CHANDLER: A quick course in abstraction

Mary Voelz Chandler

Published June 26, 2008 at 6 p.m.

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Special to the Rocky

An untitled 2007 oil on canvas painting by Ania Gola-Kumor.

Special to the Rocky

Mel Strawn's 1958 ink on paper Thresher.

Summer doesn't bring much fluff these days to Denver galleries, and "Abstraction" is a case in point. It's an opportunity to study serious non- representational work by artists who rarely show here.

Gallery owner Sandra Phillips asked Sally Perisho to serve as guest curator, a welcome return to the art scene for the former head of what was then known as the Center for Visual Arts.

In this show of work by five artists working in different mediums, Perisho has shown wisdom in most cases, and generosity in others.

As a result, "Abstraction" includes some stunning work, even though it occasionally veers from total coherence.

To begin, Perisho has included work by Ania Gola-Kumor, a long-time, well- respected teacher at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design.

Gola-Kumor showed widely in the 1980s, but then went under the radar when it came to exhibiting her work.

The community should be glad she is back, represented here by two works in watercolor and oil pastel on paper and three extraordinary oils on canvas (plus, more recently, a small bin of other pieces).

The smaller watercolors, toward the front of the gallery, are dense, compact and focused on containment within the frame.

Her nearby paintings, however, are more expansive, deep and almost cellular in nature.

Line and color hold sway in these large, untitled paintings, bracing and balanced works that are all-consuming and hard to pull away from.

On a different level, the same is true of several works on paper from the 1950s through the 1970s by Mel Strawn, the Salida-based artist who has moved over the past few decades from abstraction to digitally charged representational work.

Phillips took a bold step a few years ago in showing Strawn's early, early abstract paintings, and moves in that direction again here by exhibiting lyrical works in ink or charcoal on paper.

Thresher, especially, illustrates Strawn's strength at defining line with an economy of strokes.

Also back on view is work by Virginia Maitland, a celebrated Boulder-based artist who seemed to re-emerge in 2004 during the large retrospective/survey "Opened Windows" at the now-defunct Studio Aiello.

Maitland's four paintings at Phillips seem like a mere appetizer, especially Amethyst, a stunning color field/color stain painting from the 1970s; it hangs across from Gola- Kumor's wall of paintings, and looking back and forth offers quite an education in abstraction.

Maitland's newer work has the feel of an artist finding a new path, with the addition of photographic elements on a shaped painting and the reliance on a horizon line in another work.

Throughout, though, Maitland is color's master.

Perisho called upon Texas-based painter Jane Troyer (they share a mutual friend) for several works, most in tempera and accomplished in a style that can only be called slight.

Her lines and forms appear to have been applied by spirits.

Finally, at the center of the show is new work by accomplished ceramist Bebe Alexander, coordinator of the ceramics program at the Arvada Center.

Alexander's beautifully formed and glazed towers are well known from area clay exhibitions.

But they are more stylized than abstract, as their clear architectural elements leave no doubt about Alexander's intent.

Still, "Abstraction" is a strong statement about the power of abstraction, and the way in which different artists find power in the focus on line, form and paint.

Abstraction

* What: Work on a theme of abstraction by Mel Strawn, Virginia Maitland, Ania Gola-Kumor, Jane Troyer and Bebe Alexander

* Where and when: Sandra Phillips Gallery, 744 Santa Fe Drive; through July 5

* Information: 303-573-5969; thesandraphillipsgallery.com

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