Art Seen: Last Frontier meets Far East in natural lacquer paintings

It was the Tai Chi that lured her in. Kathy Matta, of Soldotna, had a Chinese neighbor who liked to practice the mesmerizing physical art outside daily. Matta was intrigued by the practice, and eventually traded her English speaking skills and help with grocery shopping for his Tai Chi expertise. She eventually traveled to Fuzhou, China, for Tai Chi competitions, and was finally introduced to the art of natural lacquer painting.

It took seven years of returning to the area before contemporary artist Tang Minxue was willing to begin teaching her the strict and difficult discipline using what is considered to be one of China’s natural treasures. The subtropical climate is critical in the drying and polishing process, which usually takes a year to complete, but sometimes even longer.

Matta has been returning to study this art for nine years, and is interested in keeping the tradition alive and pure. Chinese television has produced two documentaries about her art and life in China, and numerous articles have been done on her life in Alaska. She says she lives in two of the best places in the world.

Matta grew up in New Jersey and studied at the NYC Graphic Center in New York. She is an accomplished watercolor and acrylic painter, but finds her most exciting niche in the lacquer painting she imbues with the natural pigments of mother-of-pearl, duck eggshells, silver and gold leafing and many colorful minerals.

The fresh natural lacquer is actually poisonous, related to poison ivy. It was originally used 700 years ago to coat coffins and housewares like pots and bowls, and was only later introduced as a painting medium. The visual effect needs to be experienced in person; a photo cannot sufficiently deliver the exciting effect caused by the luminosity of these mediums.

Because of the complexity of the pieces that are currently on view in a small but exciting exhibit at Frames and Things in the Blazy Mall, it can be difficult to discern which marks are the artist’s, and which are a pure outcome of the entirely unique materials. One gets the sense that the images have grown out of the medium, and as such have an organic birthright.

Her most successful and sophisticated works are those that have larger areas of visual rest but then also contain a solid composition, as in “Curiosity and The Drum.” Others could use a stronger design element to hold them together, with more effort toward breaking up the spaces more fully.

Matta is well-known for combining Native motifs with loving renditions of local animals, and the lacquer and eggshell effect is well-suited for describing our mountains and tundra. I would love to see what the artist could create nonrepresentationally with these fascinating mediums.

Matta’s variety of work can be seen in other venues in Alaska, including the Arctic Rose Gallery in Anchorage and Art Works in Soldotna. Her show will be on exhibit at Frames and Things until the end of March.

Zirrus VanDevere is a local mixed-media artist and owns Art Works gallery in Soldotna. She has bachelor’s degrees in fine arts and education.

Art Seen: Painter dresses up youthful art with advanced approach

The walls at the Gary Freeburg Gallery at Kenai Peninsula College’s Kenai River Campus abound with color and well-crafted design this month.

Al baio, a recent graduate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in New York City, exhibits a series of large paintings depicting young children in various animal uniforms. The paintings are done in Flashe paint, which is vinyl-based, and Sharpie marker. The Flashe paint is very guachelike, allowing for large areas of very flat color. She has been working exclusively in this medium for a year and a half, and color is obviously central to her work. I am amazed that a 22-year-old has such a mature sense of composition and form.

She says her experience of working on this first solo show was thrilling in every way. She also explains that her artwork has been focused on children and childhood for a while, with this current body of work primarily built around her memories and notions of childhood camaraderie. Growing up, she never had many friends and secretly envied all cliques she didn’t qualify for, no matter where their status fell on the totem pole of preschool popularity, she said.

The bright-eyed children in this body of work are unified by their attire as much as by their exaggerated facial expressions. Their animal regalia becomes a trademark of their solidarity, establishing the exclusivity of their gang. As they peer out of their Crayola-colored uniforms, a humorous vulnerability emerges, exposing them for the children they are.

Ellen Chambers, who curated the “Paper x3” exhibit at the college recently, discovered al baio while searching for artists to include in that exhibit. Baio’s work was in a juried exhibit for student work executed over the nonacademic summer months, and she won the Boit Award for her pieces. Chambers says she was impressed by the unpretentiousness and easy friendliness of the young, blue-haired artist, and could not wait to arrange an exhibit.

Baio has come through solidly on this first exhibit; it will be interesting to watch her career progress.

Zirrus VanDevere is a local mixed-media artist and owns Art Works gallery in Soldotna. She has bachelor’s degrees in fine arts and education.

Art Seen: Colorful variety at Kaladi’s shows

Both Kaladi Brothers coffee shops are alive with color this month.

