MULLEN at LINDSAY. LIZ AT COMFEST.

HURRY, hurry, hurry! Better than coney islands and as hot as electronic rock at COMFEST, KARL MULLEN'S Outsider paintings will shimmy on the walls at Lindsay Gallery 986 North High, at least thru July 4 and maybe longer.


The soft spoken artist hails from Dublin -- not Dublin Ohio -- and is now a resident of Pittsburg where he has been honored by several major awards and grants. Luckily for us, his unusual paintings visit Lindsay Gallery once in a while, once in a green moon I am tempted to say.


For twenty years Mullen has shown in Canada, Ireland and the U.K, and his weird dreamlike paintings -- yes,they are representative -- and narrative -- often present crudely drawn personae. Like, like leprechauns and -- first graders' drawings! The guy knows literature and old books; sometimes his odd figures appear against pages of ancient tomes. He says his dreams are important to him -- I asked him -- and if you like, off beat skilled and original. KARL MULLEN is the guy! (he uses, or he has been known to employ, such weird "media" as lamp soot, walnut oil, street soot, sumi ink, you name it.) His musical band has just the right poom and oom, we hope he comes back soon. Go, see, buy!


P.S. I'll be reading with some terrific poets on Saturday night -- check the schedule -- at COMFEST, I think in the Arts Tent. Check the schedule. It's almost midnight and my eyes are giving out! -- Visit Lindsay Gallery and see Karl Mullens "Primitive", "Dream Like" art He's a quiet, one man COMFEST!!

JUNE 2009 BUSTS OUT WITH ART!

FIRST DAY for the COLUMBUS ARTS FESTIVAL, this time near the one, the only Columbus Museum of Art!--I'm going down there tonight because Thursday is always a special night,and George Tooker will be there! (I hope we're brave enough to negotiate that Arts Festival traffic!)

MICHAEL BAUZA PhD.,will read his poetry at AREOPAGITICA BOOKS at 7:30pm on June 26 He'll read WORD MUSIC! (my title.) Bauza's newest work is based, or rather undergirded, by his attentive love for chamber music, -- even though much of his writing is not ABOUT chamber music! The writer holds a PhD in chemistry and works at Chemical Abstracts. This should be a sophisticated and unusual evening. There is always an open reading at AREO, 3510 N. High, and the imposing ghost of JOHN MILTON is usually hovering around the stacks, and the literary canine, Townsend, keeps watch on the readings and readers.




MORE THAN ARTSPARKS: TAMARA JAEGER's tall, unusual, and pleasingly wacky wood sculptures -- SELECTED ASSEMBLAGES -- will show at the impeccably lovely KENY GALLERY, 300 East Beck, thru JUNE 26. This show is a don't miss because it is substantial and quite unusual. -- Walking thru the exhibit this writer felt that she was wandering in a dream forest where she met characters from fantastical fairy tale books!! Many of the assemblages are taller than real people, and their flat wooden bodies have been painted in flat primary colors -- which are never dull, even when they don't shine!



















JULIA McLEMORE's RECENT FLORAL PHOTOGRAMS are an absolute delight! These BIG flowers, and parts of flowers, are -- well, mind blowing, in that their design and color come straight from the natural world! McLemores artist's statement generously explains her process, but not the surprise that her works give to beholders. McLemore's work, with Jaeger's, will be on exhibit at KENY thru June 26. More information and images at www.kenygalleries.com



ERNEST LOCKRIDGE is a painters' painter. That is, he is agile at painting technique! -- Yet,the end results are not at all conventional. Color and imagination are the wellsprings of his work! Lockridge's CONVERGENCE shows at the CCPBA Gallery at European Papers, 539 East Town Street, until August 29.















The exhibit includes two large and striking images of Monarch butterflies who pause and fly with accuracy and elan! They're big! They're identifiable at a distance, and they remind us that we,as earthlings, stand at a "convergence" at which earth is in peril. (My interpretation.) Lockridge is a retired professor of literature; he taught at Yale and at the Ohio State University. The titles of his paintings reveal the liveliness and the variety of subjects of his paintings,some of which are rich with glimpses of a trip to Iceland.

