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Escape From Winter
‘ULTRA BRIGHT’ SHINES WITH COLOR AND OPTIMISM
By Jessica Smith arts@flagpole.com
Serving as an oasis in this frankly dark
political and cultural climate, the Gallery@
Hotel Indigo’s latest exhibition, “Ultra
Bright,” offers a chance to escape tempo
rarily into the worlds of six Athens and
Atlanta artists. Bringing in the new year
with vibrant eye candy has become some
thing of an annual tradition for curator Didi
Dunphy, who seeks to balance a season usu
ally marked by frigid temperatures and pale
landscapes with bold and colorful imagery.
An opening reception for “Ultra Bright” will
be held on Thursday, Jan. 26 from 6:30—
8:30 p.m., and the exhibition will remain on
view through Saturday, Apr. 8.
The lush environments of Drema
Montgomery—whose painting “Honey
Child” graces the cover of Flagpole this
week—are simultaneously charming and
disturbing. Nostalgic artifacts and “gender-
specific” toys from childhood—plastic
castle, teacup, bejeweled crown, lace,
beads, baby dolls—are squeezed by gut-like
growths in shades of hot pink and blue.
Borrowing Southern colloquial terms
such as “Bless Your Heart” and “Over
Yonder” for titles, the body of work contem
plates the vernacular language distinct to
Montgomery’s hometown in northeastern
Alabama. While commonly used as terms
of endearment, those phrases also subtly
serve to reinforce a code of behavior and
value system. Though full of distractingly
delicate and glittering details, her paintings
convey a certain heaviness that alludes to
the complexity of shaping personal identity
through the influences of a culture. “Girly”
objects physically tangled and trapped
within these fleshy chambers speaks to the
emotional tension and psychological inter
nalization that so often comes with con
fronting expectations of femininity.
Laura Noel’s series of photographs,
“Crawling Backwards,” represents an
exploration into Noel’s personal history
and an attempt at traveling back in time to
recreate the optimism and wonder of child
hood. Many of her most precious memories
took place in her family’s former home, a
place described as an enchanted kingdom
full of exotic treasures collected
through world travels. The items
were sold at auction after the
passing of her great-aunt, an eye
opening event that introduced
12-year-old Noel to the inevitable
unfairness of adulthood.
A photograph of the silhouette
of a unicorn encrusted with crystal
formations in shades of cotton-
candy pink and pale blue speaks to
the imagination and reflects the
slow passage of time. Other pho
tographs augment natural forms
with fantastical digital manipu
lations, such as a gnarled tree
superimposed with a rainbow and
flowers layered with translucent,
ghost-like fabric.
Employing an automatic mark
making approach, Logan Shirah
creates paintings and drawings
that are guided by his current
mood or in response to whatever
is occupying his mind. This impro-
visational and meditative process
transforms a stream of conscious
ness into a cohesive whole, as
loose forms gently flow from one
another.
Influenced by abstract surrealism, psy
chedelia and childhood cartoons, Shirah’s
works are inherently playful and light.
The eye is led between colorful shapes by
interconnected hard lines, demonstrating
painting’s ability to serve as a form of archi
tecture that constructs space to wander
around in.
The mixed-media abstractions of Vivian
Liddell demonstrate a contemplative
exercise in challenging formal approaches
to making art by blurring the high/low
division between art and craft. Liddell
intentionally disregards traditional rules
for design and composition, opting to
intuitively play with a piece until it feels
complete. Using materials like fabric, spray
paint, ribbon and embroidery, Liddell estab
lishes a healthy tension through irregular
forms and clashing patterns. “Mountain
Path Trolls”—two embroidered creatures
guarding a maze smeared in paint—is hon
estly one of the few times you’ll ever see a
gallery work featuring googly third eyes.
There comes a time in every art writer’s
career when she is met with the chal
lenge (and potential conflict of interest)
of balancing participation in the scene as
a journalistic spectator versus as a direct
contributor, which leads us to the final art
ists of “Ultra Bright”: Flagpoles own two art
writers, Barbette Houser and me.
Houser sews eye-catching quilts that pri
oritize the expression of a visual idea over
traditional craftsmanship or functional use.
Inspirations from the natural or manmade
world are often reduced to their simplest
form, transforming motifs and patterns
into designs that embrace abstraction.
Houser began quilting as a daily practice
in 2010, finding the activity to be a form
of therapy. As she describes in her artist
statement, “[t]he meditative and healing
nature of constant stitching enabled me to
accept the death of my beloved husband
and view my obsessive-compulsive behav
iors with more objectivity and understand
ing.” Brightly colored and alluring in their
understated simplicity, her quilts
exemplify the complexity of find
ing solace through minimalism
and precision.
Through my series of psyche
delic landscapes, I hope to offer
small windows for escaping into
mountainous and otherworldly
environments. Each scene was
constructed by coilaging sheets
of hand-marbled paper, a process
modified from traditional Ebru
techniques that involves manipu
lating pigment on an aqueous
surface. My hope is that the swirl
ing patterns condensed within
these two-dimensional fantasy
environments will encourage view
ers to seek and admire the natural
world’s recurring designs long
after they leave the gallery.
While visiting “Ultra Bright,”
be sure to swing by the GlassCube
to see “Satisfaction System” by
Garrett Hayes. His work utilizes
found objects that would have
otherwise found a fate of sitting
on shelves, occupying landfills or
naturally decaying.
The installation is comprised
of a large, web-like structure created with
woven scraps of denim, while a smaller
circle echoes behind its center. A network
of thin ropes provide interesting shadows
during the day, while colorful electro-lumi
nescent wires transform it into a glowing
installation at night. “Satisfaction System”
is on view through Saturday, Apr. 15. ©
Logan Shirah
.
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16 FLAGPOLE.COM | JANUARY 25, 2017