“Anteater at Night.”
Central to “Wonder & Awe,” a solo exhibition from artist Ash Eliza Williams in Strohl Art Center’s Bellowe Family Gallery, is a large, nine-panel oil painting of an anteater wading into a pond. It represents the so-called natural world, as all of the pieces in the show tend to do.
But Williams avoids earth tones to color the world that they spotlight, favoring cool blues and grays across the 33 works. The resulting scenes suggest midnight or pre-dawn moments, broadcasting an alien chilliness that provides a new view of the world outside the vision of humans.
“Ghost Moth.”
This anteater, for instance, is alone but for some leaves and fish. In other words, the creature isn’t alone at all.
Williams’ artist statement says they’re “driven by a deep sense of wonder and curiosity about the non-human world.” Through oil paints, clay, wool, metal and found rocks, the pieces in “Wonder & Awe” investigate that realm with great scientific intrigue that never radiates stuffy academia. The works are closer to fantasy landscapes than textbook drawings and remain minimal and streamlined.
All told, the exhibition — which runs until Aug. 20 — offers a vision of communication that exists where our human eyes and lenses are simply not present.
As such, Williams centers craters, clouds and beings of the deep, like whale sharks and jellyfish, as well as of the woods, like beetles and porcupines. For an image of the latter, Williams’ brush raises its sharp spines high into the sky, raising them like signaling flags.
In doing this, the artist shines light on the concept of communication through dualities — two separate entities sharing an interaction. One small sculpture of a rock reveals a hole in the top. The painting behind it shows a flood of winged insects floating into a light beam, as if entering inside. Another reveals a furry bear arm reaching up behind a moth.
Williams renders another, more formidable moth splayed open in billowing white lines, like a circulatory system. Opportunity, menace, incidental mirroring — communication can take many shapes.
The anteater, though, perhaps best typifies Williams’ interesting take on the natural world as conveyed through purple hues. Williams painted each panel separately before joining them; the color varies slightly from each one, and the lines do not sync up perfectly at the edges.
This approach underscores how human attempts to connect aren’t always successful, and neither are those between creatures in the natural world.
Moments of emphasis, where warm colors creep in, work well. Absence of earthy colors and reliance on cool tones makes Williams’ reds, used sparingly, really pop. The glow of a peak, recalling Williams’ upbringing in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A fox burning across a horizon. And on that portrait of an anteater, a curling tongue on the hunt for the creature’s next meal.
Pieces by Ash Eliza Williams are displayed in “Wonder and Awe” in Strohl Art Center’s Bellowe Family Gallery.
A smattering of “blushing” rocks, per the titles, personify earthen material and create an intriguing thought experiment. Do rocks blush? Can they feel exposed?
The scientific answer — rocks have neither adrenal glands nor blood — is far less interesting than the work Williams brings to their oil paintings on paper.
The exhibition, curated by Associate Director of Chautauqua Visual Arts Galleries Erika Diamond, ultimately reminds that life goes on both with and without humans, and that this is not some kind of platitude. The natural world always exists apart from us.
“Wonder & Awe” presents an almost – voyeuristic look into its beating heart while reflecting the unique eye of its artist. We wonder, and we should be awed.
Patrick Hosken is an arts writer for Rochester’s CITY Magazine and an adjunct professor at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School.
