In the galleries, February 15

The Rocky

Friday, February 15, 2008

Richard Notkin's 2007 etching The Gift, in a mix of techniques including aquatint, soft ground and hard ground.

Noted ceramist Richard Notkin is all over the metro area right now, serving double duty as the juror for Foothills Art Center's biennial Colorado Clay exhibition while showing work in the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design's debut show in a series called "Paralleled."

"Paralleled" is designed to be an umbrella to offer viewers a chance to compare and contrast work in various categories. For this outing, that's "Amorphous Abstraction and Socially Conscious Artworks."

That title may read as a bit flat, but the work in the show certainly is not.

And it's handily divided.

In the West Gallery, work with an abstract bent is on view, including paintings by Homare Ikeda that include his signature amoebic underwater imagery, and drawings and ceramics by Scott Chamberlin that stress sleek form hinting at the figural (especially the large jouel, which is as glittery as its name).

Also under the "amorphous" end of abstraction, place a series of sculptures made of bright-red resin-coated sandbags by John McEnroe. They appear to have been frozen while flopping or slouching in space.

In the East Gallery, social commentary rules. Fiber-based work by Jess Larson casts a feminist eye on items traditionally associated with women (from girdles to domestic attributes). Yumi Roth's traffic cones turned into pinatas through the magic of crepe paper speak of mixed environmental messages.

And Richard Notkin's anti-war imagery employed in both small clay tiles and in larger etchings is beautifully rendered work, strong in meaning. His ability to use the same iconography in two mediums shows a stretch in the evolution of his work.

In between, in the auditorium, Scott Johnson's video Ruminando presents as a diptych that examines the difference in vision between creatures that are prey and predator.

Johnson's cameras move through narrow streets with a different scale of panoramic vision, a trip guaranteed to make your eyes start questioning what they see. Which is the point.

Paralleled: Amorphous Abstraction and Socially Conscious Artworks

* What: First in a series of exhibitions, here with artists including Richard Notkin, Scott Chamberlin, Yumi Roth, Jess Larson and John McEnroe

* Where and when: Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, Philip J. Steele Gallery, 1600 Pierce St., Lakewood; through March 8

* Information: 303-753-6046; rmcad.edu