In a small collage currently in the Fort Lewis College Art Gallery, a map, bits of a German newspaper and a 1969 car registration surround a tiny picture of an old car. The size of a postcard, Ursula Hudson’s work evokes a journey, perhaps immigration to America.
In a stitched drawing by Susan Moss at the Durango Arts Center Library, a grocery list drops down next to an awkward, meandering map. “Blue Notched Road” suggests a memory of a trip or errand.
In Louise Grunewald’s solarplate etching, “The Journey of Age,” the artist obliquely addresses the theme of the big DAC show, “Journey Stories.” Grunewald pairs an abstract image of a weathered rock with a text. The words compare nature’s ancient lines with human aging. It is a commentary on time and suggests another kind of journey.
The three works appear in different exhibits and contribute to a wonderful interplay of art and ideas. Hudson’s collage hangs in the FLC collage show, Moss exhibits in a solo offering, and Grunewald’s solarplate is among only a handful of works that respond to the theme set forth in “Four Corners Commission: Journeys.”
When there’s a disconnection between an exhibition theme and the show itself, it’s worth examining.
DAC’s Journeys came about as collaboration with the Animas Museum. The museum currently displays a Smithsonian traveling show called “Journey Stories.” The premise asks how we and/or our ancestors got where we are.
Somehow that got lost at DAC where most submissions hark back to previous Four Corners shows in which Western landscape paintings and photographs have often dominated the field. But participants were asked for more this time, to think through the theme of displacement, trial and travel.
The theme suggests storytelling not mere description. That’s where process and materials matter. Collage is a tempting process for storytelling. It combines imagery from different sources and by association spins a tale. Maybe that is why works in the FLC show seem to meet the Journey theme more fully than the DAC show.
Grunewald’s philosophical take on the theme rises above the rest by pairing an image with a provocative text. A few other works address movement and change, most notably Rhonda Polsfut’s acrylic painting of a truck packed to the brim heading up La Plata Canyon. Juror Jina Brenneman gave it Best of Show, perhaps partly because it directly addressed the theme
Upstairs, Moss, a professor of art at FLC, has experimented with a new approach to drawing. She took a sabbatical last year in which she combined her passion for drawing with textile art, notably embroidery.
Moss is a keen, exploratory artist, who filters her work through many sieves including conceptual frameworks. The show’s title suggests as much: “Improvisation, Restraint: new stitched drawings.”
Instead of pencils or charcoal, Moss has taken up embroidery needles as her drawing instruments, unabashed at how awkward the end result might be.
“In contrast to drawing,” she writes, “hand stitching is often a slow accretion of marks.”
So she has contrasted carefully executed marks with random, meandering stitches. You’ll see both approaches in each work, often with sayings and borders.
This is what experimentation looks like, and sometimes it’s childlike and seemingly naïve. Moss admits that her intention is to “create play between restraint and improvisation.” That many of the works suggest a journey is coincidental.
Besides Grunewald and Polsfut, those who seriously addressed the theme at DAC include Mary Kay Harrell, Esther Greenfield, Connie Voss, Kay Harper Roberts, B. Summer Lynch and Judy Hayes.
Theme shows are fascinating for those who submit works by exploring new avenues and for those who contemplate the unexpected results.
jreynolds@durangoherald.com. Judith Reynolds is a Durango writer, artist and critic.
If you go
“Four Corners Commission: Journey Stories,” Durango Arts Center now through Feb. 1, 802 East Second Avenue.
“Improvisation, Restraint: New Stitched Drawings,” by Susan Moss, DAC Library, now through Feb. 25; 259-2606.
Collage by Cecil Touchon and the Museum of Collage, Fort Lewis College Art Gallery, Art Building, now through Feb. 12, 247-7167.
