On the evening of Friday, January 15, Axom
Gallery (176 Anderson Avenue, second floor) hosted “Experimental,” a successful
night of sound performances by City Harvest Black, Mike Shiftlet,
Licker, and Joe + N. The experimental and noise performances drew a large
audience, and were beautiful explorations of atmospheric and electronic
mashups, executed in front of a photo installation by John Lake that filled most
of the gallery’s walls.
Lake’s installation was as immersive as the music. The
massive panorama was pieced together from countless pages printed in black and
white, depicting a few shots of a larger-than-life man standing, floating, and
exalting in the waters of Lake Ontario. Here’s hoping for more of these sorts
of events from Axom!
Arts & entertainment editor Jake Clapp and I dropped in on the month-long
artist residency at The Yards (52 Public Market) on Saturday, January 16, to
visit with the creators and see what they’ve accomplished so far. This round of
resident artists features four Rochester-based makers, and one artist from
Brooklyn.
Ryan
Sutherland is relatively new to creative expression — he only began
painting a couple of years ago, and he also makes video work. Some of his
acrylic paintings in their chaotic lines and saturated, bold colors, remind me
of the work of Basquiat and outsider artists, who he says that he favors. And
his mixed media pieces struck me with the kind of visual sucker punch of punk
album and zine imagery.
Sutherland’s subject matter ranges from cityscapes, to
portraits, to sort of stream of conscious collage. My favorite work in his
current set is a portrait of a bearded man adorned in a turban or head wrap
that resembles a windy sky. Set against an acidic yellow background, and against
the motion in his turban and the chaotically scratched texture on his shirt,
the subject’s face is the very picture of inner calm and meditation. The work
breathes reverence, and Sutherland says it’s about his own reaction to
Islamophobia.
The only non-visual artist during this residency, Karsten Brooks is a musician who creates in the electronic
and experimental/noise genres. Set up with a drum kit, keyboard, and computer during
the residency, Brooks has been inviting other musicians to collaborate
with him on different days, providing a live soundtrack for the other artists
while they work and chat with visitors.
Brooks says the residency has been a nice way to play drums
and create without the fear of disturbing his neighbors at home, where he
usually plays, and that he’s taken advantage of late studio hours for this
reason. He blends drums, keys, ambient creations, and sampled bits of music and
spoken word to create entrancing, layered compositions. Hop over to his Soundcloud account to check him out.
Atiya
Jones, who is visiting Rochester from Brooklyn, works in both abstract and
figurative styles. In the past, her interests have included creating portraits
that challenge standards of beauty imposed by advertising and media, and has
created zines of her drawings and poems. She also incorporates photography into
some of her work. The current series she’s working on might look like pretty-patterned
doodles at first glance, but there’s more than meets the eye.
Jones explained to me that the renderings — some of which are
contained in the form of a human bust, others look like microcosmic clusters of
life — are about two distinct things. The first is the obscuring of women,
specifically the manifold roles they take on within the home and in society.
Visually, these pieces have bubbles of patterning concealing the faces of each
figure; symbolically, we can read it as the invisibility of these
underappreciated roles, or the loads of roles obscuring the true identity of
the woman.
The second thesis Jones is working with has to do with events
that naturally happen on a cellular or molecular level that don’t necessarily
find a comparable pattern in human culture. For example, if there is a
concentration of something in an area of the body, the body will work toward
distribution and balance. If you consider this in economic, social, or other
terms, humans haven’t quite caught up to what nature has perfected. I’m kind of
in love with Jones’ concepts.
Something about the grand lanscapes,
dreamy hues, and delicate line work of Andrea
Durfee‘s current oeuvre
reminded me of the late, beloved artist Jean Giraud’s (AKA Moebius) work. But Durfee most definitely has her own style, and creates watercolor
landscapes with figurative elements hidden within them. Hills and mountains
contain curled-up women under moody skies, with sweeping valleys, streams, and foliage.
Durfee says she begins each piece
with figurative sketches, followed by laying in the tonal watercolor, and then
refines it all with the fine, geometric and organic lines. Tree lines are
traced and the light-meets shadow cragginess of the rocks forms facial features
and expressively laid out bodies melting into the terrain. The artist says she
sees these figures as personification of the tension between opposing emotions
and inclinations, and representative of our connection to our environment, our
past, and each other.
I’ve been familiar with Jacquie O’Brien‘s “Cunt
Cushions” — soft pillows made of fabrics and fibers that resemble the diversity
in lady parts — as well as her Eva Hesse-esque
sculpture and “Feminist Killjoy” embroidery samplers with snarky pushback to
the patriarchy. But she’s recently been introducing more solid media in her
sculptures, such as concrete pillars and neon spikes.
Her set up at the residency includes a sewing machine, stacks
of fabric, and various odd materials. O’Brien says her aim in expanding her
material choices is to explore different definitions of gender identity and expressions.
The residency ends January 30, but you can visit the artists during
open studio hours each Saturday between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. A group exhibit will
be held on January 30, 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. For more information, visit The Yards’ Facebook page.
This article appears in Jan 13-19, 2016.
