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The Lyndon House’s 41st Juried Exhibition
GET LOST IN SPENCE TOWNSEND’S PAINTINGS WHILE YOU’RE THERE
By Jessica Smith arts@flagpole.com
CREME DE LA CREME: The clearest body of evidence that
“Athens is an art town” will be presented this week, as the
Lyndon House Arts Center unveils its 41st annual Juried
Exhibition. A true testament to how many artists are con
centrated in the area, a record-breaking number of entries
were submitted for consideration in this year’s anchor
show. Of the astounding 933 works entered by 366 hopeful
applicants, guest juror Jock Reynolds, director of the Yale
University Art Gallery, whittled his selections down to 228
pieces by 171 artists. Offering an impressively well-rounded
representation of the town’s best talent, the walls are brim
ming with everything from paintings, drawings, prints,
photographs, collages, mixed media assem
blages, collages, sculptures, videos, fiber art,
ceramics, metalwork and more.
Reynolds lends fresh eyes and a world of
experience as a juror. During a decade-long
career as an associate professor and director
of the graduate program at the Center for
Experimental and Interdisciplinary Art at
California State University in San Francisco,
he also co-founded New Langton Arts, an
alternative space for artists. He became exec
utive director of the Washington Project for
the Arts in D.C. in ’83, moving on to director
of the Addison Gallery of American Art at
Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, in ’89,
and finally on to his position at YUAG in ’98.
The exhibition is thoughtfully arranged,
with stylistically or thematically similar
pieces often presented together in a comple
mentary fashion. Reynolds’ intention here
is to heighten viewers’ pleasure and appre
ciation by magnifying threads of coherency
between frames. In a show with over 200
artworks to get lost in, this burdensome pro
cess not only establishes order and increases
continuity, but keeps any feelings of being
overwhelmed by the show’s sheer magnitude at bay. His
attention to detail cannot be overlooked, since following
founder Nancy Lukasiewicz’s recent retirement, the center’s
search for its next curator is still underway.
Upstairs, Lucy Calhoun’s painting “Riding Horse, Staying
Sane,” a fish-eyed view of two figures clinging to a black
horse through rolling pink and green hills, joins the herd
within three neighboring works by Amy Watts: the hidden
Cubism-influenced “Blue Horses,” a vibrant cowboy roping
bulls in “Santa Fe,” and the ever-loyal “Sacajaweah’s Horse”
beneath a rainbow sky. Mo Costello’s black-and-white pho
tograph of five black dogs curiously peering out from a car
in an abandoned landscape is not far placed from the three
dogs accompanying an elderly woman for a sunny walk in
Terry Rowlett’s oil painting. Farther down the wall, Adam
Kurtz’s rust-colored “Sawfish,” made from a hedge trimmer
and water heater tank, and Durwood Pepper’s eccentric
deer, bedazzled in rhinestones, brooches and a pink feather
boa, are mounted side by side as if they’ve arrived from the
same folk art planet.
During the opening reception on Thursday, Mar. 24 from
6-8 p.m., recipients of various awards will be recognized.
Reynolds assigned 10 merit awards, four merit prizes, a
handful of honorable mentions, and a few longstanding
named recognitions. In recognition of Lukasiewicz, The
“Rehearsal” by Spence Townsend
Lyndon House Arts Foundation has established a new
award for fine craft. Additionally, the Lyndon House Arts
Center Choice Award will offer an emerging artist a solo
exhibition in the Lounge Gallery.
The 41st Juried Exhibition will remain on view through
Saturday, May 7.
EMERGING ARTIST: While visiting the Lyndon House, be
sure to make your way to the Lounge Gallery for Spence
Townsend’s solo exhibition, “Chelsea Patternz and Other
Thangs,” a collection of four large paintings derived from
two different bodies of work. Townsend, who received
a BFA in painting from the University of Southern
Mississippi in 2005 and is set to graduate with an MFA in
drawing and painting from the Lamar Dodd School of Art
later this spring, weaves engaging stories onto each canvas
through a fantastical lens. While many of his scenes—
which are well worth digging into at spencetownsend.
com—are left to the viewer’s interpretation, most are equal
parts humor and imagination. Vividly colored and puls
ing with energy, they draw influences from beyond fellow
artists.
“I feel like literature and music have an equal, if not
larger, influence on my work,” says Townsend, citing
Kurt Vonnegut, B.C. Pierre, Sylvia Plath and David Foster
Wallace as a few of his favorite authors. “Reading stories
helps me to formulate point of view, perspective and tem
porality, which all relate to visual art,” he says. “Likewise,
imagining my favorite songs in visual form is a vital exer
cise for my painting practice. It’s helpful for me to think,
‘how would this voice look?’ or ‘what color would this cello
be?”
Though the majority of Townsend’s paintings are nar
rative in nature, “Blind Carbon Dating” and “Pilgrum” are
a pair of spontaneously generated mashups full of witty
cartoonish characters—Lil Wayne as a cater
pillar grins and says “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice,
Beetlejuice,” while a Darth Vader PEZ dis
penser claims “I’m your step-father.”
“There are a lot of pop culture references,
and little phrases that I find funny or odd,”
he says. “Often in my sketchbook when I’m
brainstorming for narrative ideas, I will
make ridiculous lists of these types of things
on the tip of my tongue. For this series,
rather than refining the list into something
coherent, I simply ‘painted the list.’”
In addition to being a visual artist,
Townsend has been performing music for
most of his life. Following several years of
touring in the punk rock circuit, he’s made
three solo recordings, the most recent of
which, Aesop Songs, is a companion piece to
a series of paintings that illustrate Aesop’s
Fables. Much of his research conducted dur
ing graduate school has been an exploration
into the crossover between art and music, a
seemingly natural extension of his ability to
bounce back and forth between practices.
“I tentatively started this project during
my undergraduate studies over 10 years
ago. At this time, I asked volunteers to listen to a piece of
music and respond by making a drawing with crayons—one
drawing was done by Ian MacKaye from the band Fugazi,”
says Townsend. “During grad school at UGA, I’ve particu
larly been building on the work of Paul Klee and Mikalojus
Konstantinas Ciurlionis. Through using the program MAX/
MSP and midi, I’ve been able to use my bass guitar as a real
time color controller for my computer monitor. This has
been a strategy for directly relating the music I write to the
colors I use in my paintings.”
A reception with Townsend will be held in conjunction
with the Juried Exhibition on Thursday, Mar. 24, and his
show will remain on view through Saturday, Apr. 30. ©
1575 LEXINGTON ROAD ATHENS, GA 30508
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MARCH 23, 2016 • FLAGPOLE.COM 15