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265 NEWTON
BRIDGE ROAD
ATHENS, GR
AUGURS AND OGLERS
High Anxiety: I couldn't help but think of the
opening sequence of Hitchcock's Vertigo when
I first saw UGA MFA graduate Teddy Johnson's
series of paintings "From.Great Heights" on
view at the Athens-Clarke County Library. The
colorful scenes of city rooftops seem to belong
more to the world of Technicolor than real life,
and the subject of the paintings themselves
calls to mind the police chase that left James
Stewart dangling from a San Francisco high- .
rise. Of course, a comparison to the painter
so often linked to the cinematic Master of
Suspense, Edward Hopper, seems apt, but
Johnson appears to share only a predilection
for everyday urban life and vivid colors with
the mid-century artist. Instead of mystery
or apprehension, Johnson imbues his figures
with a sense of elation. The buoyancy of these
figures is especially interesting considering
that the scenes are most likely borrowed from
the artist's place of residence, Baltimore,
whose traditionally
industry-based economy
has recently undergone
dramatic changes that
include rising crime.
But as Johnson's figures
suggest, a call for opti
mism could be in order.
Ultimately, though Belville is taking subject
matter that can easily become preachy or
hackneyed, his drawings avoid these pitfalls
through his subtle and elegant treatment. Also
present in the gallery are several portraits that
skeptically approach the supernatural with
figures offering little more than card tricks
and cheap spectacle, such as "Soothsayers,"
"Gamblers/Money Managers" and "Augurs."
Atom, the Bomb: While Belville's images of
the contemporary South hint at a Faulknerian
preoccupation with corruption and decay,
the South—new and old—gets a serious and
refreshing makeover in Michael Lachowski's
"CHAD: Charleston Historical Art, Dude." On
view at White Tiger Gourmet, the series of
photographs are being shown together for the
first time since they were exhibited in the city
to which they pay homage, Charleston. Part of
Lachowski's larger body of work, "Atomlook,"
I it
| ut
1 I r
Antediluvian: While
Johnson's paintings
imbue commonplace
metropolitan scenes
with a sense of exu
berance that enables
them to transcend their
mundane circumstances,
Scott Belville's figura
tive paintings at the
Lamar Dodd School of
Art fill the more familiar
landscape of the South
with a somber, at times
almost elegiac tone.
This is especially true
of Belville's new series
of drawings entitled
"Flood/Drought," for
which Belville imagined a world of gnarled
tree roots intertwined with bulbous, skull-like
shapes, charred tree stumps marred by axes
and dirty, effluvial bodies of water. These
decaying ecosystems work as thinly veiled
allegories of the present, taking on the hefty
theme of the troubled environment. Traces
of humanity or figures appear in most of
these drawings, such as a solemn-faced preg
nant woman standing on the edge of a pool
of brown water in "Flood/Drought: Edge."
Accompanied by a lifeless stuffed deer and
the spectral outline of a man on stilts, she
engenders a sense of hopelessness that belies
the sense of birth and rejuvenation she ought
to.embody.
While framing and presentation are always
considerations for an artist, Belville's series
incorporates process and theme into the pre
sentation. Taped onto foam board with the
drips and splatters still evident from the art
ist's process, the presentation of the drawings
(something that Belville has had fun with
throughout his career, as in the 2004 paint
ing included in this show, "Drive-By," that
is framed to look like it is a large painting
in a miniature gallery) reflects the deepest
content of the drawings themselves: the way
permanent acts and their marks (large and
small) become a vital aspect for consideration.
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in
Teddy Johnson’s painting "Jenny’s Ledge’’ is on display at the ACC Library
through August.
which features the same model, Atom, in a
series of photographs taken throughout 2006,
each photo of the "CHAD" series is a portrait
of an important character from Charleston's
history. But, the tableaus include flagrantly
a-historical costumes and details and look
more like a sunny fashion shoot than anything
you're likely to see in a history book. For
example, John Rutledge, South Carolina's first
governor and signee of the U.S. Constitution,
is re-imagined by Lachowski as young Atom
signing a guestbook on a coffee table in a
contemporary interior. The pen Atom uses is a
souvenir from the John Rutledge house, and
you can't miss a popular staple of Americana,
the ubiquitous PBR can, that sits nearby on
the desktop. Like Belville's drawings, presen
tation is thematic: each image is bordered
by a digital gold frame and plaque that is as
flagrantly fake as the "historic moment" it
frames. Like Johnson's and Belville's paint
ings, lines separating past, present and future,
the real and the imagined, become blurred in
Lachowski's photographs. Yet instead of tal
ismans for a hopeful future or omens of man
made apocalypse, Lachowski seems to remind
us that history itself is most likely equal parts
fact, fiction and fantasy.
Rebecca Brantley
12 FLAGPOLE.COM • AUGUST 12,2009