competition because they all have to
be a museum, a library or an office
building. As Ms. Stein might have
said, “A watermelon is a watermelon
is a watermelon...”
Luis Maza’s Free Standing Melon
Slice, a huge casein, acrylic and glitter
sculpture of a slice of watermelon
stood at the entrance of the gallery,
whetting the aesthetic appetites of
passersby. Maza’s piece in many ways
typifies the rest of the works in the ex
hibition. It is playful, humorous,
skillfully executed, easily palpable
and delightfully intriguing. All of the
artworks in the show incorporate
some or all of these characteristics,
while reflecting the individual artist’s
technique and style. Just as no two
watermelons are identically alike,
despite fundamental similarities, so
be it with melon art. As in nature, the
fruits of the melon artists’ labor vary
in quality and category, both physical
and aesthetic. Some folks have green
thumbs, other folks can’t grow
weeds.
As one might expect, still life pain
tings are much in evidence. Romantic
Classicism lives in Helen Means’
entry, titled Still Life. Her oil paint
ing of two watermelons on a table
recalls a seventeenth century Spanish
bodegon or an eighteenth century
French nature morte with its lush,
soft realism and traditional composi
tion. In another example, Whittier
Wright incorporates classical still life
iconography, a table, kitchen knife
and fruit, with neo-Matisse style and
color, tempered by Wright’s slick,
controlled expression. Guy Robinson
reveals a psychedelic side of the
watermelon still life with his oil paint
ing, Hallucinogenic Watermelon
and Typical Iconography: Hallucino
genic Pregnancy Due to Swallowing
Seeds. Robinson’s acidic visions are
rendered in a Boschian manner and
setting. The paintings’ enigmatic con
tent seems to imply that the garden of
earthly delights includes some very
potent varities of watermelon. Other
works loosely grouped under the still
life heading include Lee Lawson’s
two small acrylic paintings, Noah’s
Watermelon and the nicely textured
Still Life. In the latter, a watermelon
sits on a sawhorse which has been
draped with a white sheet. Lawson
has applied the paint for the sheet in
thicknesses which form shadow lines
exactly imitating folds in the white
cloth-a modest but effective example
of three-dimensional painterly illu
sion.
A couple of photographers also
licked their lips when confronted with
the Watermelon Show and proceeded
to sink their teeth into its juicy sub
ject. Kathleen Gegan Morse’s altered
photograph conjures up visions of
otherworldly watermelon products.
George Gruby’s Southern R.R.
Melon, with its watermelon sitting on
a railroad track excreting fireworks, is
a watermelon photograph collector’s
dream come true-and there’s plenty
of ya’ll out there, right?
There were of course, enough
drawings and prints to insure no
melon-ic technique was overlooked.
Nellie Mae Rowe’s whimsical, in
genuous crayon rendering, Warter
Mellon Days, cleared up the spelling
of watermelon once and for all for the
New York fans. Included in the ex
hibit was a series of twelve
monoprints by Anthony Rice, A Year
of Watermelons, each print cor
responding to a month of the year. A
full length watermelon slice is seen
laterally, surrounded by a thick aura
of splashed color, which varies accor-
Art Papers September-October 1981
Kiyoaki Kato, Georgia Plant Bower, silver print, 1980 (photo: courtesy of Fay Gold Gallery).
ding to the time of year. For example,
August’s watermelon has swoops of
hot reds and burning oranges around
the fruit. Colors cascade down the
right side of the surface on all the
prints, and as one flips through the
twelve, the gradations of hue from
dark winter black to spring green to
autumnal brown flow naturally in
seasonal rhythms. Wptermelone-
mania, a paper print by Hedi Bak is
notable for its title at least, if not its
fruity texture and color. Bernie Casey
is represented by two acrylic pain
tings, Melon Melody, with a guitar
shaped watermelon, and Watermelon
Moon Man as well as an interesting
pencil drawing, Watermelon Hand, in
which a structural interplay between
image, the written word and the
subject-object relationship is con
structed from a few simple elements.
Perhaps due to the watermelon’s
unique shape and physical substance,
the sculptors’ entries were consistent
ly the most ingenious and entertain
ing. There were concrete-on-canvas
watermelons by Betty Duncan, a real
istically carved and painted wood
watermelon by Ned Cartledge, and
the made-to-order clay melons of Ran
Carey. Some of Carey’s phony fruits,
thanks to their brain-tissue out-
side/pulpy-fruit inside construction,
shed new light on the old expression,
“Aw shucks, the boy’s just got
watermelon on the brain.” John and
Gail Campbell showed various ex
amples of their carved, painted wood
sculptures. They had “wood-er-
melons” in an old wheelbarrow, in an
old Coca-Cola crate wagon, being
hawked by a Black figure at a
miniature watermelon stand, and just
sitting around the gallery space. There
was a painted steel Watermelon Chair
with Divining Rod by Ke Francis, a
work of great imaginativeness and
comic exuberance. Also in the fantasy
mode was Julian Fernandez’ small
porcelain, neon and tapestry sculp
ture, The Melofont. A note by the ar
tist explains the strange off-white
elephant-like figure with red neon
tusks as the work helper of the
watermelon fairies. OK, Fernandez,
whatever you say.
