Oregon daily emerald., February 08, 1973, Page 8, Image 8

reviews
Contrasts:
real and
man-made
art
Two new shows that opened Sunday at the
University Museum of Art pose some problems
about the role of art in an environment already
' over-populated with man-made objects. The
shows, one including the four winners of Statewide
Services’ Traveling Exhibit Competition (in the
main floor galleries) and the other comprised of
woven sculpture by University graduate Mike
Walsh (in the Focus Gallery upstairs), will run
through February 25. They may be seen Tuesday
through Sunday, 12 to 5 p.m.
It’s good to bear in mind while viewing the
exhibits from the Statewide Services Competition
that one of the main objectives of the competition
is to make good contemporary art available,
through a circulating program, to areas outside
the cultural centers of the Northwest. Think about
how a fisherman from Astoria, a logger from
Bend, or a secretary from Pendleton might look at
each of the exhibits. It’s not too difficult to guess
what they’ll like, or what they won’t like.
Michael Ware’s ink drawings, for instance,
should be fairly popular. Limiting himself to
black ink (usually applied with a brush) and white
papa*, Ware has been able to capture the elusive
atmosphere of the rain forests and dunes at the
Coast. Considering the economy of means and
similarity of format employed here, the effect is
one of surprising variety. Texture is Ware’s forte:
fog, rain, water, clouds, sand, and the roots,
branches, and leaves of trees each take on their
own textural characteristics and are in this way
sorted out of these tangled landscapes.
Michael Mathers’ documentary photographs
of the tramps he met while hitching freights for
several months come off as pretty attractive, too.
The men appear in their native environments here
— in boxcars, in freightyards waiting to catch the
next train, in camps and make-shift shacks, never
far from the rails. Each photograph is ac
companied by a quote from one of the characters
Mathers has portrayed, and these provide much
additional interest to the exhibit. The tramps and
their language are equally colorful.
In her woven capes, masks, helmets, and
ceremonial devices, Barbara Setsu Pickett
harkens back to a time when there was little
separation between art and life. Most of these
pieces relate in varying degrees to Indian
costumes or ritual objects from the tribal cultures
of Afrca or South America. For this reason, they
often seem to invite the viewer to imagine himself
wearing or using them in some sort of ritual, and
this constitutes their distinctive attraction.
It’s doubtful that, in contrast to the other three
exhibits, very many people will be turned on by
Eric Gronberg’s ceramic work that shares a
gallery with Pickett’s weaving. Of course, these
dismembered hands, feet, knees, legs, arms,
torsos, buttocks and breasts lying randomly in red
barkdust among oak leaves, branches, and stones
evidence a master’s touch in the use of materials.
But technical proficiency can’t save the piece
from looking like a morbid sexual fantasy. Add to
this the fact that the set in which the ceramics are
situated, and without which it would seem in
complete, was concocted by the Museum staff and
could probably not be duplicated elsewhere, and
the difficulties overwhelm the work.
The problem with all the work in the Traveling
Exhibit show is that it in one way or another fails
to come to grips with the present, with the realities
that the viewer confronts as soon as he steps out
the door: Ware’s ink drawings offer an escape
into a landscape still untouched by man — an
illusion. Mathers’ disarmingly romantic
photography assays the pathos of the tramp’s life
we all long from time to time to escape to.
Pickett’s woven pieces refer to an earlier, perhaps
simpler stage of man’s history. Gronberg, though
his work is not quite as appealing, seems to
suggest yet another fantasy, another antidote for
reality.
Mike Walsh’s woven sculpture in the Focus
Gallery offers (me solution to this problem. Walsh,
in his own words, is dealing with “. . . ritual,
organic, and paradoxical forma and their
relationship to the environment.” The use of
natural materials (jute, sisal, linen, feathers,
wood, and paper) is throughout his work con
trasted with man-made materials (plastic, rub
ber, chromed or rusted metal) and there’s usually
a lively dialogue going on between the contrasty
elements.
Walsh isn’t technically proficient in the way
that the artist in the main galleries can be.