Amy Warfle has photographs on display at the Kaladi Brothers on Kobuk Street in Soldotna. Although the majority of the pieces are wildlife or landscapes, the most successful are her human subject portraits. In “Abriel,” a child’s downturned face fills the image. Her eyes appear closed and her expression is befitting of a much more experienced and wise being.

In “Dress Up,” the subject, possibly the same young girl, sits in front of a large oval mirror in a big, white, floppy hat and a slip obviously meant for a woman. Her pose and expression are captured as the classic dress-up stance; the peripheral environment could not have been better planned (if in fact it was) as the metal chest, large woman’s dress shoes and perfectly aged door create the quintessential backdrop for the child’s play. It is either an expert studio shot, or just a really fortuitous catch.

The framing concerns me some; not just the lack of it, but also the fact that only one of these photographs incorporates a mat that could protect it against damage. Photos have a nonporous surface (unless they are digitally produced on porous paper), as does the glass these are pressed up against.

Moisture can get trapped between the two and make them adhere, sometimes irrevocably. Our environment is dryer than most up here, but I have still seen it happen many times. Using matting and backing board can also usually help with the rippling/waving effect that some of these pieces have occurring.

At the Sterling Highway branch, Donna Schwanke and Kathy Painter have a body of work on display that I first encountered at Odie’s sandwich shop. The two artists work in watercolor, Donna’s relaxed handling often in contrast to Kathy’s more tightly rendered painting (although “Counting Sheep” by Kathy is a wonderful exception).

What is interesting is most of the paintings were created jointly, and then signed with the name Vidalia Romeko. The combination works well. Excepting just a couple of them, namely “Berries and Cherries” and “Lemon-aide,” which have the cluttered, too-many-cooks-spoil-the-soup sort of feel, most of the joint ventures are strong, engaging and lovely.

Two particularly successful Vidalia Romeko pieces are “Landscape,” with rich deep tones and vibrant hues, and “Down the Creek,” in my estimation the best of the show. The latter is nearly fully abstract, but salmon shapes are discernible, and the energy created by the vigorous brushstrokes and the areas where the watercolor paints were left alone to do that crazy thing they do, is quite exciting. It is the kind of painting one could spend a considerable amount of time with and still feel one has not fully explored it. “Counting Sheep” is Kathy’s most successful solo entry, and Donna shines with her almost cartoonish and very playful “Tulips.”

Zirrus VanDevere is a local mixed-media artist and owns Art Works gallery in Soldotna. She has bachelor’s degrees in fine arts and education.

Art Seen — Many moose

I see moose. They’re everywhere. They eat our compost when times are tough. Sometimes they get in the way of our vehicles, and vice versa. I’ve had one try to cross a small bridge with me, bumping my car into the opposite guardrail, ever so gently.

They are mysterious and majestic, powerful, gangly and awkward, all at once. Regardless of how we feel about them, they are a common part of our experience, one that is explored with visual media in an exhibit that is a brainchild of Bill Heath’s, and presented by the Peninsula Art Guild at the Kenai Fine Arts Center.

“Only Moose” is an invitational exhibit Heath had been thinking about for years and put into action about a year and a half ago. Rather than send out invites to a list of chosen artists, he used a more casual approach by mentioning the exhibit in random conversations. Interestingly, the latecomers to the project were the ones to enter more pieces than those who had significantly longer lead time. The artists came through in typical Kenai Peninsula fashion, entering a wide variety of media, including photography (both classic and digital), graphite drawing, pottery, fiber, found object sculpture, oil, acrylic and watercolor painting, and pen and ink.

Many of the pieces are fanciful, like Donna Steele’s “Asneakin & Apeakin,” a line
drawing in India ink, and Pat Lytle’s sweet portrait “Amble.”

Much of the photography is of the expected “look who I found in my yard” variety, but Heath himself included two thoughtful pieces, both with the media description “photo-based artwork.” “Moose Ears” is a nearly iridescent-on-black image that feels as if one is looking through stained glass at the fireweed and ears-only hint of a young moose. In “Brown Water,” you find the adult moose swimming in shallow water, but the image has been so abstracted as to feel like a monoprint on rice paper or even something more exotic.

Genevieve Klebba’s interesting photographic entry is of a male and female moose in a marsh. The image is quite grainy, and the contrast has been pumped up, also giving the effect of some sort of printmaking. Timothy Oliver’s quiet watercolor, “Thriving,” also deserves mention. It is understated and lovely, rendered in surprising greens and blues.

