CHANDLER: Making all the parts fit

Show cobbles together artists' abstract views of the natural world

Mary Voelz Chandler

Published May 29, 2008 at 7 p.m.
Updated May 29, 2008 at 7:13 p.m.

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Works from Terry Maker's "Spiny Series," in resin, shell and mixed media on panel: Spiny Urchin, left, Spiny Crawler and Spiny Driver.

Part of the attraction of "Flourish," a new group exhibition at Robischon Gallery, is to see how work by somewhat disparate artists can fit under an umbrella that also begs individuals to stand out in a crowd.

After all, this work is complicated and, in some cases, showy, though in the good sense of the word. It veers into, out of and around abstraction while staying grounded in an examination of the world of natural phenomena, change and growth.

If anything links artists such as Judy Pfaff, Jae Ko, Brad Miller, Terry Maker, Trine Bumiller and six other regional and national artists, it is their attention to detail, superior workmanship and the personal ways they approach a multilayered concept such as nature.

The issue of abstraction gets a workout. In the front gallery, for instance, Ana Maria Hernando combines beautifully embroidered textiles and resin plates to create a nearly transparent take on a giant lily pad, itself a riff on a similar but more colorful work she showed at the Museo de las Americas.

Hanging nearby are several richly textured ceramic, stoneware and porcelain "fossilized rock forms" by Brad Miller, grouped into a powerful wall display that suggests immense underwater plant life but can be taken, element by element, as abstract objects.

Also in that gallery, complex works on paper by New York-based Judy Pfaff include pieces from the "Year of the Dog" series that combine woodblock, digital and hand-printing; #9 is particularly satisfying, in a blaze of red and black, with applied and pleated layers of paper, and cutouts and drawings of birds and poppies.

And Seattle-based Katy Stone uses acrylic paint (and scissors) to turn the clear material Duralar into effervescent recollections of natural upheaval, in Mum Heap and Spiders and Lace.

Move into the center space, and New Yorker Ross Bleckner fills an alcove with works on paper using numerous techniques (from sugarlift to spitbite) to revisit a formal floral scene several times.

Terry Maker's quest to investigate every material under the sun here results in three slim vertical mixed-media works in which she captures slices of stuff ranging from ball-bearing puzzles to tire tread to shells in lush resin. It is ephemera made real and ripe for study. Rebecca DiDomenico of Boulder presents two mixed-media works that incorporate embroidery (and a tiny spool of thread) in evanescent representations of growth.

Trine Bumiller, in three large segmented paintings, uses a grayed-down palette, with a couple of bright surprises, and suggestions of form to bring the outdoors inside while giving it a beautiful glazed surface.

San Franciscan Jamie Brunson's abstracted swipes of bright paint appear to flow like a fast river, inanimate though they might be. And Washington, D.C.- based Jae Ko's four red rolled paper objects appear to be having a conversation, hung on a wall in a striking asymmetrical display.

More of Brunson's work appears in the back Viewing Room, where they keep company with nine small oil-on-linen paintings by New York-based Kathy Moss that seem to chronicle the deconstruction of a bunch of berries. Tiny red orbs begin to scatter against a pale ground, given texture by her inclusion of ground stone in the paint. They are mysterious, not abstract as much as conceptual.

But it's possible to make only so much of a verbal map through this ever-changing landscape. The actual trip through is much more worthwhile.

Mary Chandler is the art and architecture critic. chandlerm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2677

Flourish

* What: Eleven artists address complex natural forms: Judy Pfaff, Ross Bleckner, Jae Ko, Trine Bumiller, Terry Maker, Brad Miller, Ana Maria Hernando, Rebecca DiDomenico, Katy Stone, Jamie Brunson and Kathy Moss

* Where and when: Robischon Gallery, 1740 Wazee St.; through June 21

* Information: 303-298-7788; robischongallery.com

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