Friday.

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CIAO Gallery owner Michelle Walters has come across a painting that she believes to be an original work by early 20th-century Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani, probably painted as an assignment while he was in school. The painting, which is signed on the front and back with a note by the artist, will be on display for one day only, Saturday, along with a juried exhibition loosely based around Classic modernism.

Walters has initiated the authentication process for the painting, but it could take years to complete. She said that because a slew of fakes surfaced in the ’70s, Modigliani scholars are now hesitant to give the final word on authentication.
But the entries for the juried exhibition, which will be on display through February, are interesting themselves. Etched plexiglas panels by Hyun Ju Kim make ghostlike three-dimensional images on a two-dimensional plane. Artist Lon Brauer’s portraits, which won second place, have a blustery classic modernist style.

The opening will run from 6 to 9 p.m., Saturday at CIAO gallery, 1921 Teton Village Road. PJH

‘Airborne’ by Susan Thulin

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Inner ear at PSB; dragonfly buzz; Modigliani? | Planet JH News Article: Arts Beat

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