There were numerous other
aesthetic melon manifestations deser
ving at least brief mention: the giant
Famous Slice painting by Comer Jen
nings; John Grunta’s odd little mixed
media piece, much like the old Cracker
Jack games with black marble
“seeds” which roll around in a little
enclosed box done in watermelon
motif (of course); Miriam Newman’s
Watermelon Landscape, with an im
aginary melon emerging from a
perfectly suitable color “field”; and
Larry Connatser’s funky Landscape
in the Colors of Watermelon, predict
ably done in his raised dot style.
The harvest of this year’s
Watermelon Show is as enjoyable as it
is eclectic. The Stanley & Schenck ex
hibition is an entertaining concept
employed to give local and regional
artists a vital environment in which to
display their work, attract an au
dience, and reap a bit of what they
sow. Through the planting of seeds of
recognition and notoriety in the
minds of the gallery-going public,
these artists may be better equipped to
continue producing an enriched crop
from their fertile imaginations.
There’s just no substitute for juicy,
creative watermelon.
—Douglass DeLoach
Douglass DeLoach, one of the few
Southeastern experts on horror films,
has been known to enjoy an ice-cold
slice of watermelon in his time.
Group Show
Fay Gold Gallery
Atlanta, Georgia
August 4 - September 8
(The paintings in this exhibit are
reviewed by Valerie McKenzie, and
the photographs by William A.
Brown)
The overriding consideration in the
selection of these painters seemed to
be that they are all faculty members at
Atlanta College of Art or Georgia
State University, with the exception
of one who instead taught for four
years at a college in Pennsylvania
before moving to Atlanta. The press
release accompanying this show tells
us that the result of Ms. Gold’s
“marathon tour” of artists’ studios
and homes is a body of work which is
‘•‘pointing in new directions.”
Although for some of the artists the
work exhibited is a change from
previous styles, these paintings and
works on paper could hardly be con
sidered avant-garde. Rather, they
explore standard formalistic concerns
such as color and surface interrela
tions, spatial and dimensional rela
tionships, painterly aspects, and pat
terning, all within a very decorative
context.
Anthony Greco showed two large
canvases, one of vertical bands of
beige which gradate into grayish-
blackish bands as the eye reads the
painting from left to right. Faintly
superimposed on these are two large
circles. Another painting consists of
vertical and horizontal bands, which,
like Frank Stella’s early work, echo
the dimensions of the canvas. These
are painted in bands of beige, blue,
and white with subtle variations
within the faint circle centrally
superimposed on the bands.
Philip Lancaster’s nearly
monochromatic works are executed in
acrylic paint and sand, applied with a
window squeegee. The effect is a rich,
painterly surface texture. Painting
with sand is really nothing new,
however. The artist succeeds best with
a tense and energetic charcoal and
pencil drawing which works better
with its sculptural, push-pull surface
agitation than does his own three-
dimensionally shaped work entitled
Letter to Philadelphia.
Michael Gaston’s canvas shows
him to be a skillful colorist. The artist
effectively creates spatial modula
tions by layering his color areas.
Brilliant hues of magenta, taupe and
violet, and softer tonalities saturate
the surface of the canvas. Gaston then
overpaints this surface with two wide
bands of translucent green pastel on
the sides, and thin bars of green edged
with violet L-shapes. The total effect
is lyrical and elusive, and highly
decorative.
Corrinne Colarusso’s Water Paint
ing is as doggedly wearying to view as
seemingly was its execution. This
work suffers from an insecure ex
cessiveness, not only in the abun
dance of paint, but also in the ir
ritating contrast of high-key blues and
violets with a flat, harsh orange. The
energy the artist hints at in the move
ment of her brush gets lost somewhere
in the flood.
Medford Johnston showed three
works, all of which contain brightly
colored polka dots and triangular
forms on backgrounds of brilliant
turquoise, violet and orange. Once
again these are very decorative works,
almost silly, like an expensive wrap
ping paper. The illusionistic effect of
free floating geometric forms painted
in bright, intense colors, is based in a
tradition stemming from the work of
Kandinsky and the Russian Supre
matists. Johnston’s forms, however,
feel the full pull of gravity, and
although they lack a floating or skim
ming quality, they still retain their
pleasantly decorative quality and
light-hearted mood.
Tom Francis’ work is the only non
abstract painting in the show. In two
smaller works the artist applies his
paint thickly and sloppily, almost like
fingerpainting, which lends an
energetic quality to his patterned
palm trees, clouds and schoolbuses. A
larger work depicts patterned clouds,
schoolbuses and small figures and
uses the same bright clear coloring as
the smaller works, although less
vigorously brushed. These works are
the most confident in the show, but
are marred by a somewhat trendy at
titude. They’re playful and fanciful to
be sure, but hardly “satiric” or “west
coast in feel”(s/c) as the artist pur
ports.
Overall, the show lacks dynamism
and fresh vision. Although the works
were often visually pleasing, there is
no great originality at work here, nor
is there much conceptual or intellec
tual contect. Perhaps a group show
on local non-academic painters would
produce something more invigorating
and challenging than the tentativeness
that characterized this exhibit.
—Valerie McKenzie
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