Mounting an exhibition showcasing the work of four artists can most often pose at least one significant challenge: how to get the works to relate to one another. The task is further complicated by a diversity of genres — in this case drawing, painting, ceramics and photography — and disparity of subject matter, both representational and abstract.
Yet, somehow the current four-artist exhibition featured at the Aiken Center for the Arts reaches a satisfying state of symbiosis. The show’s title “Threads” reinforces this connectivity: how the inner life of each artist — Leslie Alexander, Andrew Cho, Ginny Southworth and Diane Kirkpatrick — relates to his or her outer experience and relationship to both nature and others.
Leslie Alexander’s 12 acrylic abstracts focus almost solely on the interplay between our inner and outer worlds. In this regard, one particular painting may offer a roadmap of the artist’s essential journey. Entitled “Sacred Thread of the Conch,” the piece features a central shell-like structure from whose spirally volutes emerge and fan out silky filaments. One is reminded of how in many cultures, the conch is used as a musical instrument, broadcasting its trumpet sounds far and wide. So too, does each individual human being sing the song of the self.
Over and over, in works like “Bold Birth” and “Scattered Light,” we see the same generous spirit, reaching out in active engagement with the surrounding world. A similar impulse can be found in the wall-mounted ceramic pieces of Andrew Cho. Most of the 19 works currently on view are composed of flat porcelain plaques, each one purposely shattered and then reassembled with the gaps between the shards clearly delineated. Emblazoned on each surface is the image of a person or several people, some known to the artist and some observed from a distance. The act of piecing back together their likenesses mirrors how each of us relates to those around us; they become so often figures of our own imagination, constructs of our own devising.
Thusly a portraitist like Diane Kirkpatrick may most often relate to her subjects in her 17 colorful oils and 30-by-40-inch charcoals. It has often been said about those who attempt the likeness of another that the finished product is a partial projection of the artist’s own psyche. Certainly, in how the subject is posed, like “Lily with Fox” wherein a young girl takes unsettling possession of a wild animal and “Voodoo Child” wherein yet another female fixedly stares at the viewer, this time holding aloft antlers in mid-ceremony, we learn as much about the artist as we do about the sitter.
A similar confessional stance is evident in Ginny Southworth’s black and white photographs of the somber, low-lit landscapes of the British Isles. These 14 pieces are about equally divided between the country and the city. Through the eye of her camera, we too hike the treeless terrain, peering at other wanderers silhouetted on the crest of distant hills. We too trod the cobblestoned, rain-soaked byways of old town Edinburgh, gazing up at buildings of stone and brick that have stood for centuries.
On view until Nov. 30, “Threads: Exploring People and Place” is one of the most satisfying, most impressive exhibitions mounted at the Aiken Center for the Arts in the past few years. Congratulations to Caroline Gwinn and the Center’s fine staff for sharing with the community the work of four such fine local artists.
