When the medium really is the message

Bobbie Allen

On a blank sheet of paper, the words I choose and the structures of

my sentences generate what is generically called “style.” The

genetics, so to speak, of creation play a part in this for all of us.

English (in my case) is the medium, with all its mongrel-dog history.

And as a speaker, I work with both the limitations andstrengths of

the language, and of myself.

Understand this, and you know something of what an artist faces

when he or she chooses to work with certain media. Sometimes artists

talk about the medium choosing them, as when Michelangelo spoke of

freeing David from the marble. Choosing oil over acrylic, for

instance, requires patience (it dries slower), knowledge (it’s harder

to apply) and some knowledge of chemistry (it’s harder to mix).

But resourceful artists can make the medium part of the message.

Cybele Rowe sculpts large-scale ceramics. She takes advantage of the

elemental, earthly nature of her medium and its traditional use as

the primary material for vessels to suggest a “feminine” art.

“Longer Boat -- Bronze” is an amazing example of this, currently

at William Merrill Gallery, 611 S. Coast Highway.

The first thing that strikes you is that this is a very large

piece of ceramic (70-by-12-by-9-inches). It’s canoe-shaped, mounted

horizontally, and is indeed dug out, with the same kind of marks you

would expect to find inside a handmade wooden boat. This also plays

with the medium -- one alluding to the other. Like the ceramic plates

in your kitchen cabinet, it’s glazed to a glossy surface, which

indicates Rowe works with a very large kiln.

The outside of the “boat” is an Anglo flesh tone, almost

birchwood-colored, covered in tattoo-like whorls and lines done in a

dark earth brown. There are fine lines engraved into the clay where

glaze has deposited in richer shades. But the inside is a deep

crimson red. The overall effect is a totally organic, fleshy boat,

both container and contained.

As anyone who has made a finger pot in junior high art class can

tell you, it takes a lot of experience to be able to predict what a

glaze is going to do in the kiln, or even to know what temperature to

fire the pot. A wrong choice will cause the glaze to run, or the

piece to shatter.

Rowe must work both with and against the qualities of her chosen

medium, and must do so in a way that will create a unified work of

art. In other words, she must sculpt the clay and allow the medium to

speak for itself.

Dustin Utterback works with sheet metal as a canvas. This totally

unexpected use of a medium has led to some unexpected innovations.

His work floats on the walls of “784 PCH” (the gallery is awaiting a

new name) because it’s suspended on magnets. They are mostly color

studies, with very high gloss and surprising texture. Utterback

allows the heavy quality of the paint to work for him, applying it in

thick layers, full of bumps and brush marks -- even carving it out to

allow the underpaint to suggest figures or to blend in the viewer’s

eye.

If you’ve ever taken your can of Rust-Oleum out to the garage to

paint the lawn chair or whatever, you know the whole aim of

high-gloss enamel is to avoid brush marks or thick spots (“apply in

thin coats” the directions will say). Utterback is treating it like

oil on canvas, only sheet metal has absolutely no adhesion

properties, so the paint doesn’t stick. The artist overcomes this

limitation by using it as a destination, rather than something to go

around.

“Into the Light,” one of a series, depicts a human figure with a

long, straight shadow picked out in grass green underpaint with

flecks of blue and yellow. The top layer of paint in vermillion is

applied with tiny brush strokes in an almost pointillistic way. The

metal’s thinness gives the painting almost no sense of weight.

The magnets that hold it project an inch or so off the wall,

allowing the work to be tipped or turned at will. It also means that

the painting of a shadow itself casts a shadow on the wall behind it.

Very often as viewers, we’re most impressed with the surprising

use of typical materials. There is an enormous canvas by Guy Paquet

(also at William Merrill) that dropped my jaw with its mastery of

oil, and with the amazing awareness of what a large canvas can do to

the spectator.

“Reaching the Big Band” is flat, flat, flat blue: not a brush

stroke to be seen across its 60-by-84-inch surface, the very

antithesis of high-gloss enamel. It is the precise blue of the sky at

that exact moment when the sun has set and you know it’s night, but

the stars have not emerged.

You know this, because at the very bottom of the canvas, low hills

in the distance are dotted with the white and yellow lights of an

invisible town. The dark blue hills are across a body of lighter blue

water, a lake. In the foreground, pale yellow grasses in a narrow

band closest to the viewer frame the scene. They shouldn’t be visible

at this moment, but they grant us a sense of depth so we give the

painter poetic license to depict an impossible lighting condition.

All this flatness, the absence of texture, then, is really conveying

miles of depth.

But all this blue is really there to direct our attention up, into

the air, where, just to our left, a small figure floats impossibly on

a bicycle laden with drums and musical instruments, orange and green

streamers trailing, diligently pedaling skyward.

We are clearly in a dream. The slightest hints of glazing bring

the lights of the town, the brown of his trench coat, to our

attention. The high detail makes it clear to us: this is all

perfectly normal, you see. It’s the very texture of the canvas, its

matte surface, so difficult to achieve in oil without looking thin,

that makes this vision possible. With incredible restraint on the

part of the artist, he allows vast stretches of canvas to remain

empty of everything but color.

Is it a dream? The limitations of language prevent me from

answering that question for you. The limitations of the photo won’t

answer it for you, either. You’ll have to go look at the painting,

and see for yourself.