TITLES: Aphrodite; The River Goddess, Boann; Force of Nature; Penelope; Saffron Robe; Proteus Rising from the Sea. -- You can find more images and info at www.ernestlockridge.net. I believe Lockridge's reputation as an artist will grow as time passes. He is original and his work has substance.

Click on each image to see a larger version. Use the back arrow on your browser to return to Liz's blog.

LISA HALL: POET WITH A PALETTE!

What gorgeous surprises! On a recent Sunday when I needed an art infusion, I found not only a delicious art exhibit, but a gallery space which was new to me! CATERINA Ltd., 571 South Third Street in German Village, Columbus, Ohio, is a tall historical old German Village building. Inside it you'll find color-full-state-of-the-art-pottery and kitchen-ware, and many imported objects which are to die for. --Yet, on the third floor you'll find a bonafide and spacious art gallery! --Caterina Gallery, of course!

HIGH SPIRITED, an exhibit of LISA HALL's medium to large size oil paintings will show at CATERINA through May 15, and they are quite good, quite pleasing, and quite original in an understated kind of way.

In 2008 Lisa and her husband rode motorcycles through the Alps, and the artist stopped to capture the mountainous and pastoral countryside. --Yes, you'll find a small white church nestled in one green mountain valley, and you'll see gorgeous snows and meadows! --You'll find that Hall knows how to "blow you away" with warm (and cool) muted colors! --She's a genius at thickly applied brush strokes --she may use a palette knife, I forgot to ask! --And she understands texture.

Her yellow sun rays dance. The greens, blues, and lavenders she harvests from the natural world become gentle choreography. Some of her landscapes resemble weavings. --Look closely, look from far away!


On TOP OF THE WORLD, the painting which became Hall's post card image, is the closest the artist comes to pure abstraction in this exhibit which is, despite my reluctance to label, "an example of abstractionism with just enough hard edge." The artist has managed to be derivative without being passé. To conclude: when you see Hall's poetic mountain-scapes "you'll want to go there." --These are definitely paintings to live with.

(Click on the image to see a larger version. Click the back arrow to return to this blog.)

In the hall SUSAN ASTLEFORDS's glorious blossoms made me think of Shakespeare's sonnets -- his birthday is in April,-- and DAVID PHALEN's photographs are first rate. --Especially the warm and friendly bar scene in Wales. --I'm Welsh-American so I may be prejudiced, but Phalen is darn good. --I'm darn glad I discovered CATERINA!

POETRY AT THE RIFFE!

DEAR READERS: March 27, 2009 I'm writing from a not so good space in illness, but I want you to know about an event at the Verne Riffe Center Gallery, 77 S. High St., on Sunday, March 29 at two p.m. --- Maybe I'll be there, maybe not.

MIMI CHENFELD, FRED ANDRLE, WIlLIAM FABRYCKI, (with me, Liz!) are THE UMBRELLA POETS OF COLUMBUS, and they will give a reading honoring poetry and the visual arts. DAVID FRANCIS SMITH and CRAIG MCVAY will be guest poets. The current RIFFE GALLERY exhibit is Visual Dialogues, which presents art from Germany and Ohio.

Here's my prosaic offering: (abstractions exist on their own merit, but I boldly let these tell short short prose poems to me!)

I.
MY FEELINGS ASSUME COLORS AND SHAPES
when I look at Green #5 by Jana Morgenstern!
Behold: Circles, tubes, abdominal curves, the intestines
of a gorgeous April.
I'm searching for spring! --- I'll love stepping barefoot!
Ah, they are so green, these curves and shapes of art.
As I stand here writing, I can taste spearmmint!

