Paper and Steel at the Orangeburg County Fine Arts Center: A New Work

 

The exhibition Paper and Steel will be hung this Friday and open to the public May 5.  One of the latest and newest pieces I made for the exhibition is a drawing over an old abstract painting on mulberry paper.  The painting was essentially a monoprint using ink and alcohol to create swirling effects on what is often erroneously referred to as “rice paper.”  It was created several decades ago, was framed for an exhibition about thirty years ago, and had languished in my closet ever since.  It was time to bring the painting out from hiding and into the present.

The new drawing preserves much of the underpainting even though the entire context has been changed.  “Who was that Unmasked Man?,” is my new title for the strangely twisted face with thorny branches, riffing on The Lone Ranger question of my early childhood memory.  Here the simple face becomes a nightmare.  In fact, I found that I was not alone in having Covid-19 nightmares that generally entailed being next to a stranger without a mask.  

 The small coronaviruses in the picture were made with color pencil.  They were purposely made pale and understated.  The viewer would have to hunt around to spot them all.  “Who was that Unmasked Man,” like many of my paintings for this exhibition, can be read in more than one way, depending upon a person’s Covid perspective.  A person intimidated by science deniers, might understand the fear represented.  However, it would be possible for those who underplay the severity of our viral crisis to interpret the painting as overreaction and paranoia.  It will be interesting if two interpretative camps emerge at the upcoming exhibition.

Paper and Steel Four Person Exhibition at Orangeburg County Fine Arts Center New Work

 

Putting on an exhibition that has been on hold for over a year is like opening up a pre-pandemic time capsule.  In this time capsule lies the work of artists working in mostly black and white, stark forms that seem so well coordinated as a grouping.  Indeed it was planned that way, so that the entire exhibition would look like a well choreographed dance.

The new version of Paper and Steel, is mostly the same, but does introduce some modifications and current work.  How could we not be affected by the sea change of social unrest and a pandemic of biblical proportions?

My new work, “Killing One’s Brother with a Jawbone,” was created recently in response to social unrest, but also on a personal level, for my own unrest at having misplaced most of my drawings for this exhibition and wondering what I could do on short notice.  So I tore up an old drawing that I had made of Schiavone’s “Cain Murdering Abel” and superimposed the torn pieces onto an old abstract ink painting on mulberry paper.  The abstract painting had been done about thirty-five years ago and was languishing away in my closet in a frame that I wanted to use.  The torn drawing seemed to dovetail rather nicely with the old abstract painting, the swirling composition echoed by the swirling patterns of alcohol and ink.  

The title of the new work is a double entendre, with the secondary meaning having nothing to do with smuttiness, however.  In the original Andrea Schiavone painting, from which I had made a sketch on location in the mid 1990's, Cain is depicted striking Abel with a stag jawbone.  “Jawboning” is a phrase used to describe persuasion, pressure, or arm twisting verbal behavior.  Over the course of this pandemic year, I’ve often been wary of the use of language, especially if language hides malicious intent or stirs up hatred towards various groups of people.  The moment I placed the drawing on top of the painting, that sentiment was clarified.