Sometimes his pieces fall flat due to pretension or
the craftsmanlike overkill of the plexiglass-and
wood boxes that encase some of them, but he more
than compensates for these letdowns when he
manages to fuse image with idea in pieces like
“Attachmet (Sic) Future Development” and
“Ceremonial-Fragment Tapestry.” This latter
work consists of some handmade jewelry and a
small weaving encased (appropriately this time)
as a mock museum exhibit and dated by the artist
“circ. 1984.” Though it doesn’t come off as too
didactic, it still makes a point.
At his best, Walsh goes beyond the limits of
good craftsmanship and good taste, and speaks
directly to the viewer about what it is to live in this
time and place. In this way, art becomes not only
pleasurable, but necessary.
Stephen Bangs
'Equivalent Prints9 call for imaginative viewers
To Jerry Greenfield, the viewer of his
photographs is just as important as the
photograph itself. And if the viewer
comes filled with imagination, he is
assured a chance to share in the
photographer’s creativity. His part will
be to complete the seemingly abstract
image by being encouraged to for
mulate his own objects and ideas
deduced from the presented visual
stimulus.
A collection of Jerry Greenfield’s
black and white photographs from the
past two years are on exhibition in the
Photography Gallery at the University
of Oregon Art Museum until the end of
February. Through the help of Bernard
Freemesser, teacher of photography in
the Journalism Department at the
University, this gallery has been
established to provide a constantly
changing photography exhibit to the
people of Eugene.
After living in Oregon for 17 years
and attending Pacific University in
Forest Grove, Jerry Greenfield moved
to the east coast in 1964, when he began
studying under noted photographers
Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. Yet
his greatest influence came from the
teachings of Minor White. White
believes, as does Siskind and Callahan,
that the subject matter is secondary
only to the photograph itself in creating
a response. In explaining this trend in
photography, he speaks of
“Equivalence.” Defined very simply,
Equivalence is the theory that a
photograph (or any other work of art)
will go beyond the mere representation
of a physical subject ; it should mainly
serve as a function or experience which
will entice the viewer to relate it to
something within himself, giving him a
new stimulus to re-create a personal
visual experience.
These examples of Jerry Greenfield’s
photography serve this same function
of Equivalence. He has taken close-up
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shots of naturally occuring phenomena
such as rusted iron, curling paint, and
flaking metals. As pure designs, they
may appear similar to the abstracted
What do you see in Greenfield’s pealing paint?
forms found in many modem paintings.
However, Greenfield has presented
something distinctly different from
abstract forms in his successful prints.
Instead of using the painter’s method of
starting with a basic idea and then
abstracting it into an often in
distinguishable shape, Greenfield
searches for an existing abstract farm
and then isolates it from the surround
ings, thereby composing a specfic
design to act as a stimulus for our
response.
This can most clearly be seen in the
print in the far comer as one enters the
gallery (none of the prints are titled on
the wall). Looking only at the actual
subject matter, it consists of a long,
white stretch of paint that has curled up
around the edges. Yet when viewed as
an Equivalent, I can imagine the
curving, sensual outline of the body
belonging to a 1950’s, Marilyn Monroe
type of beauty. True, this may not have
been what Greenfield had in mind when
he made the photograph, but I doubt be
intended to merely represent an area of
white paint before a dark background.
By this theory of Equivalence, his
original idea of the photograph can now
be expanded to include other personal
interpretations.
Although many photographers use
and have used this style of a close-up,
“isolated” view, Jerry Greenfield
shows how it continues to be effective.
This approach allows the camera to
isolate a subject from its normal
surroundings, and then causes the
viewer to concentrate on the subject’s
new context. If the viewer uses his
imagination to visualize a new form, he
can leave the exhibit with some won
derful re-creations. I left very pleased.
I had just visually formulated the
majestic pose of Rodin’s powerful
statue of “Balzac,” standing proud with
his arms folded, before a starry night—
all out of an area of broken rust and
flaking metal.
David Turner
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