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Saturday, June 08, 2002

By Mary Thomas, Post-Gazette Art Critic

The juried exhibitions are, along with the Artists Market and the food booths, the most popular part of the Three Rivers Arts Festival. Local submissions and others from across the country make for a varied and unpredictable mix that includes established artists as well as emerging, trained along with folk artists.

	"Mute Music Box V," far left, is a mixed-media work by Elizabeth Asche Douglas of Rochester, Pa. (Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette) Music Preview Opie playing loose Arts Festival schedule: 6/8 and 6/9 Map: Arts festival 2002

This year's shows are no exception, with the photography exhibition being the most solid, the three-dimensional show harboring the most experimental work and the two-dimensional being the most eclectic in range of exhibitors.

The Photography Exhibition is a strong show, providing a thoroughly enjoyable walk through 86 images by 56 artists.

The quality has been consistently high for this exhibition recently, in no small part due to the honed eye of juror Lonnie Graham, himself an accomplished photographer. Images are in color and also black and white, and a range of techniques are employed including toning, manipulated Polaroids, panorama and pinhole shots and digital work. Subjects include landscape, still life, portrait and politics depicted realistically or abstracted.

Angeliki Costas Georgiou captures the feeling of another culture in a fine body of work that comprises two images from her series "Cyprus the Women in Black" and the six-panel "Fragments from Home," moments as quick as breaths caught while an elderly woman feeds her chickens or braids her long hair.

Lori Hepner makes fabulous compositions from the enlarged details of rumpled embroidered cloth napkins (curiously titled "Irene," "Earl" and "Karen").

More pointed and poignant are the rich black-and-white images of Prescott Moore Lassman, two works made more effective by his judicious cropping. "Woman on Porch" isolates the face of a woman between the rough wood frame of her porch and a broken window. In "Prostrate Man and Legs," a black man lies on a street corner, his head on the concrete and arms handcuffed behind him. Two pairs of dark pant legs rise from the polished shoes next to him, while in the background Dr. Scholl's and running shoes go about their daily business.

Also implying tough narrative is the arresting "Condemned: Diptych: Open Window (on left) Closed Window (on right)" by Neal Newfield. A woman, a child who appears more savvy than his age should indicate, and a man are framed in a window. In the second photograph, the window is closed and their images fade behind the glass pane and sign pasted onto it that reads "CONDEMNED. This structure is declared unsafe for human occupancy or use."

The glasses, titled "Level Headed," are by Donovan Widmer of Bloomington, Ill. The ring and chain behind them connect to his other exhibited work, "Trap." (Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette)

Other photographers make much of what could easily become banal, including Gary Cardot's "Presque Isle, Erie, PA," made special by a photo-full of flowing banners trailed out by the wind; Roger Benedetti's "Tent Rocks, New Mexico," wherein pattern, texture and perspective give life to a tourist landscape; Paul Weigman's abstracted natural subjects, "From the Shadow Cantena," given mystery by sun and shade; and Elizabeth Nye Byram's "Small Town U.S.A.," simultaneously anonymous and specific.

Also noteworthy are two exceptional pieces by Robert Thompson: "Day Dreams," a woman on a modest wooden porch in the rural south looking off to a lake and trees, and "Stripes," a visual treat of shadow-created line.

The Three-Dimensional Exhibition -- 53 works by 40 artists -- includes sculpture and craft. These categories frequently morph in contemporary expression, as with Carol Townsend's well-made ceramic "Sphinx #1" with its inscrutable visage.

But other works, such as Stephen Sell's traditionally shaped and glazed clay vessels or the troubling, charred "Portable Pit" (although it does have a patch of blue sky protruding through its dirt floor) by Bart John Meier line up adamantly in one camp or the other.

The most captivating work in the exhibition is a group of fanciful suspended silk and wire figures that float in a slow dance driven by air currents. The organic forms, made by Elizabeth Mesa-Gaido, have aspects of, for instance, sea horse, elephant, ballerina and swan, but together they appear as unique creatures that have seeped through a space warp from a world of possibility and wonder.

Nearby is husband Gary Mesa-Gaido's "1-24a," 24 painstakingly constructed wooden geometric forms covered with encaustic that are as colorful and ordered as hers are monochromatic and playful.

Other high points include the clever "Level Headed" altered glasses of Donovan Widmer; the smart feminist commentary "All in a Day's Work," an apron with a sash studded with Girl Scout-like badges for knitting, ironing, feeding baby, etc., by Leslie Ann Schug; Wade Kramm's refined interactive "Relative"; Michelle Ann Pajak's fine enamel "Cluster Collar"; and Patty Gallagher's and Akiko Kotani's always engaging exploration of the fiber arts.

However, one wonders what Blaine Siegel was thinking when he created his potentially offensive "Hitler, Moe and Jack," a take-off on a well-known automotive parts chain.

The Two-Dimensional Exhibition annually reminds that painting is not dead, no matter what the pundits may say, though drawing and prints also are represented, as in Howard Lieberman's strikingly large "Celestial Choreography" and woodblock prints by Mary Grassell, who masters the medium. There's truly something for every taste among the 111 works by 82 artists who show a range of technical skill.

Collage is most effectively used by regular exhibitors Mark and Jeff Zets.

Michael Sheets' hyper-realistic "Tool Series #9" and "Pie Reflections" -- that's cherry, with shining metal napkin holder, gleaming glass salt and pepper shakers and bottle of Heinz ketchup -- are flawless. Next to them is Steve Boksenbaum's "Counterpoint," which continues the diner theme -- his signature subject -- down to the Heinz bottle. Long applauded in diner aficionado circles, Boksenbaum here conflates realism and abstraction for a fresh look.

Others to seek out include three paintings by Stephen Fessler, who combines imagery and narratives from mythology, religious beliefs and oral tradition in unsettling scenarios; the evocative "Always With You" by Christopher Shellhammer (rose petals loosened by the wind fluttering across the room of an aging farm house) that is just real enough to be possible and inaccurate enough to be dream; and Ben Gersch's portraits, one with psychological underpinnings and the others, of a fireman and a policeman, straightforwardly iconic.

But there are many more works in all three shows than I have space to list that deserve compliment.

The Two-Dimensional Exhibition, hung in the pavilions in TrizecHahn Gateway Plaza Four, is open from noon to 8 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and noon to 9 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. The Photography Exhibition, at the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh Galleries, 937 Liberty Ave., and the Three-Dimensional Exhibition, in the PPG Wintergarden, are open from noon to 8 p.m. daily. The festival runs through June 23.