SOURCE MATERIAL: A GLIMPSE INTO THE ARTIST’S STUDIO
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The current group show at the Center for Contemporary Art takes up this theme in an unexpected way. The 14 artists were invited by CCA director Kathy Cottong to display their artworks along with other materials from their studios. What’s presented, dispersed throughout the gallery’s four rooms, with one or two installations per wall, are actual studio materials–snapshots, postcards, sketches, souvenirs–juxtaposed with a few pieces of each artist’s work. Like the Vermeer painting, these installations offer a controlled view of the artist’s studio. In general, however, the artists in this exhibit aren’t so much making statements about the importance or function of art as they are revealing the connections between an artist’s everyday life, interests, and surroundings and his or her work. There’s a caginess to the Vermeer–he doesn’t really let us see how his mind works, he doesn’t even face us. These artists, on the other hand, while differing in the degree to which their installations are autobiographical, invite us to view their creative processes.
Pinned to the wall in David Lefkowitz’s installation is an assortment of postcards, baseball cards, photographs, sketches, tiny abstract paintings on wood (of the same size and format as baseball cards), and felt pennants that have been painted over by the artist. On a shelf in the midst of all these images is a postcard rack, the brackets of which contain landscape paintings on wood approximately three by five inches. Many of the landscapes, like real postcards, present attractive scenes: rolling hills and lovely blue skies. But the few that include evidence of a human presence have a disturbing, even ominous feeling. One of them features two workmen in the foreground, a gray path or road behind them, and a lush cluster of trees and shrubs beyond the road. The crowded green background throws our attention back to the two oddly dressed men: both wear protective suits, helmets, long orange gloves, and heavy boots. One is entering a manhole (which is in the grass, not in the road) and the other stands and watches him. The protective clothing indicates either the presence of something toxic or an extreme fear of nature. Another postcard painting, of a sunset over a lake, also shows man’s negative effect on an otherwise unspoiled landscape. Far in the distance, tiny smokestacks spew gray clouds into the glowing sky; the gray paint literally muddies the pink and yellow.
These are thoughtful paintings, clearly not hurriedly done. They bring to mind John Berger’s statement that “A drawing of a tree shows, not a tree, but a tree-being-looked-at.” Douglas’s images are accumulations of countless moments of looking. Through the patient process of becoming acquainted with her vases, she gives them an indescribable significance. It’s jarring, then, to look at the actual vases on the table: they seem so ordinary compared to their painted counterparts.