************

II.
BLACK #7 BY DETLEF SCHWEIGER
is my Dresden Ink Blot dress! --- It's so NOW!
Cut on the bias from a piece of charcoal!
Look, I'm a cold-hot-charcoal-piece-of-fabric
when I slip it on.
Years ago, my first art teacher, Miss Josephine Lee,
in Fostoria, Ohio, taught me about
dyeing Queen Ann's Lace, taught me
about Coco Chanel's little black dress.
Taught me how to use my imagination!
And so, today, I muse, "I'll write some
designer lines for Black # 7 by Detlef Schweiger.
I'll tape a map of Ohio to my left shoulder
and locate the Riffe Center in Columbus, Ohio!
--- And look, --- an orange dagger, a good luck patch!
And look, I can see haute couture against mottled snow!
Voila! I can feel stylish and chic
and do anything I want to, and go where I want to go
in my little BLACK #7 ULTRA DRESS!"

Here are some more of the abstractions in the Visual Dialogues exhibit. Click on each image to see a larger version.

GLORIES: VIVIAN PITMAN AT LINDSAY

Wearing elegant, yet simple, Africa-print dresses and matching head wraps, Vivian Pitman and her mother, the artist Barbara Thomas, welcomed guests to their Lindsay Gallery Opening on Friday, February 27. It was a gala evening. Guests and glasses sparkled. Vivian's unique and bright paintings almost jumped off the wall, and so did the more sedate renderings of her mother. All of the small, puppet-like dolls seemed to breathe, even though they are cartoon-ish and stout and dance without strings!

When I asked Pitman what her dolls were made of, she replied, "clay. And anything I need to use and find to use."












Pitman is a self taught artist. She seems to dance, like a break dancer, between colors, words, and "schools" of art. Her liveliness surpasses the terms "primitive" or "authentic." She is unafraid to use bright reds, greens, yellows, purples. She knows how to create textures and surfaces, and she will not reveal her secret: how she uses sand in her creations.

Her composition -- sometimes elementary, sometimes random -- is always effective. Expressive. As in Expressionist! In THE DEATH OF LINCOLN, Pitman, at her most elementary, has depicted the martyred President as resting, his corpse strangely tube-shaped, on bright grass surrounded by a color guard in bright yellow shirts! The crudely painted soldiers are firing a salute, "as they would for a President," Pitman said. An encirclement of creatures that resemble merry go round horses -- or reindeer -- surrounds the scene. And everything dances together. --As I recall, this is a scene in which a grotesque blood red Bird of Death is veering.-- A Pitman may be child-like, but it is rarely, or ever, "cute."

Vivian employs words; most of her paintings include titles or phrases. You'll find an ALPHABET OF SLAVERY: "A is for African, torn from his home. B is the bloodhound to catch all that roam. C is the cotton plant. . ."

One of the small stout three-D puppet-like dolls represents "Eta Moten, singer, actress, hailed as a pioneer for black actresses."--I had to look her up!-- Pitman "saw Moten once in a movie." And many remarkable personages will be seen at this Lindsay show. You will learn much. For example, Virgina Hamilton, who wrote books for young people, is represented.

The slogan,"Only Love Can Drive Out Hate" is visible. So is a heart wrenching Klan Whipping, and a Lynching, and the admonition "KKK. Leave the negro alone!" (in which blood drips from the white man's club!) Gazing at these grotesque depictions we are reminded of the ferocity of anarchist posters that blossomed before and between World War I and II. They said it like it was.


Pitman celebrates history and narrative in a unique way, and she is, indeed, worthy of the title, Griot. History bearer and tale teller. Lincoln, Martin Luther King, yes, and nearly life-sized President Barak Obama, are much in evidence. In one painting the wonderful young President, in profile, wearing a classy green sweater -- I just know it's cashmere -- looks admiringly at a recognizable, if stout, Martin Luther King. They are both happy because Barak Obama has fulfilled The Dream. A wide Stars and Stripes provides a background for the two gifted leaders. In one painting Obama-as-Hero seems to have morphed into Spider Man!

OOOPS! One of Pitman's most outre subjects, unique but not offensive, depicts women sitting at a long table, similar to that in the legendary Last Supper. However,Pitman's "supper" presents, not traditional disciples of Jesus, but women who are squirting breast milk at each other! Pitman said this painting was inspired by Women Who Earn Money by Selling Their Own Milk!

IN OUR TELEPHONE INTERVIEW Pitman revealed that she works part time, is a Christian who loves her church, and that her art career started when she began making ladies hats and selling them. Her mother, Barbara Thomas, a strong yet more conventional artist, has always encouraged Vivian.

