LAST CHANCE “Earth & Sky” Exhibt

October 15 – November 13

Washington Art Association is pleased to present an exhibition featuring four artists whose work is connected by their in-depth explorations of specific materials.

As a young artist living in England, Constance Kilgore was deeply inspired by that terrain and the mystery of what lay beneath it. Earthworks, standing stones, glyphs and their forgotten meanings just below the surface, eventually evolved into a dynamic dance with the sky above. Kilgore’s sky paintings evoke a deeply felt physical and emotional response in both the artist and the viewer. The artists pours and pushes diluted acrylic paint into raw wet linen creating images of atmospheric skies, the technique of wet into wet surfaces mimics atmospheric conditions, the interplay of reflecting light and billowing clouds. This exhibition pairs Kilgore’s more representational landscape paintings with her dreamy abstractions using cold wax medium. Painting with wax medium gives luscious body to the paint and the ability to build layers of surface texture and rich color. For the artist, the physicality of the medium returns her to an early fascination with the topography, archaeology, and the fragile durability of long-buried objects created by forgotten civilizations.

David Licata chooses glass for its inherent beauty and the endless variety of colors and textures he can create with the medium. With gas torches and a well-honed arsenal of traditional and innovative techniques, Licata stripes, twists, blends and shapes rods of glass into fluid compositions. A lifelong student of glassmaking, the artist has become a technical expert; he often employs Venetian striping, twisting, or fusing to achieve desirable effects in coloration and surface texture of the glass. He might also use a variety of traditional chainmaille “stitches” in building his work. The process is time and labor intensive and becomes a meditation for Licata. The artist compares making the glass links and connecting one to the other as akin to knitting with flame: “It is very complex and repetitive; I challenge myself with patterns that contradict the idea of protection and the fragility of glass”. The shadows each sculpture casts are an integral element and express the elusiveness of time and amplify the changing of the seasons in a visual manifestation.

Carolyn Millstein’s work begins as sheets of lead, brass, or copper, often reclaimed and baring evidence of their previous lives. These metals offer myriad intrinsic qualities and endless possibilities for transformation. This exhibition featured a series of wall hangings whose compositions sometimes hint at roots in traditional quilt patterns and in others veers to landscape and pure abstraction. The artists snips and cuts, and shapes metal into elements that are crafted into compositions and sewn together with wire stitches, and nails. The overall work is a dichotomy of material and meaning; hard metal becoming “quilts”, sharp wire meticulously stitched by hand.
Not only does Millstein manage to evoke traditional craft in several important ways, but her knowledge of how heat and chemicals can transform the surface of metal by gathering or dispersing color, melting, and cooling elements, and patina is nothing short of alchemy.

Ann Mallory’s formal training in ceramic studies began in 1968 at the University of Southern California, and brought her to England, Europe, and across the United States, and was especially influenced by a seminal trip to Japan. She studied with mentors such as Marguerite and Frans Wildenhain, both connected with the original Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany; Karen Karnes, noted American ceramic artist; and Susan Peterson, educator, and author with a focus on Japanese ceramics. Mallory says the following about her work: “I favor clean volumes, minimal surface decoration and rightness of scale, which promotes a sense of wellbeing, serenity, and interior balance auspicious for thought. Natural form and texture, and the human emotions they evoke, are a never-ending source of inspiration.” Mallory’s ceramics in this exhibition have been chosen from four distinct bodies of work; Bundle, Contemplation Form, Ripe Form, Standing Stone.