Art Seen — Artists Without Borders show offers lots to look at

Artists Without Borders has another group exhibit in the conference room upstairs in the 4D Professional Building on Marydale Avenue and the Kenai Spur Highway.

Sometimes the exhibits have themes, which can increase the creative input from participants (last month’s was “The color of music”). Occasionally, it will be a solo endeavor, but mostly the exhibits are open to any and all. There is no formal group that meets, but rather, an e-mail list that word goes out to regularly. Anyone wishing to be a part of the list can call Karen at 262-3958.

I would describe the current exhibit as cute, with an abundance of pieces popular for decades here on the Kenai Peninsula. Clear exceptions include Donna Schwanke’s pieces, and an entry from Kathy Painter titled “Peacock Gone Wild.”

Schwanke’s “Taking Risks” was the people’s choice, understandably, as it is a vibrant piece with unusual textural handling. The medium is represented as watercolor on textured canvas, but the brushstrokes are so severe and the paint so shiny and plastic feeling, I would have guessed this was done with a polymer of some type.

The composition is solid, and the colors are uplifting without feeling corny. The piece is so inviting and unusual, it needed a notice posted to keep viewers’ hands off of the canvas. It’s been fun to watch Donna stretch and experiment these last couple years, and her work is really starting to garner attention. One might call her “up and coming,” if she’d allow it. She is generally quite demur when complimented, simply professing a great love for creating her work.

Another piece with an interesting aspect is “Wild Horse Canyon” by Sherry Collins. She has used an oil knife rather than a brush, which creates much of the visual interest in this work, as it is pleasingly loose and textural. Her horses appear to be sort of floating in space, however, something I’m not thinking she intended.

Melinda Hershberger has displayed some really lovely and controlled brushstrokes in her still life “Apples and Ball Jar.” It is executed in oil, which can be a messier and potentially unruly medium as compared with others, so her skill is to be appreciated. The creamy colors used in defining the cloth are delicious.

Georg-Anne Phillips has done a nice job on the whimsical “Raven Love II,” a small but accessible painting.

I am pleased to see the interest in creating and displaying art that this exhibit represents. It would be a great benefit to our community if more of the artists took their interests a step further and sought training and education in the visual arts.

Kenai Peninsula College has an excellent program, with knowledgeable and patient instructors. Being in a school environment can open up a person’s perspective and world significantly, and can provide the impetus for expressing one’s self in unique and fortifying ways.

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: Exhibit is new page in art book

When I walked into the Gary L. Freeburg Gallery at the Kenai River Campus of Kenai Peninsula College, the lights suddenly turned on. A motion sensor has been installed, probably to help the college save money on electricity. But while I found myself engrossed in the subtle and strangely intense exhibit, the lights quit on me no less than four times. A minor irritation, to be sure, but each time I felt a spell was broken.

Brenna Burns’ delightful Kozo (mulberry) paper installations have the breadth and depth to take viewers outside themselves, or inside themselves, if they are so inclined. Each lightly hanging piece incorporates quirky little drawings of cocoons, pods, creatures and dresses with blocks of writing, only sometimes legible, which serve to create varying textures on the already texture-rich handmade paper.

The words span from statements like, “the body is the garment of the soul,” to, “you’re not ready to know” (which is what I felt when I couldn’t read the words on some of the pieces, like a secret teaching I knew I could gain access to only when I was truly ready). Sometimes the repeated words feel like a mantra, other times more like the frenzied babblings of a manic-depressive. In others yet, like a detached factual statement, repeated in an offhand manner.


These works really seem like an archeological find, delicate transcripts depicting ancient practices, some areas torn, or bunched, or overlaid to varying effect. I found myself wishing I could literally surround myself in this element, in a paper house of sorts, enjoying the way the material responds to only slight movements around the room.

To quote the artist, who is also a writer based in New Haven, Conn., “Mulberry is the preferred food of silkworms, and I enjoyed this connection between the insect nature of the paper and the insect nature of the images I was working into the paper. Kozo also has a sound to it — it rustles and flutters without much provocation – and this struck me as another nice kinship with the insect world.”

The exhibit is called “Paper x3,” because of the three artists represented.Each have been involved in their own type of exploration into paper. Rhoda Rosenberg’s connection with paper was brought to the surface (I think I mean that as an intended pun) while she was learning printmaking in the 1970s.

“In etching, I fell in love with black ink. The surface was seductive. Instead of using the process to make images that I already had in my mind, I began to find images through the process.”