About her own art Pitman said, "it's kind of a gift, like a talent for throwing a baseball. You're born with it, but you have to practice. I'm still learning."

She added, "I'm patient and strong, and I can work hard." Pitman likes to listen to jazz and all kinds of music. She is not immune to the power of dreams. And she is wonderfully proud of her sister, the novelist GWANDINE THURMAN who recently published ETHIOPIAN PRINCESS. (see www.kingdomnovels.com.)

Pitman is "engaged" or engagee as the French used to say about socially concerned artists. She was definitely not born with a gold paint brush in her hand. In fact, Duff Lindsay, gallery owner and curator, first discovered Pitman through a contact at The Mid-Ohio Food Bank.

The current exhibition reveals a wide sweep of concerns and subjects, which, like the proverbial maiden in a fairy tale, Vivian Pitman has woven into a mythical assemblage of paintings, dolls, and sculptures.


Click on each image to see a larger version. Then click on the back arrow to return to this blog.

Lindsay Gallery is located at 986 North High in Columbus, Ohio. 614-291-1973. VIVIAN PITMAN will run thru March 21. See photos of the Pitman reception.

MARCIA EVANS ON LINCOLN

When I dropped in at Marcia Evans Art Consulting Gallery, 8 East Lincoln, to see the current exhibit, I blinked with pleasure at the large abstracts glowing on the walls. These acrylic paintings by BJR, BRIAN REAUME, are vivacious yet sedate, and their color intensity is warm, not hot! --- Here are beautiful, if not provocative, contemporary paintings.

The artist employs, if loosely, a range-of-colors-and-geometric aesthetic which is "Now" yet "Classic." BJR is a self taught emerging artist with a Masters in literature, and the titles of his paintings describe a mood, an inner journey:

• My idea begins with a story. . .
• Brand New Wish. . .
• This space was designed around me. . .
• I was just going to. . .
  

BJR is quite a facile painter; he knows about hues and layers. He knows how to make colors and shapes dance! His no nonsense abstracts reveal a lively spirit, and his work is decorative in the best sense of the word. His large paintings are perfect for various offices and corporate sites and for many gracious living spaces.

DAWSON KELLOGG, Professor of Art at CCAD, is the glass half of this show, GLASS & CANVAS. Kellogg's tall vessels, at least the ones at "Marcia's," average around 18 inches tall and have a classic urn-like shape. Of translucent glass, they usually emphasize one radiant color, one clear glass tone, so to speak, which has been augmented by compatible hues, chromatic blurrs and shapes, within. Deep blue, for example, enhanced by various blue and purple swirls within. Kellogg, like Reaume, is a Now-yet-Classic master.

The opening reception for Glass & Canvas included live jazz and hors d'euvres, and was quite well attended. THE EXHIBIT CLOSES SEPTEMBER 30.

Next up at Marcia Evans will likely be a SALON show with works which may or may not include paintings by one of Marcia Evans' most sought after painters, JOHN DONNELLY, Professor of Art at Mount Vernon Nazarene University. Donnelly's zany and flowing interpetations of everyone and everything --- from Marilyn Monroe to Mona Lisa to a rooster crossing the road --- I think I saw that --- present the hallmarks of a strong and practiced painter!

LINDA WESNER's* colored pencil renderings of rural Ohio have won top national awards. In an inimitable understated (Wesnerian) way, they're breathtaking!

Donnelly and Wesner are but two of the many fine artists who have been exhibited by Marcia Evans. Marcia Evans moved from Granville to her current site, 8 East Lincoln almost two years ago. She has been working successfully as an art consultant for twenty years. She has a diamond cutter's eye for choosing art and art objects from the Mid West and nationwide. She and her gallery can be summed up in a few words. --- New York sophistication with an (Ohion's) - hard-cider-zing!

CAROL PHILLIPS WITT lives in Granville, Ohio, and her smallish, sun-toned, nature-informed "plates and vessels of pressed clay" are to die for.

MARCIA EVANS is open 11-5 Tuesday-Saturday and by appointment. 614-298-8847.

