LOST AND FOUND
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Publication: Journal Santa Fe Section; Date: Aug 5, 2011; Section: Gallery Guide; Page: S8
LOST AND FOUND Artist turns discarded junk, glazed stoneware into witty assemblages Art Issues MALIN WILSON-POWELL For the Journal
We are awash in junk in America. For artist Polly Whitcomb, the high desert climate of northern New Mexico combined with the rural practice of using all manner of discarded metal objects for erosion control in arroyos has produced a treasure trove of inspiration. Whitcomb has been living in Ribera in the Pecos River Valley for the last fourteen years, and, about eight years ago, she began dragging home rusted bedsprings, rakes, bicycles, sections of heaters and wood stoves with fire scale, along with roofing tin mottled by weather or slathered with patches of tar. In her second solo exhibition of assemblages at Patina Gallery, Whitcomb’s work delights with sophisticated, playful juxtapositions. Titled “Reverence for Rust,” it features 23 current pieces wittily emphasizing spatial presence and the material properties of just-the-right piece of scrap she untangles from her mess of rusted metal. She does this with the unlikely, yet successful, device of adding to each composition glazed stoneware pods and flattened spheres that she fabricates. These well-integrated plump spheroids and seed shapes suggest robust, germinal potential in counterpoint to the desiccated hunks of junk. The whirly spirals of “Spring III” make great shadow play in a vertical composition peppered with rusty tin-can tops and poufy stoneware disks, some with a mustard glaze interspersed with others coated in a metallic teal shade. The arch of the linear frame billows forward to create an active belly sprouting wonky curls of wire that reach toward the viewer. Whitcomb’s predominant aesthetic is an eccentric mix of sheer, down-home, do-it-yourself joy, and, of all things, Constructivism. Constructivism, an international movement that arose out of the 1917 Russian revolution, crossed all disciplines, including architecture, industrial and graphic design, theater, film, dance and fashion. While Russian Constructivists’ grand utopianism intended to create a wholly new culture, Whitcomb’s intentions are shot through with modesty and maturity. In addition to her own obvious pleasure in creating resolved and quirky combinations, her assemblages are a one-on-one invitation to precise, sensory observation of new objects. In addition to this legacy from the Russian formalists of “making strange,” other similar properties include animated geometric shapes, strong directional graphic components, and open spatial structures. Most of these assemblages reveal a perpetual awareness of movement that simultaneously retains both centrifugal and centripetal possibilities. There is a great range of velocities and changes in dynamics from contained poise to vectors of energy so vigorous they seem to pierce the gallery walls. Approximately half of the work is in a hand-held scale that Whitcomb showed at the gallery two years ago. The other half are in a larger format, more akin to human-body scale, ranging from 36
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inches to 56 inches on their longest side. The artist notes, “With a larger playground there is greater scope for more complexity and more clear space. In general, I’m not a proponent of ‘bigger is better’ but in this case there is a feeling of freedom, of disregarding issues of weight and simply following where the materials lead.” Although separate parts often appear to slip, slide, wobble, jut, flutter, swoosh, or ping, each piece coalesces into an utterly individual and coherent tone or mood. You can almost hear these differences. The spindly, bent elements (windshield wipers) of “Mantis” have a definite twang; the spherical cone and blue orbs of “Circle Dance” evoke an expansive, harmonic music of the spheres; and, “Fandango” has a hot, insistent rhythm. They beg for a musical interpretation by a modern Mussorgsky, the Russian composer of 10 suites for “Pictures in an Exhibition” in 1874. The nuances of the relationship between color in the found objects and the glazed stoneware pods demonstrate great finesse tempered by both restraint and boldness, i.e., whatever is needed for resolution. Myriad surface textures forged by the weather are deftly deployed, as is the use of the void in such pieces as “Night Song,” an automobile window frame augmented by pipes and tilted pods that suggest forward propulsion. Although Whitcomb studied painting at the University of New Hampshire and went to the Yale Art School, her life changed direction. From 1970 to 1983, she lived at the Rochester Zen Center, and, in 1987, she arrived in Santa Fe. For decades, she has supported herself by making elegant tableware and tiles. Her assemblages have an adroitness that comes from many years of hands-on response to the physicality of objects, and they bypass the traditional distinctions drawn between art and craft, or between the numinous and the functional. They are improvisational mysteries and made with no preconceptions as to their character and usefulness. With the termination of the exhibition, Whitcomb is moving her studio, and the choicest New Mexico junk she has scavenged and can’t bear to leave behind, to her native state of Vermont. Her move brings to mind the dilemma faced by Bruce Connor, a master of assemblage, upon moving his family to Mexico in the early 1960s. He returned to the U.S. after only a brief stay, because he couldn’t find enough junk in Mexico, where every piece of scrap metal was re-purposed. Undoubtedly, there will be caches of trash to be picked through in Vermont, but it won’t be desert-cured New Mexico trash. The results will be on view at the Patina Gallery, which has plans for another show in two years. This afternoon, it is hosting a conversation with the artist at 4 p.m. If you go WHAT: Polly Whitcomb: “Reverence for Rust” WHERE: Patina Gallery, 131 W. Palace Ave. WHEN: Through Aug. 21. GALLERY TALK: 4 p.m. today CONTACT: 505-986-3432 or allison@patina-gallery.com
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COURTESY PATINA GALLERY ABOVE: Polly Whitcomb creates a hot insistent rhythm in “Fandango,” a wall sculpture assemblage of found objects and glazed stoneware.
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RIGHT: Polly Whitcomb uses great finesse in setting up relationships between color and found objects in “Flying Objects,” a mixed-media wall sculpture assemblage. BOTTOM RIGHT: The spindly, bent elements (windshield wipers) have a definite twang in Polly Whitcomb’s “Mantis,” a wall sculpture assemblage of found objects and glazed stoneware.
COURTESY PATINA GALLERY The whirly spirals make great shadow play in “Spring III,” a wall sculpture assemblage of found objects and glazed stoneware by Polly Whitcomb.
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