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Spotlighting Two Shows: A Medley, and Drawings
The New York Times October 19, 1997
Vivien Raynor
Two group exhibitions, one with a message and one without. The first is a medley of assemblages, paintings and works on paper by 24 Latin American women, occupying the Castle Gallery at the College of New Rochelle. This is an appropriate setting, for while the college now admits men, it began its career in 1904 as the state's first Roman Catholic institution of higher learning for women, one oriented to the needs of immigrants. The other show, at the Pelham Art Center, is of drawings by 15 artists, most of them women, and, it would seem, most home grown.
The lineup at the Pelham Arts Center was organized by the center's advisory committee and, if only because their intentions are purely esthetic, it makes for an easier ride. Even so, it comes with the usual freight of statements by artists who are all too well versed in the absurdities of art criticism. For example, Beth Caspar simulates a child's drawing of a house on a blackboard, then, conceding that there is little to choose between her conceptions of a sanctuary and a hideout, states that the image represents the "duality, or in essence, its obscuranticism."
But there are enough good pictures to compensate for what amounts to verbal harassment. They include the simplified interiors rendered in charcoal by Eileen Gillespie, Wendy Lemen Bredehoft's row of rope nooses in the same media and from Richard Callner, pattern-like images of landscape in pen and ink.
Also conspicuous are the abstractions of Mary Rankin -- rhythmic arrangements of flame-like shapes executed in pencil and crayon. Janet Culbertson is best known for her paintings of devastated landscape, but in this case she is the super-Realist with an enormous ink-and-charcoal "close-up" of a Galapagos tortoise. Even more photographic are Dan Gilhooley's two life-size images of women done in pencil and color pencil, respectively.
At the other extreme is the eccentric of the show, Hsin-Hsi Chen, who likens life to an endless film but works in three dimensions; that is, he makes immaculate pencil drawings of upholstered furniture, then folds them so that they protrude from the wall like solid objects.
The Pelham Art Center show continues through Nov. 1. The information number is 738-2525.
The New Rochelle production was organized by Benjamin Ortiz, curator of art and collections at the Discovery Museum in Bridgeport, and Gustavo Valdez Jr., publisher and editorial director of Arts Magazine. They have come up with contemporaries of all ages, some United States residents of long standing, others new arrivals. While they include biographical details, the curators offer no guidance as to differences between the various cultures, their primary purpose being to highlight Latin American talents who, they feel, have not received the attention they deserve -- either at home or abroad.
If viewers are unable to distinguish between the characters of, say, the Puerto Rican and Argentine contributions, they will almost certainly notice the influence of the North American scene. Not for nothing is the show titled "Crossing Borders."
Apparently, female artists in Latin America have fewer scores to settle with men than their sisters to the north have, but they can be every bit as narcissistic. Anaida Hernandez is unusual in that she tackles domestic violence but does it discreetly by inserting the term into an eight-foot-square acrostic, which combines black and white woodcuts of letters printed on small wood panels with images like those of a bluefish and a winged orange cat in the background. But for most of the Puerto Rican artist's colleagues, the subject is woman, her form, her memories and dreams.
Raquel Paiwonski, also from Puerto Rico, produces hefty wood structures housing pink rubber breasts, a few with glass eyes instead of nipples, together with baby dolls and other items. The majority of these maternity cabinets are crowned with silhouettes of heads cut out of glass and mirror, and one of them trails a bunch of long arms. All are well crafted but somewhat repellent in their obsessiveness.
An artist from the Dominican Republic, Belkys Ramirez, contributes a vertical black and white woodcut of a woman whose hair, filled with "thoughts," takes up most of the space. Also worthy of attention is the Puerto Rican-born Mirna Baez, whose image of a woman with huge breasts is nonetheless a bust for being a near-silhouette drawn in charcoal on white paper.
The show's piece de resistance is an installation, which focuses on an altar decked with all manner of objects, including paper boats afloat in bowls of water, and surmounted by a lot of satin and lace drapery in blue and purple, but which otherwise beggars description. It is the work of Clara Morero, who hails from Cuba.
A photographer who is Mexican by birth, Yolanda Petrocelli presents large, sepia-toned portraits of herself posed against leaves and wearing clothes that smack of Polynesia. They may strike some as fantasies inspired by Gauguin, but to me they seemed like wry comments on a fantasy that did not work out, the more so since all are surrounded by broken china. Either way, they are professional-looking works and, as such, inject oxygen into a rather claustrophobic atmosphere. "Crossing Borders" closes next Sunday.
GRAPHIC: Photos: "Galapagos Tortoise" by Janet Culbertson. "Cloud of Cranes Complete With Instructions," top, by Kathryn Arnold and "Black Rope Series I" by Wendy Lemen Bredehoft, in an exhibition at the Pelham Art Center.
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