Closing & Opening

 

"The Faces and Facets of Freedom"

Theme Group Show at Oxford Gallery

267 Oxford Street, Rochester, NY

Walk into the Oxford Gallery to enjoy the theme show "The Faces and Facets of Freedom".  It is a wistful goodbye to our community.  Not that we are saying goodbye to freedom in this moment of political turmoil, but for our community we must know that the Oxford Gallery will be closing.  Great thanks must go out to Jim and Ginny Hall who have steered this ship for over these past 30+ years!  Being an active agent in the visual art scene here in Rochester is a real achievement!  We know it is a lot of work to run an art gallery and requires a serious commitment.

Paula Crawford's painting of the Statue of Liberty greets you in the gallery.  "Lady Liberty" is an oil on canvas, and I was pleased to see the interesting color patterns in Paula's artwork.  On this occasion, I was reminded of visiting this monument when I was a little kid with my family ( and then we were allowed to walk up flights of stairs to view the harbor and the New York City skyline from a perch in the Lady's Crown! ).

Theme shows like this one have been a feature of the Oxford Gallery schedule for years, and I have the feeling that Jim and Ginny enjoyed the idea of giving creatives a prompt that would inspire artists to conjure up some interesting results.  Each individual artist in this case would have a different approach to the concept of "Freedom", and the visitor to the gallery might then find some of the works in this exhibition to be a bit provocative, especially the paintings by Thomas Insalaco.

 "This Is Not A Banana" oil on canvas

Thomas Insalaco

Often in group exhibitions like this one in Rochester, I tend to look at the paintings and sometimes the sculptures get overlooked.  That is not the case with the bright piece by Olivia Kim that commemorates the great respect we have in our area for Frederick Douglass.

Olivia Kim's Frederick Douglass statuette

With a theme like "Facets of Freedom",  a viewer can project themselves into a situation like the one portrayed in David Dorsey's painting, "Saturday Morning".  Here, he shows an engaging family moment, with kids having fun, enjoying a sunny day, and this all puts me in a good mood!

"Saturday Morning", oil on linen by David Dorsey

Bill Kayser, born in 1936, was a colleague of mine when we were teaching at Rochester Institute of Technology, and it is great to see that he is still being productive.  He has two works in this exhibition, the larger one called "Breach" is a kind of collage mounted on the wall.  I guess in his case the notion of freedom is embedded in thinking about a greater sense of abstraction without being so literal!

Bill Keyser's "Breach"

Being out in nature is one of my favorite things, so I have a real attraction to an oil painting by Phyllis Bryce Ely in her work called: "Freedom to Roam".  This might represent freedom and the couple of Bald Eagles in this show also has that effect.  On the other side of this equation of course there is the lack of freedom, and for that we get a sense of restriction and detention found in the quartet paintings by Jim Mott.

                                   "Visiting Omar, ICE Detention, Batavia" 

                                                                       by Jim Mott

Jim Mott's acrylic paintings in various shades of grey set up a contrast bringing us back to the reality of regional politics and the enforcement of the ICE Detention centers.

As the Oxford Gallery closes we can thank all of those people who come out to support the arts, and in my next post I write about the Mercer Gallery at Monroe Community College, and the opening of a large group exhibition for The Print Club of Rochester!  So Stay Tuned!  I urge you all to go and see the Oxford Gallery before the end of their final show!

Juxtaposition

 

John Rhoden sculpture show at

The Memorial Art Gallery

Rochester, New York

When going to a museum, you might make the journey to see works of art you are familiar with and that you have enjoyed in the past.  This is like going to visit an old friend! Indeed, there are pieces at The Memorial Art Gallery that I go to see like their Stuart Davis painting   ( "Landscape with Garage Lights").  Of course there are other paintings I enjoy like the Cezanne upstairs, or maybe the Fairfield Porter landscape on the main level.  I had met Fairfield Porter in my first year at Cornell, and followed his work for years!

This visit is to see a show of sculpture by...who is this?  John Rhoden? At The Memorial Art Gallery the exhibition is "Determined To Be", and it is a nice surprise!  It seems that this artist is long overdue for some recognition ( and that could be said of many other artists ).  Maybe it was OK for John during his lifetime, he may not have been drawn to the limelight.  The artist certainly had a figurative impulse, and I really enjoyed the juxtaposition of video with Garth Fagan dancers!  This combination was a brilliant idea!

John Rhoden sculpture with video images of Garth Fagan Dancers

Outside of The Memorial Art Gallery, where has John Rhoden's sculptures been exhibited?  His creative drive is evident, and I wonder if there were shows of his that I had missed?  Over the years there may have been a racial bias at work in the art world that is being exposed here.  In any case his work is terrific, and I am glad that The Memorial Art Gallery has made a statement with this in mind.

From my point of view, I think that Rhoden's wood sculptures are the pieces that most interest me, and they carve out a direct path into the history of sculpture, especially in regard to the lineage of African American art.  I am glad that museums are finally waking up to the fact that there are groups of artists that are overdue for their share of the spotlight.  We have so much to learn from this!

"Reflections: The Light Within"

watercolors by Luvon Sheppard and Steve Hill

Over on East Avenue, at The Rochester Museum & Science Center, we went to see my colleague Luvon Sheppard's watercolors which he painted outdoors along the Erie Canal with his friend Steve Hill.  On the day that we visited the show, the place was alive with all kinds of kids out and about!  Glad to see that the teachers could schedule a school trip!  There are so many features that the kids find exciting in this museum, but just not enough time to take everything in..

Luvon Sheppard's recent watercolors made along The Erie Canal

The show is called "Reflections" and - it will be on view on the Third Floor of the RMSC for the better part of a year.  Luvon's paintings are modest in size, but they have a big ambition to capture some of the poetry of the outdoor experience along the canal.  

Steve Hill is a painter who went on the excursions along the canal to document what he found there, and his paintings will also be on view for the year.  I know this territory myself, having painted along the canal many times, and I think that both Steve and Luvon have a wonderful sense of light and air in their work!

I know that Luvon and Steve also share a bit of history - having been teachers at the workshop called: "All Of Us" in the early 1970s.

On a different note:  It has come to my attention that one of the mainstays of the art community - the Oxford Gallery will be closing soon!  Hats off to Jim and Ginny Hall for keeping things going there over the years.  Of course they were not the only gallery owners there - it has a long history, and I was pleased to show a number of my own paintings at the Oxford Gallery and even made some sales!  This gallery has been an anchor for an art community and they will be missed!

Finally, here is a recently published article about my own artwork that you may want to read.  There is a link to this piece online, so ENJOY!  https://usawire.com/alan-singer-art-industry-technology-tradition/