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Artfully Associated Annual exhibition is a colorful mix of traditional and contemporary Friday, September 25, 1998 By Donald Miller, Art & Architecture Critic
Regular viewers of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh annual not only weigh artists' work but also judge each year's juror. The 88th annual, opening today in the Heinz Galleries of Carnegie Museum of Art, will be no exception, although overall it has a different look.
The show of 172 works selected from 557 entered - consisting mostly of painting, sculpture and photography - blends traditional and contemporary pieces in curious ways. The exhibition is a large potpourri that takes some time to get to know but is certainly worth the effort.
Juror Carrie Prysbilla, curator of modern and contemporary art at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Ga., has put a unique stamp on the show. Her choices indicate she has a classicist's interest in fine pieces as well as a strong penchant for the unusual, if not quite way-out.
Prize-winning works are placed in the entrance space while a show-within-a-show in the last gallery honors the work of last year's annual award winners. Such an arrangement requires careful planning so that the assembled works make a strong statement together as well as singly. That total impact was missing when I saw the show Tuesday.
I also passed by one of the show's most unusual paintings, Clayton Merrell's "Claustrophobia Sky," assuming it was just another abstract. But on closer observation it is really an ant's-eye view of a cloudy blue sky with small trees arranged around the periphery. It is certainly one of the show's surprises.
When: It continues through Oct. 23. Hours are Tuesday - Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday 1-5 p.m. Associated Artists and museum are sponsoring guided gallery tours Tuesday - Saturday 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. This Sunday and Oct. 4 at 1 p.m., two artists in the exhibition will talk informally in the galleries. There will be family walk-in activities on Oct. 3.
Admission: $6; $5 for seniors; $4 for children, students; members free
Information: 412-622-3131.
Award Winners: Patty Baldwin and Brian Pardini, Aaronel de Roy Gruber, Joan Iversen Goswell, Lee Hershenson, Michael Hogle, Nancy Lips, Laura McLaughlin, Clayton F. Merrell, Charles C, Pitcher, Robin Richards, Marjorie Shipe, Mary Culbertson-Stark.
Carnegie Museum Of Art Purchase Award: Juliette Borda.
Westmoreland Museum of American Art Exhibition Award: S. Scott Steberger (includes art purchase and solo exhibition invitation).
The exhibition has a number of sculptures worth readers' attention. The most kinetic is Wade Kramm's "Between," featuring a metal rabbit running on a loud revolving belt under standing lamps. At the opposite extreme is James Nestor's "The Last Supper," a Robert Morris-like collection of unrelated objects joined by three pans of pennies welded in place by poured clear resin. The irony of the piece, with money substituted for divine goodness in a less than perfect environment, is open to various interpretations.
Perhaps the most astonishing painting is Ron Jesiolowski's "The Last Metamorphosis," a complex neo-surreal fantasy filled with strange creatures with genealogies ranging from Bosch to "Alice in Wonderland" to American surrealist Peter Blume.
Other powerful paintings are Greg Karkowsky's "Big Brother," of sheet metal and vinyl, looking like a robot crossed with King Kong; David Ludwig's charcoal-colored "Structure No. 9801," an exquisite minimalist painting in two asymmetrical parts; and Nancy Kountz's "Three IV," a series of divided panels with gold-leafed sides and softly scumbled surface colors that change with varying light.
The photography is particularly fine this year. Even though they are small, "Charity" and "Faith," the toned copper and blue-toned images of a 1920s porcelain figurine on silver photographic paper by Robin Richards, have a memorable ethereal quality. William Wade's "Not Alive No. 2," a group of bald and painted mannequin heads, has its own eeriness.
Also outstanding are: Aaronel deRoy Gruber's brilliantly sited toned photograph of the Union Trust Building's roof "chapels"; Donald Robinson's atmospheric "Four Mile Run"; Fran Gialamas' female "Riveter," a photo-assemblage of new refinement; Jane Haskell's computer-altered window grids; the perfectionism of AAP president Rich Brown's brick wall joining photograph and acrylic; and Lee Hershenson's assembled head shots of attorneys, rabbis, doctors and firefighters.
In sculpture, Patty Baldwin and Brian Pardini's glass box, "Professor Nutting 'Lightness of Being,' " is an object of dreams while Baldwin's "Spirit Spinner" (the piece turns on a crank) handsomely recalls both Rene Magritte and Joseph Cornell.
Jennifer Harrison's "Mother's Milk," a collection of nipple-equipped white canvas bottles set in dark soil, is, to say the least, enigmatic while Norman Ed's life-sized wooden "Bed/Vault" suggests the portable crematorium (there's room for you, my friend).
Major breakthroughs in the exhibition include Mary Culbertson-Stark's charcoal drawings of bodices that suggest the absent artist's self-portrait, Anna Marie Schnur's semi-surreal "Mourning Visit" and Howard Lieberman's masterful double self-portrait in graphite pencil. The expressionist quality of Ben Matthews' "Boxer," a blue-green painting with white serpent heads where the boxer's gloves would be, reveals a fresh talent.
In her juror's statement in the catalog, Prysbilla, a Minnesota native, says, "I strive to make sure that the art selected reflects the diversity of the work submitted while sharing a certain aesthetic rigor.
"The process is by no means scientific. In the end, I hope the works presented here reveal a rich cross-section of the work being produced by Pittsburgh's artists. My thanks to all who entered for sharing their visions with me."
She has done a solid job. But the special show-within-the-show idea, announced last year, needed special orchestration to ensure a stronger total statement.
The Associated Artists has never worked harder than recently. Within weeks it held a benefit to show off its new elevator and renovations to its building at 937 Liberty Ave., opened a two-person exhibition there and planned the annual. Alyson Baker, Carnegie curatorial assistant who has a New York gallery background, oversaw a challenging installation. Many works are small so the galleries are not crowded.
By all means see this latest and largest flowering of Pittsburgh's artists.
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