One of my most favored works is a freestanding piece by Joy Falls titled “Moose Diaries.” She uses a skull, barbed wire, stone, pencil and paint to create a really fascinating sculpture. An imaginary diary sprawls across the skull, which is both comical and tragic.

Gaye LaRane’s watercolor/acrylic strips spin freely, each suspended from a spot in the ceiling. The tones are earthy, and the textures inviting.

I decided to execute a fairly traditional work for this exhibit, which I have realized is especially unusual, judging from the responses I’ve gotten. One woman who has seen my work for years expressed surprise that I worked representationally. It is called “Law of Economy,” and is a fairly large oil over acrylic on canvas of a mother moose and her offspring who shines purple in the nighttime light. The handling is fairly loose, and the mood verges on ominous. Rarely do I mention my own work in these articles, but I thought I would throw that one in. It was an interesting task.

Two of my other favorites surrounded my own on display: Pat Lytle’s “Drifting” done in soft pastel with swirled and cloudy glazing, and Anne Louise Gillilan’s “Signs of Spring,” a photo of moose droppings revealing themselves as ice begins to thaw in a puddle. The composition is good and the printing basically flawless, with a nice tonal range of blacks, grays and full whites. Both pieces say a lot with just a little.

We really do seem to love our moose, whether we are recording their aesthetically pleasing droppings, or telling a loving story, like in Pam Mersch’s “Harvest I,” in fiber, and “Harvest II,” in mixed media, where she visually explains the missing broccoli from her garden-acquired meal. And even more so when we are pleading for their welfare, as in “Traffic Control” a digital illustration by Chris Jenness. From the looks of it, these powerful, lovely creatures are a revered and adored part of our community, and are here to stay in our hearts and minds. The exhibit runs through this week.

Zirrus VanDevere is a local mixed-media artist and owns Art Works gallery in Soldotna. She has bachelor’s degrees in fine arts and education.

Art Seen: Water works

Pam Mersch discovered her love for art as an adolescent, painting horse portraits for her father. She had two aunts who were longtime active artists, and another who tried her hand at it but then focused all of her energy on her job helping the developmentally disabled.

Mersch’s mother, Gwen Thomas, was always an oil painter. That is until Mersch coerced her into taking a watercolor workshop in Oregon. Now Thomas is an avid watercolorist almost exclusively, much like her daughter. Mersch has done some “smoke paintings,” where she’s utilized the smoke from a burning fatwood stick to “paint” on paper. The effect is quite dreamy and intriguing. She has also done the occasional collage, sometimes utilizing her watercolor pieces in them.

Mersch received an associate’s degree in art from the University of Alaska Anchorage in 1975, and married Steve Mersch in 1978. He is a veterinarian, and Mersch spent many years working for his practice, as well as doing numerous other jobs, including volunteering for local arts groups like the Kenai Art Guild (aka Peninsula Art Guild) and Triumvirate Theatre. Throughout it all, she has continued to explore her artwork, delighting especially in the almost magical nature of watercolor.

Her work will be on display at the Funky Monkey in Kenai for October, with a First Thursday reception from 6 to 9 p.m. The lively piece “Trade” incorporates a new technique she recently picked up at a workshop in Homer. It involves thoroughly wetting both sides of a 140-pound weight piece of watercolor paper, then laying it flat on a gator board. The paper stays flat because of the water saturation, avoiding the pesky curling many watercolorists often contend with. The colors are also more lush and remain more saturated upon drying, and the brushstrokes are especially yummy.

Mersch has traveled to Italy for a workshop and recently lived awhile in Sherborn, a town in Dorset County, England. Steve had a stint as a resident veterinarian and Mersch used this opportunity to sketch and paint her new surroundings. Every Tuesday she walked into Sherborn to paint with a watercolor group. Tea was served promptly at 3 p.m., without fail. The watercolor group that meets here locally at the Kenai Fine Arts Center every second and third Saturday is a great source of camaraderie and inspiration for her, as well. (Call 262-7040 for information on that.)

I asked Mersch what her advice to aspiring artists would be, and she quickly responded, “Live it, breathe it; even more than I do. Experience as many mediums as you possibly can and be brave.”

And then she laughed, because sometimes we teach best what we most need to learn. Mersch’s work is certainly lively and curious, and any new direction she may choose to go is likely to yield inviting results.

Zirrus VanDevere is a local mixed-media artist and owns Art Works gallery in Soldotna. She has bachelor’s degrees in fine arts and education.