Julia Weber
Staff Writer
All art — in some capacity or another — is colorful, but not all art is color forward. The first floor of Strohl Art Center is an homage to color and its many, many manifestations. Curated by Susan and John Turben Director of CVA Galleries Judy Barie, “Fields of Color” is on view now through July 20.
“I am always thinking about color and texture and how the combination of color of the object and the texture of the object go together,” said Paige Tibbe, one of the exhibiting artists in “Fields of Color.”
Adorning the walls of the gallery, Tibbe’s oil paintings invite viewers into intimate landscapes combining the natural world and domestic scenes. Tibbe views their paintings as an exploration of self, navigating the changes in their life and translating these personal experiences into universal ones.
“I think a lot of my work is trying to visualize all of those shifts that are going on inside me everyday,” Tibbe said, “so it makes sense that my pieces are also mirroring this expansive idea and this ever-expanding thing that’s going on inside of all of us.”
Nearby, Yura Adams’ paintings depict wildlife and the natural world as she sees it from her studio. Action scenes are translated into abstraction, evoking from viewers a sense of dynamism and energy.
“I use an abstract language because I want it to be unspecified (with) more emphasis placed on the viewer’s perception. So I don’t use realism in my work, and I also wanted the freedom that abstraction gives me at this moment,” Adams said. “This language comes out of an improvisational interface with what I see, what I gather and how it comes out in the end.”
In contrast to Adams’ action-packed nature paintings, Greg Chann’s sculptures bring a stimulating, transcendent feeling to the gallery through his carefully-composed geometric creations.
“I try to counter it with another element or art, and I always want to keep the viewer’s eye on the piece, so it’s a continuous journey,” he said.
The meticulous sculptures — made by assembling acrylic cubes and cuboids and airbrushing them with colorful pigments — leave no artistic detail unfinished, but Chann leaves the interpretation of his work up to viewers.
“Every viewer brings with them their own life, their own perspective, their own history,” he said.
He emphasized the breadth of ways in which artists in the exhibition are foregrounding color in their work.
“When I look at art, when I look at that exhibition and there’s a theme, ‘Fields of Color,’ it’s fascinating how everybody has their own interpretation and their own vision, and they’re all different,” Chann said. “Creativity just fascinates me.”
Cascading down the walls of the gallery are James Harvey’s textile works. Years ago, following a concussion, Harvey said he experienced a unique visual phenomenon in which he saw multiple images layered over one another.
“Through the use of multiple layers of this delicate fabric, along with ink and brush, I create compositions that evoke moments suspended in time,” Harvey wrote in his artistic description. “My work hovers between the figurative and the abstract, presenting ghost-like images that seem to draw breath and vanish into the ether. Limbs and faces emerge with clarity, while others recede, inviting viewers to engage with the mystery that permeates each piece.”
Sarika Goulatia’s oil paintings, less abstract than the work of some of her peers in the exhibition, draw attention to cultural issues like immigration and natural disasters. Her “Palisades” series is heavily abstracted, with brush strokes bringing movement to the boards on which they are painted, while “We Move, Therefore We Are!” couples figurative paintings with pigment washes in reds, blues, pinks and purples. She said she sees her artistic practice as a way to foster reflection within viewers.
“We are all travelers, and not only (in) this country but in this world, we are travelers. I want us to reflect on that,” Goulatia said. “What do we want to leave behind? What do we want our legacy to be?”
While Goulatia’s paintings interrogate identity through sense of place, Mia Tarducci’s abstracted paintings draw on her own identity through her own understanding of a sacred place. Initially inspired by the paint drips decorating the floor of her studio, Tarducci found herself feeding off the rich relationships she found between colors.
“Seeing how they all relate together and how they can all be sort of mismatched and displayed in any configuration, to me, is exciting because it’s a way of keeping the work vibrant and alive without having it be stationary and stagnant and there’s no room for discussion — it is what it is,” Tarducci said.
For her, shifting in scale and to a more modular configuration was pivotal as she developed this new body of work.
Centered in the room, pedestals elevate Adam Kenney’s blown glass vessels for viewers to see up close. Kenney’s practice often interrogates relationships between forms and surfaces on functional vessels, departing from the two-dimensional work of some of his peers while keeping his attention on the relationships between colors and textures.
“I find certain combinations of materials and shapes pleasing, and I always have,” Kenney said. “I’ve been working in different materials — glass and steel and wood — for over 20 years to try to put compositions together that feel good to me and hopefully to others.”
He works in a variety of materials, but the works on view in “Fields of Color” are glass with wood bases. For Kenney, the process of working with glass attracts him most to the material.
“It’s intensive, and it’s physical, and then it’s very finite and very brief compared to other craft processes,” he said. “I’ve always been drawn to that most.”
While the artists in “Fields of Color” work in vastly different mediums, materials and concepts, they find commonality in their desire for viewers to engage in the art and come to their own conclusions about the work on view.
“If someone is interested in art — now I recognize that there’s many areas of interest in the human community and not everybody can have the same level of interest going into a gallery and want to stay and try to understand — but just like in nature, I can walk through nature and just walk through it, or I can walk through nature and notice,” Adams said.
“It’s that perception, that desire to be open to perception that can make things richer in my life, whether I’m in nature or I’m in a gallery trying to understand someone’s work for the first time,” she added.
