Gallery greats: Local shows put a wide range of stunning work on display
Michael H. Hodges / The Detroit News
If the economy's got you down, here's tonic for a sagging spirit -- spend some time in an art gallery and see how culture can soothe the anxious soul.
Read on for a look at six of the most important shows happening this fall at galleries across Metro Detroit.
Bettina
Edwards
'Annabel Elgar: Part I,'
'Corine Vermeulen-Smith: Dioramas'
and 'Early in the 21st Century: A Group Show'
October 18 - November 22
Opening reception: October 18, Saturday, 6-9pm
Museum of New Art
7 N. Saginaw St., Pontiac
Noon-6 pm, Thursdays-Saturdays
(248) 210-7560 or
Two solo shows and one group show -- all photography. Gallery director Jef Bourgeau calls Annabel Elgar's tableaux, "gently eerie -- with a story going on in each, but you can't quite figure what it is."
Elgar favors jarring juxtapositions -- like the initially cheerful image of a little girl riding her pink bicycle, oblivious to a couple nearby locked in fiery embrace.
By contrast, with "Dioramas," the Dutch-born Detroiter Corine Vermeulen-Smith offers computer-manipulated, panoramic fantasy landscapes that are at once utterly gorgeous -- and not-quite-right in some oddly satisfying way.
The group show, "Early in the 21st Century," features work by Bettina Edwards, Cynthia Greig, Kelly Rosebrock, Tom Stoye, William Sadovsky and Jack Summers.
'Jane Hammond: People, Places and Things'
Friday-Nov. 29
Lemberg Gallery
23241 Woodward Ave., Ferndale
11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays
Artist reception 5-8 p.m. Friday
(248) 591-6623 or www.lemberggallery.com
New York artist Jane Hammond believes in the liberating power of limits -- at least, that's the way Darlene Carroll at Ferndale's Lemberg Gallery puts it.
In "Jane Hammond: People, Places and Things," the works are all based on a limited "vocabulary" of 276 borrowed images Hammond's manipulated and combined to produce rich, mysterious mixed-media compositions.
That vocabulary includes everything from maps to butterflies to images from the Kama Sutra.
The works at Lemberg are silver gelatin prints crafted from meticulously created, multilayered photographic collages.
"Jane just throws the rule book out the window," Carroll says. "She's fascinating. Brilliant."
If Hammond's name sounds familiar, it may be because she also has a show -- "Jane Hammond: Works on Paper" -- at the Detroit Institute of Arts through Jan. 10. Hammond will speak at the DIA on Oct. 15. Call (313) 833-7900 for information.
'Kathleen McShane: Fixity's Rainbow'
Saturday-Nov. 26
Paul Kotula Projects
23255 Woodward Ave., Ferndale
11 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays
Artist reception 5-8 p.m. Friday
(248) 544-3020 or www.paulkotula.com
Kathleen McShane, a Cranbrook Art-grad living in Bloomfield Hills, has made a career out of stretching the ordinary limits associated with drawing.
"Fixity's Rainbow," at Ferndale's Paul Kotula Projects, gives good evidence of this adventurousness, with two new series of drawings that some will find rather esoteric, and others will see as engaging and humorous.
For his part, Kotula says, "I like the intimate quality, the physicality of her work."
McShane's "Strata Structure" series employs meticulously drawn skeletal frameworks that the artist then frames.
By contrast, her white papier-mâché "rocks," with their fluid black edges, call to mind the late Jean Dubuffet's eccentric white-and-black sculptures, like "Monument with Standing Beast" outside Chicago's James R. Thompson Center.
'Ron Isaacs: Goes Around Comes Around'
Through Nov. 8
Robert Kidd Gallery
107 Townsend St., Birmingham
11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays
(248) 642-3909 or www.robert kiddgallery.com
You can be forgiven for thinking the works in "Goes Around Comes Around" at Birmingham's Robert Kidd Gallery are nothing more than beautifully staged dresses and suits, often with leaves scattered on them.
Look closer. What Kentucky artist Ron Isaacs has created are meticulously crafted trompe l'oeil, painted sculptures -- made from hundreds of thin pieces of Finnish birch, glued together and laminated -- that marvelously deceive the eye.
"They're magical in that sense," says gallery director Ray Fleming. "It's a tremendous combination of painting and sculpture."
'Ellen Phelan: Kenjockety -- A New Series of 24 Prints'
Through Nov. 15
Susanne Hilberry Gallery
700 Livernois Ave., Ferndale
10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays
(248) 541-4700 or www.susanne
hilberrygallery.com
With "Kenjockety -- A New Series of 24 Prints," Michigan native Ellen Phelan gives us a suite of painted photographic prints that feel, in many cases, almost neo-impressionist. The show is up at Ferndale's Susanne Hilberry Gallery. But the neo-impressionist characterization undervalues the thoughtful distortions this New York City artist has worked on these archival ink-jet prints.
Phelan starts with a landscape photograph, which she then paints, generally in both watercolor and oil versions. These are then scanned and printed.
The results are, in gallery director Susanne Hilberry's words, "uncommonly beautiful. Ravishing, really -- and extraordinarily painterly."
'The Last Days of 1984'
Through Nov. 8
Zeitgeist Gallery
2661 Michigan Ave., Detroit
10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturdays and by appointment
Closing party 7 p.m.-midnight Nov. 8
(313) 965-9192 or www.zeitgeistdetroit.org
An irreverent, not to say savage, attitude toward the political establishment takes center stage at Detroit's Zeitgeist Gallery with "The Last Days of 1984."
Curated by educator and artist Eric Mesko, the show includes many well-known local names, including Marilyn Zimmerman, Nicholas Koenig, Roxy Lenzo, Stan Gilliam, Hugh Wilbert, Korea, Brian Coutts and Mesko himself.
Gallery director Jim Puntigam calls the work "dark" and "powerful," singling out Koenig's in particular.
"I like his collages because they're definitely political. He's young -- like 19 or 20 -- but his work is strong."
Also on view through Nov. 8 is a series of photographs of the artwork Detroiter Maurice Greenia Jr. painted on the corpse of the old Hudson's building, pre-implosion.
You can reach Michael H. Hodges at (313) 222-6021 or mhodges@detnews.com.