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*note: Linda Wesner's colored pencil renderings will be on exhibit at Ohio Wesleyan's Richard M Ross Art Museum in Delaware, Ohio, thru September 21st.

IMPRESSIONIST WOMEN,-- THEY'RE HOT!

Midwestern Visions of Impressionism will show at the Ohio Arts Council's Riffe Gallery at 77 South High in downtown Columbus until October 12. You will find my article about this wonderful exhibit in the current (September) issue of The Short North Gazette. The exhibit stars several pretty women, so look for them. (Unfortunately I've lost my exhibition list so I'm flying by the seat of my flowery wash- and-wear skirt!)

Believe me, Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman was not lovelier than the slender youngish woman in Morning Sun, as painted by Pauline Palmer. ( I think around 1920, perhaps earlier. No matter.) The time is morning; the scene is a sea side hotel room with a high ceiling. Near a huge window the pretty woman sits at a make-shift vanity table likely arranged by the artist herself. Perhaps the slender young woman in gauzy and layered "morning" attire IS the artist herself! A wood frame stand-up mirror is her mirror and she's making herself up, the way the painter is making this painting up! The window is tall and wide and beyond it is the bay, the sky, and the LIGHT fills everything. --- It's the light, guys, how you paint light! --- Yes, the pretty woman is, quote, "illustrative,"--- She's a magazine cover for all time. --- You want to call room service and order a French press (coffee) and chat with her.


Mary Holland Bacher, 1891, by Otto Bacher (1856--1909) (Click image for a larger view.)

In 1891 Otto Bacher painted Mary Holland Bacher his wife, an artist. Her long, full tennis- whites dress, possibly a blouse and skirt,with its big dippy lace collar, was likely made to order by a dress maker. There were visiting dress makers; they would stay at your house while they sewed clothes for you, and you didn't have to be especially rich. --- The white chapeau --- sooo 1890s --- is topped by a big white rose! Mary sits --- notice I use the present tense --- leaning forward in a straight backed wicker chair, probably in her own back yard, to pose for her husband. She poses, of course, in natural light that filters through shimmering leaves while daisies glow like dim stars toward the back. Mary's fingers, grasping the tennis racket, are strong. --- She's a painter! Her wrists are small. She's a lady, a no nonsense woman-lady. Her face is thin, sweet, earnest --- she looks straight at you, and, if you observe carefully, you notice sensible brown "athletic"shoes peering from beneath the ruffled skirt.

I know Mary is accurately dressed in the tennis playing vogue of her time because I have seen very old photographs of my father's aunts playing tennis in Marion, Ohio, around 1900. Sometimes they played croquet and wore similar dresses and once in a while a very young guy named Warren G. dropped by and joined the crowd. Aunt Letty wouldn't let him smoke in the house. But that was later.

The Midwestern Visions exhibit allows us to time travel. Good painting orbits beyond time!

EXCELLENT EXHIBITS

GETTING REAL at High Road Gallery in Worthington is an eclectic and enticing show which closes on August 24, this weekend. This article is belated but the show was so good that I wanted to congratulate the exhibitors and the High Road Board.

One wouldn't want tastes in art to return solely to a realist emphasis, but this exhibit proved that Realism is alive, well, and a many splendored thing! The exhibit includes/included many paintings that made me say "Wow!" AND, the exhibit included at least one painting that is likely to, eventually, earn a place in the collective art memory of our nation.

TOM BAILLEUL'S RAINMAKER really packs a punch and deserves its Best of Show Award. (The Board of High Road, all of them art professionals, educators, artists, juried the show.) Baillieul's art is precise, not rigid, and is color-full. The man is an ecological scientifically based artist. --- Yet, paradoxically, one might describe his art as talismanic, or symbolic --- as in religion or analytic thought!


