Unique diversity: This extensive exhibit showcases works by two artists traveling different, fascinating paths

Robert Codina, photographer, and Rosie Kane, multi-disciplinary artist, have created an astonishing exhibition at Upper Valley Art League’s Kika de la Garza Fine Arts Center.

“Meraki” delivers an exhilarating artistic overload with 50 photographs from Codina and 58 works from Kane.

The two-artist show pattern that UVAL has leaned into for the past few shows has surely peaked with this one.

While Codina searches for meaning beneath the flat surface of his image, Kane injects new/unusual materials into her work to extend the identity of her material. Their visual images are enough to satisfy surface level viewers, while their concepts and material experiments offer thoughtful consideration and insights.

Both artists have grouped works according to a technique or state of mind to bring viewers into their inspirational thinking.

Codina’s photographs depict a variety of people, places, and objects with an emotional range that spans the serious to the playful. “Knot to be Understood” is a witty series of 12 pictures combining wordplay and visual situations; each image is humorously titled, such as “Knot on the Level” and “Knot Making the Bar,” and evokes the mental gymnastics of self-contradiction.

In a general statement Codina believes that the photograph serves as a portal into the mind of the viewer, inviting experiences at depths below the flat photographic surface. His ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) pictures take us into the metaphysical and represent a more complex edge to his images. Appearing abstracted on the surface, “Day on the Beach” depicts a family at the water’s edge, showing a child in the foreground where the ICM seems to be sweeping her spirit into the ethereal realm of nature.

“The camera is a companion on my life journey,” explained Codina. “It provides a lens through which I view life. I shutter at life to capture its intrigue”

Kane is an artistic adventuress, pursuing unique materials to add to her already broad palette. Challenging Codina’s emotional range, she masters a range of techniques, unique as well as standard, that also offer an additional level of understanding, but on a technical rather than emotional level.

“Simply Her,” whose earthy face contrasts with the sophistication of her elegant oil portraits, is from a ceramic series with micaceous clay that allows natural clay colors with flecks of mica to give her unglazed clay pieces a unique quality.

Her standard encaustic (hot wax) paintings include surprising detail as noted in her Google vacation series focusing on waterfront structures in Burano, Italy, where she spent time on Google earth to visit interesting places and locations. I found her cold wax and oil painting, “Shine,” to be more visually exciting with its remarkable and unique expression of garment texture.

“I try to combine with something I already do to make it something new,” she said. “My biggest joy is to look up something on the internet and not find it. And I think, ‘OK, I’m on the right track’, because I want to make something different. I know what clay can do; I know what encaustic can do; how can I push it?”

“Meraki” is a Greek word meaning to do something with soul, creativity, or love, and this exhibit certainly demonstrates that concept. Codina and Kane passionately push for unique elements in their aesthetic endeavors and both succeed. Don’t miss this show!

Nancy Moyer, Professor Emerita of Art, is an art critic for The Monitor. She may be reached at [email protected].

‘Meraki’