Yesterday, on the way home from picking up the gallery wall lettering for my show in November, I stopped at the MOA, Museum of Outdoor Art indoor gallery to see a show of paintings by Virginia Maitland and photographs by Sally Stokhold. Let’s talk about those first.
Mailtand’s work presented in the large lobby space just outside the gallery, shows the influence of abstract expressionism, particularly color field painting in its exuberant use of flowing color. Colors stream across the canvases in veils of color that create a sensation of depth and mystery. Close up, I enjoyed seeing textural variations in the application of the paint. Top: Peekaboo Canyon; bottom: Through Dark Fires
Stokhold’s large photographs, shown in the smaller interior gallery, feature her own image sometimes depicting famous female artists and other times herself as women who were important to art movements such as Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. As I understand the process, these are not collaged images but involve backdrop painting, creation of costumes and Stokhold’s photographing of herself in the completed set. For example: Gertrude and Alice, 27 Rue de Fleurus, Paris.
The big surprise was the exhibit in the main part of the gallery, a show called Weather Suspended. Imagine walking into a space with hundreds of clear plastic pinwheels, whirling about by gusts of wind from a phalanx of black fans.
The show is part of a Design and Build program for college interns to expand ideas about art. All along the walls were various floor to ceiling visual representations of various forms of weather. You could first guess what each kind of weather was and then lift a small tab by the piece to view the label. The panel on the left was hail.
Panel on right was hurricane.
This photo shows a walk-through experience of cloud. I was the only one in the gallery at the time and as I moved through the thin strips of white paper there was a wonderful gentle rustling sound like whispers.
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