RAINMAKER. This large, strikingly simple "canvas" was painted in acrylic with dull yet lustrous paints. The figure of the Rainmaker stands "open to" and "against" unidentifiable darkness which has been rendered in subtle dark bands. --- That is, he, or she, stands in the night, or in the underground, or in a prison, or perhaps in the darkness of our collective souls. --- YOU decide. From some where above a single trickle of rain, a lit string, hits the Rainmaker' s right hand which is cupped in his left. He, or she, becomes an iconic and/or symbolic figure. Youthful, yet ageless, he stands tall, receptively, wearing an old white-gray shirt and long baggy trousers, faded, of course. The artist knew exactly how to use simplicity and where to cast light from a mysterious source onto the Rainmaker's solemn face. And he knew that the Rainmaker would likely wear his hair in a long loose pony tail and not in a Mohawk or a crewcut. --- Perhaps my analysis of Baillieul's intent is incorrect, but nevertheless --- Rainmaker is iconic!

You can find Baillieul and his talented other half, the fabric artist Deb, on their website --- But, of course, the Rainmaker should be seen live and close up! Baillieul is a scientist by profession. He has lived in Third World countries, has seen the borders melt between magic and science. From "aboriginal" people he has learned how to telegraph an instant image that goes beyond written language. --- PINK ALERT! My aesthetic radar tells me that its likely a herd(!) of Baillieul's pink flamingos have nested at Camelot Cellars, 958 N. High.

SUZANNE! At this writing the amazing Suzanne Gallagher, portraitist and painter, has a studio at High Road Gallery.--She's the artist in residence. If her studio door is open or if you knock she may invite you in to see her in progress and completed art works.

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW closes on August 30 at Weisheimer Gallery in First UnitarianUniversalist Church 93 W. Weisheimer. The exhibit is open when the church is, which is most of the time before 9 pm. In the worship center, John Dickinson's "The Salvaged Cabinet 2007" filled me with awe. Realism on speed! You must see it in order to appreciate the dignity and the detail. The oil can, the cabinet itself, the T square . . . And Karen Rush Jones' dancing red trumpetflowers . . . And Claire Hagan Bauza's yellow barn and . . . A fine show, but too late to cover it now. . .

CLAIRE HAGAN BAUZA'S IRELAND: IMAGES FOR A SACRED JOURNEY will run until August 30 at Jung Haus Gallery, 59 West Third Avenue in Columbus. This exhibit, in its variety and depth, provides a solid yet lively retrospective of a visit to Ireland in 2007. Here are paintings that are abstract, representational, and yes, impressionist and expressionist! Hagan Bauza is an earnest painter --- imaginative, skilled, hardworking and prolific. Her use of color is alive in its variety and warmth, yet it is never rash. There are ten watercolors and ten oil paintings in the show. Among them you will find plain spoken scenes melded with legend. You will find hints of emerald and purple! --- There is not much time, so I hope these titles will lure you in: Tree Spirit; Glendallagh Valley; Kilkenny, Early Morning; The Stones that Wept; The Rock of Cashel. And my favorite, Madonna of theBirds. --- Hagan Bauza's art is not photo realist. Yet, it reveals subtle, authentic --- and sometimes mythical, glimpses of the Irish countryside, --- its bridges and outbuildings, and, of course, its trees, stones, and enchanted waters. Irish eyes will certainly be smiling. Jung Haus Gallery, despite its rather abbreviated hours, is a gorgeous space located in the lovely, impressive building that is the C.G. Jung Society of Central Ohio. Hours are 11 am to 2 pm Tuesdays-Saturdays but it's best to call first, 614- 291-8050

