A Love Affair with Texture @ Atmosphere Gallery 7/21From Cool Cleveland contributor Carol Drummond carolATdrummonddesign.com
This exhibition in Tremont will have you contemplating the connectedness of such disparate entities as a planet, a skin cell and a grape. If you haven't yet been to Atmosphere Gallery, which has been open for about five months, this is the time to go. The current exhibit featuring works by Kathy Skerritt will have you wanting to reach out and touch the canvasses. The artist's abstract works in tempera on large canvasses not only explore texture and color, but much larger and deeper issues such as universal patterns in nature, stopping a moving moment in time, multiple states of being in an instant and so much more.
The first group of paintings that captures my interest are canvasses on which is what appears to be moving, flowing liquid that stops mid flow. Something you cannot see in the natural world, without stop-action photography. These are abstractions, yet when contemplated, you try to identify what you see with something you know. The first one resembles what you would see if you were in a helicopter hovering above a body of water, the force of the propellers pushing the surface of the water in a circular configuration, away from the center of the canvas. The second painting in this group makes me think of a tire traveling through a runny mud puddle, but the instant captured in this work is before the liquid runs back to a flat surface, you see the splats away from the point of impact, the line of the tire's path, you anticipate the next moment when all the muck runs back together again.
Many of the works can be identified as more than one thing at one time. An irregularly-shaped orb can be identified as a cross section of a cell, showing it's structure and parts, a celestial body, or a piece of fruit. Other canvasses can launch the viewer to a birds-eye perspective of the earth with its rivers of water and mountains, or to some electronic scope mapping a piece of the human body, with its arterial pathways, tissues and shapes, or an erupting volcano. These universal visual themes, consistencies in creation, are visually tied together on her canvasses, reminding us of our connection with the most minute structure, or the cosmos.
To get the most from this exhibit, spend time with the pieces, consider them from across the room and close up, discuss what you see. One captivating piece at first glance appears to be a gray, somber glimpse of a woman subtly fading into and out of the gray canvas. On closer inspection, you see the entire canvas is alive with vibrant color, peaking through tiny cracks in the gray surface. You are reminded of the cracked gray coals in a fire which appear to be burned out, but when poked, they glow radiant heat from deep within. The most recently created work featured is a subtly-colored, highly-glossed tall canvas with many repetitious tooth-like shapes, among other bone-like shapes which make the viewer believe that they are witnessing the unearthing of some tiny ancient civilization. In reality, the artist reveals that this piece was made by applying to the canvas layers of paint that had been scraped off other works and saved. With this in mind, by assembling remnants of previous works, maybe it is unearthing other worlds.
Kathy Skerritt has achieved her goal of enticing the viewer by using the beauty of color and the intrigue of texture to consider the uneasy contemplation of multiple states of being in an instant. To put the viewer at ease in order for them to open up to the possibilities that her works consider. Meeting her and getting an understanding of her intentions within her works does the same thing, she puts you at ease, then opens you up to her world of possibilities.
You can understand her love affair with texture more fully by visiting Atmosphere Gallery, 2418 Professor, in Tremont through August 23rd.
http://www.kathyskerritt.com/
Ecco la data sfiziosa prima delle vacanze…….in francia, due giorni fa, c’erano 20mila persone a vederli, in salumeria purtroppo mancano i bicchieri….che faccio prendo quelli di plastica……hi hi hi……vi aspetto bella gente
