Practical art? March 1993
Don't tell anybody, but I'm a sucker for crafts. If it's
hand-made, you got me. Fine art awes me, but it doesn't tickle that deep down
practical side that makes me want to spend my money. I go through galleries
oohing over wondrous textures and clever shapes, but walk out knowing they will
hang on other people's walls, never mine. But find a useful purpose for a
thing, like a candle holder or a bowl, and I'm reaching for my VISA card.
In the 4th Annual
Cathedral Arts Festival, I had the best of both worlds with a little music and
poetry thrown in. While I managed to keep within my budget, the whole affair
provided me with an amusing afternoon-- more than worth the price of admission.
One of the people I talked at the show, echoed my sentiments. She had come
expecting to find less quality in the craft show and was pleasantly surprised.
While the crafts
prices were not inexpensive, they were well within the budget of most people,
and the quality of merchandise quite high. The real expense came if you wanted
fine art, some of the works running up into the thousands of dollars. The ones
I liked ran about $400 to $500. Needless to say, I purchased nothing.
The fine arts
decorated the church itself, the odd mixture of painting, sculpture, and
photographs made overcast with shades of pale color from sunlight and stained
glass. While most of the religious articles normally set for this room had been
tucked into small alcoves, the spirit remained, hovering over the room as the
music and poetry were conducted from the edge of the alter.
When I arrived, Dave
Case, singer and songwriter, performed solo blues, struggling to ignore
requests from his audience for the Beatles, explaining that he doesn't do cover
music. He competed with the art for attention as people moved among the
exhibits. Ghostly lights illuminated the alter from various light and metal
exhibits, one of which used dolls from the Simpsons TV show in distorted visual
game.
But there were other
images to behold, like the oil and pastel paintings in one corner by Tim
Gaydos. His work reflected a dark side of Hudson County's growth. "Waiting
in Hoboken" and especially "Under the Can Plant" grew as
observed, creating a haunting effect as you moved away from them. They reminded
me of the 1930s and 1940s painting style that romanticized the American hobo
movement.
Also impressive was
the sculptured madonna series by Joachim Wagner that presented the faces of the
madonna and child straight out of medieval art, yet with a modern twist to
their expressions.
Lesie Connito's
paintings presented little mysteries in works clearly influenced by Vincent Van
Gogh. Little shapes were hidden within the work with the titles often a clue to
finding them.
More confusing and
perhaps a parody of artists and the methods of teaching art was Mark
Greenwalt's work where body parts were interchanged with more geometrical
shaped objects that reminded me of antique furniture pieces.
Linda D'Amico's work
took me by surprise. I'm not a fan of geometrical abstract painting. I like
images to look like things I recognize in the real world <197> at least
superficially. But her shadowed blocks obsessed me for the rest of the show.
They were not simply colors, but moody shapes like an historic brick wall with
history behind it. Her use of pastel
changed the medium. She said she once worked with landscapes, but fought for
the opportunity to do the cover of a software manual and came up with this
style.
The heart of the show
for me was the poetry, where four women presented absolutely diverse styles and
moods, sometimes shocking the audience, sometimes making them laugh.
I saw Ofelia
Rodriguez Goldstein a month ago at the Love & Chaos reading. But here, she
spread her wings more as she read a larger body of work. While she has
persistently refused to publish anything, her live performances-- and this one
in particular-- moved people in a way that would not easily transfer to the
printed page.
In "The edge of
the Rio Grand" she brings herself to tears in her dealing with death and
how something must be beyond it. Her poem painted no rosy picture of the after
life but a wider spectrum: "Hope springs promises of green that defies the
rainbow's colors," she read. In another passage, she said "Meanness
is a measure of sin." Her work runs a spectrum of emotions that are barely
contained. Later, she said this was her trouble. But it is her virtue, too,
spilling emotion over onto the audience like a waterfall.
On the surface,
Patricia Page's poetry seemed less emotional, but word for word, she pounded
out poetry as powerful and persuasive as anyone there. Her sophisticated use of
language more than made up for her lack of delivery. She seemed shy on the
alter, but the words were not shy. Her thick intelligent phrasing soon
captivated the twenty or thirty listeners, stopping people who had come into to
look at the paintings. Most of her poems were short, but always sensual, the
words full of sound and vibration that resounded long after the meaning
vanished. They played with perspective in "You're my foreign movie,"
where almost every image was related back to the lens of a camera. She attacked
other sensual images to each visual. In "Whiz Bang," she did
something similar only using music as her metaphor.
Sharon Kraus is the
most disturbing poet I have ever heard. The poems presented in this event
rocked me out of my chair. Their anger and power were barely contained by the
word structures. In some ways, they were like a Frankenstein monster somehow
rising out of this small woman, taking vengeance upon those who created her.
Even the one poem she read which was not about her family was full of a sensual
broth. Sexual images rose out from between the lines in sensual allegory where
a kitchen became a orgy of shapes and sounds and colors and feelings.
Everything in these poems meant more than they said, and in each case, drew out
unintended painful experiences in the listener.
As if in relief, Ahn
Behrens read next, shattering the Kraus' gothic overtones with a slick, almost
Cosmopolitan style of poetry where she played off cliches and everyday
experiences in the manufacture of images. She began and ended with the glitz of
Hollywood, and in between talked about her home town of Buffalo and how to
escape it. "Bath Tub Gin" she said was the first poem she ever
published and reflected a style which she seems to have maintained since,
connecting each line into long, clever, run-on sentences that gave me a
breathless air of urgency. She overloads each poem with images that build upon
each other, working up rhythm that eventually runs faster and faster. Listening
to her, one feels the need of jogging shorts and sneakers, just to be able to
keep pace. She is hip, slick and commercial, yet creates textures that have
deeper tones like a Madonna video.
After the poetry
portion, Jackie Cadiou and Lee Peridot performed their own original music that
reminded me of an early Linda Ronstat when she was still innocent enough to be
refreshing. But I was already plotting my way out, trying to avoid spending any
more money in the craft portion of the festival. But too much of a good thing
is not bad, and maybe next year I'll have more money to spend.
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