from an INTERVIEW WITH STEPHANIE SYPSA

She's a romantic with a cutting edge. Columbus resident Stephanie Sypsa graduated from Columbus College of Art and Design in 2004. She hails from near Biloxi Mississippi, which is "just a hop,skip,and a jump fromNew Orleans and the Gulf." She has been married to Jason, a mechanical engineer, for nine years. Jason also is from the South, and "we love our visits there, and lots of family stuff." Sypsa possesses a strong sense of history. When she visited Dresden , Germany, during her OAC residency, she was haunted by awareness of the World War II bombings, and by the then recent damage done by HurricaneKatrina in the U.S.
When Sypsa visited Rome (during the residency) she was fascinated, indeed, engaged, by monuments, reliquaries, burials,cemeteries.--When I asked her what she was reading, she replied that she had been "spending most of my reading time on researching memory and memorials. I was struck by that feeling in Rome, how we need to connect, need connection to those gone before.. And memory. . . how we need to be remembered. I've been reading about
that, especially as regards Victorian times Funeral wreathes,hair lockets, that sort of thing.
I've even been researching light machinery from that period."
Sypsa appreciates photography, and incorporates photographs into her art. Yet, she
states, emphatically, "I am not a photographer.--At CCAD I was lucky to study art, painting and drawing. I did have a photography class that inspired me. In it I learned much about old time photography. I learned traditional stuff--Brown tones. Old nasty chemicals. Not digital.
I learned how you could color photographs, like painting!"
Stephanie and Jason like to travel, at home and abroad. "I love traveling," Sypsa said.
"We've been to Costa Rica, New Zealand, to Paris. Dresden. Rome. And, of course, we look at art, and I do take photographs.--I'm an over documentarian!"
Like most visual artists Sypsa likes to listen to music, and there again, her tastes include
"some vintage." She loves the music of Jeff Buckley "who died young and had such a beautiful voice. And I love Billie Holiday who died a long time ago."
Recently, Sypsa began to work out of a new studio in Grandview. She remains excited about belonging to the Phoenix Print Making Collective. She enjoys working at Riffe, especially being a teacher or assistant at Family Days.
"What's good about the Columbus art scene? New groups are emerging and merging. There's a new art scene in GrandView--Their gallery hop is huge! The art scene is what makes Columbus special. If not, I wouldn't stay here!"
Connections II, Ohio Artists Abroad, is open until April 8 and exhibits fourteen very contemporary and agile artists who created work during OAC residencies in Germany, Poland,and the Czech Republic. It is a varied and cerebral show and you are bound to see things you like and love and puzzle over.
The Ohio Arts Council's Riffe Gallery is at 77 S. High St. in Columbus, Ohio in the Verne Riffe building. Admission, like the best in art, is free.

STEPHANIE SYPSA at THE RIFFE

At the Riffe Gallery's Connections II, Ohioans Abroad exhibit STEPHANIE SYPSA's images serve as striking talismans for Women's History Month. Or Herstory month!
ENCLOSED IN GRAY MATTER I. consists of progressive images, three presentations of a young woman's vintage, somewhat colorless, face on three separate 8x10 inch papers. The first image is stark, earnest, unembellished. The second and third reprints of the same face have acquired overlays, marks,. . .symbols. Although Sypsa wants to convey the idea of "vintage" --the collar, the sweet earnest visage, the hair drawn back, parted in the middle--she has chosen images that lend themselves to chronological ambiguity. She suggests , I think, that we, as women, are stamped, or patterned, by cultures and events.
Superimposed marks, blocks, patterns--suggest the necessity of women to conform at home or in the work place. Yet, the same repetition can also symbolize the power of connection. Combining photography, xerox, prints,reprints and overlays,
with--graph paper, clear plastic, straight pins, and yes, thread --Sypsa conveys aspects of regularity and repetition, even factory work.
In the haunting AFTER IMAGE OF A YOUNG GIRL, photo lithograph, pins on paper, (24 x 36 inches) a single , indefinite , woman figure glows.--Well, part of the woman's face glows! So does part of her arm, and a purse--or midriff--no matter.
The purple-black-wine-velvet- background dominates, envelopes the woman.--Yet she shines thru! Her environment is Jung's "Dark" . Standing inside it, the woman calls to us from a distance,from the past, most likely. Thru stark , nearly primitive , rendering
the young girl becomes iconic, archetypal We can imbue her with meaning: Our mothers, their mothers,our sisters, our selves.
Sypsa earned her bachelor of arts at Columbus College of Art and Design in 2004. She has done free lance work for the Columbus Museum of Art and has taught continu
ing education classes for CCAD. In 2006 she took part in an Ohio Arts Council international residency at the Dresden Graphic workshop in Dresden Germany. She is a gallery assistant and preparator at the Riffe Gallery. Her phone interview follows.--Happy Women's Day, everyone!