Each is a mono print and the artist has reiterated that point by writing 1/1 in the signature area. Her work is quite sensual and visually strong. I would like to see more of it, and on a grander scale, perhaps.

“Exhale” by Nicole Seisler, her only piece in the exhibit, is a series of chunky handmade papers, displayed so they are set off the wall and create nice shadows. The paper does not seem unlike those created by students in any number of printmaking 101 classes across the country. All of the artists appear primarily process oriented. And while printmaking and papermaking are imbued with seemingly magical properties themselves, it is Brenna Burns’ work that haunts me with its magical, whimsical and inherently thoughtful approach.

At the turn of the millennium, there was a summit called to decide what a time capsule should optimally contain that would not be opened for another thousand years. After much discussion (who knows what operating systems or even electrical/energy systems will in use by then, since metal does weird things in space and is heavy, etc.) it was decided that something on paper would be the best choice.

Paper, even though it can wrinkle, mold, get crispy and yellow from an abundance of tannic acid, fall apart or simply dry out, is a surprisingly long-lasting element when properly cared for. So cheers to paper, times three, in all of its glory and subtlety. Thanks to the curator, Ellen Chambers, who pulled it all together, and a special kudos to Celia Anderson, who makes things like this happen at our local college.

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: Long lens — Photographer finds new uses for old medium

Joe Kashi has been taking photographs since he worked during high school in a photo store while growing up in the Pennsylvania coal fields. While at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during college and graduate school, he was news editor of the MIT newspaper and simultaneously worked for The New York Times, taking dozens of photographs each week with a 35 mm Pentax while covering Boston’s tumultuous events of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

He studied fine art photography for a time under Minor White at MIT. White was a prominent American photographer and photographic educator at MIT who founded the national fine arts photography journal Aperture and edited it until at least the mid-1970s. For about 40 years, Minor White had been a close friend and collaborator with Ansel Adams and other pioneers of the American photographic fine arts movement.

Later, while at Georgetown Law School in Washington, D.C., Kashi started working mostly with large-format view cameras that made 4-by-5-inch through 11-by-14-inch negatives because of their inherently higher quality. He often spent Saturdays in those non-Internet days at the Library of Congress researching older but higher-quality photographic chemistry and processes. He still uses these large format cameras from time to time but now makes detailed scans of the negatives and prints them using digital printers rather than chemicals and darkrooms.

Kashi moved to Alaska in 1977 when he accepted a job offer to become one of the first attorneys for the Kenai Peninsula Borough. During that time, he did a good deal of large format photography and some of those photos were accepted into several statewide and Kenai Peninsula juried all-media fine art shows. He taught fine art photography and darkroom work at Kenai Peninsula College for a few years and also had a small, part-time custom photographic processing business in those chemical darkroom days.

The demands of a full-time private law practice were high and he put aside fine arts photography for more than 20 years. He had learned a great deal about aesthetics from his first wife, Michelle Corder, now deceased, who had quickly become a prominent fine arts painter in Alaska, with state commissions and work in various museum permanent collections. Corder was formally educated in painting at Carnegie-Mellon in the United States and also at the Italian State Art Academy in Florence, Italy.

Kashi started using digital photography for practical legal purposes in 2003 and found that digital photography, particularly when annotated or used as part of an interactive electronic brief made with Adobe Acrobat, could be an extremely powerful weapon for the trial lawyer.

By mid-2006, Kashi found that digital photography, even when using carefully chosen compact consumer cameras with good lenses, could produce results that were equal to or better than traditional 35 mm film and chemical photography. So he again tried his hand at fine arts photography in addition to family photos and the photo documentation he routinely used in legal practice.

His photos were accepted into a number of statewide juried shows since then, gaining an honorable mention in the 2007 Rarified Light show. His stepdaughter, Rachel Lee, also was accepted into the 2007 Rarified Light show. He and Rachel shared an Anchorage show in December 2007 through the Alaska Photographic Center, and both were accepted into the 2008 Rarified Light show. Kashi also has been invited to participate as one of 50 photographers statewide for next year’s invitational show commemorating the 50th anniversary of Alaska statehood.

Many of Kashi’s works are contemplative and dynamic. Some of his more accessible work can be seen adorning the walls at Mykel’s Restaurant, including the 24-by-36-inch landscape photographs above the stairs near the front door. He and Rachel will share a show at Art Works in Soldotna for November and December, with Kashi exhibiting some of his more “artsy” stuff. An artist reception will be held Nov. 6. He is also hanging a series of photos documenting the passage of the seasons at Veronica’s Cafe at Old Town Kenai in October.

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.