Ohio Annual - Zanesville Museum of Art

I promised this post late last week, now it is early this week.  It was a lot harder to write this than I thought it would be.   

I traveled last week to the Zanesville Museum of Art for the opening of their 72^nd Ohio Annual exhibition.  Ohio has a wealth of very, very good artists.  Only a scant few of them are in this show.  I wish that there were more people to support the arts in this state.  I’m baffled at the people who would fork out several hundred dollars to attend a sports game that lasts a couple of hours and they wouldn’t spend the same (or even less!) on a piece of artwork that they will have forever. 

The show was well-rounded, including a variety of media.  I especially liked the attention given to various types of printmaking.  There were only four fiber art entries: a basket sculpture, a small rug hooked piece, and two art quilts.  I really wish I could post images of the art quilts here, as they were (I thought) top-notch.  I’m always gleaning criteria by which to evaluate artwork, and one that I use often is if I want to keep coming back to look at a particular piece, does it hold my attention over time? (Something I picked up at the Quilt National Symposium in 2015.)  The two art quilts met this criteria for me. 

The first, Passages, by Sue Copeland Jones, was a symmetrical geometric composition in yellow-orange and blue-violet silks.  The base composition was overlaid with bold strokes of indecipherable writing, hand stitched to outline the writing.  It was a classic example of using complementary colors, and certainly grabbed the viewer’s attention.  It kept my attention, as I wanted to figure out the writing, and there was enough variety in shade and tone of the colors to keep the piece from being overly garish. 

The second art quilt was by Georgie Cline.  This was a fascinating assemblage of random odd shaped (rough-cut) neutral tone (grays and tans) mini quilts zig-zagged together, leaving some open spaces in the construction.  The overall appearance made me think of an old stone wall, and indeed, the title of the work was, Stone Wall!  One can create good art work with neutrals, here was proof!  A variety of fabrics were used, accented with hand stitching.  The fabrics appeared to be hand dyed, perhaps some by rust dyeing, others from plant dyes.  Great visual interest was achieved by color gradations in the fabrics, the shapes of the pieces, and texture from the fabrics and the rough edges of the small pieces… all things that I like and use in my own work.  This piece captivated me even more, and I could kill a good bit of time contemplating it, given the opportunity. 

I picked up another evaluation criteria at the opening: do you want to live with this piece of art in your home?  (Of course, disregarding the cost.)  This is very similar to the question I mentioned above, but both are very good things to think about, especially for those not versed in analyzing art.  Identify what you like and worry about the why later.