“Unchained” by Sam Jacobson
“Hannah” by Mary Taponga
“Little Miss” by Julie Fiedler
FACE IT
Five different visions of the powerful
attraction of the human face will be on
show this Friday, Oct. 11, as Lincoln City’s
Chessman Gallery unveils its latest exhibit,
“Making Faces.”
This exhibit features pieces by clay
artists Sam Jacobson and Julie Fiedler;
mosaic artist Mary Tapogna; mixed media
and collage artist Maria-Esther Sund; and
painter Erik Seeger.
Friday’s opening reception will run from
5 to 7 pm, offering wine, refreshments and a
chance to meet the artists.
Julie Fiedler is both a painter and
ceramic sculptor. She is well known for
her ceramic tiles, as well as her ethereal
sculptures. She paints and fires her tile in
her Oregon Coast studio, surrounded by the
plants, birds and animals that often make
their way into her paintings and sculptures.
For this show, she has made self-referential,
life-size portrait busts and masks.
“Traditional bust and mask forms, with
their historic and cultural weight, work
as iconic, often joyous, platforms for self-
expression and reflection,” she said.
Working in earthenware, Fiedler creates
the busts in one piece, often combining
casting and hand-building. Underglazes,
glazes and overgrazes requiring multiple
firings satisfy her desire for both control and
risky abandon.
Sam Jacobson’s art takes many forms,
including working with clay in her studio
at Cascade Head. Much of her clay work
is functional, including teapots, vases,
bowls and containers. Other clay works are
whimsical, such as dog masks, or thought-
provoking, such as her faces. For Jacobson,
sculpting faces is transformative. A mound
of mud transforms into a face, a face
transforms into a life, and each life created
transforms the artist and hopefully the
viewer. She finds enjoyment in sharing the
faces of people that she has known, observed
or imagined, creating something that goes
beyond herself.
Maria-Esther Sund was born and raised
in El Salvador and went on to study art
at Simmons College in Boston and La
Universidad de Las Americas in Puebla,
Mexico. She has been painting for many
22 • oregoncoastTODAY.com • facebook.com/oregoncoasttoday • October 11, 2019
these are head and
shoulders above the rest
years, through her own personal desire to
invent something original. Working with
collage and mixed media, she is able to
incorporate old and new elements while
taking full advantage of the exploratory
process in creating a work of art. Inspired by
the work of Picasso, Matisse and Chagall,
especially their portraits, Sund developed
an interest in creating faces through collage
and other mixed-media techniques. As the
layers build she is able to excavate into the
surface to reveal the hidden beauty that lies
beneath.
Mary Tapogna was born and raised in
Springfield, Ohio, where she studied graphic
design at he University of Cincinnati and
graduated with a BFA in Photography
from the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Upon
moving to Portland in 1990, she worked as
a freelance photographer, mainly for The
Oregonian. She gradually began to dabble
with the mosaic art medium and was soon
having exhibits and undertaking large and
small scale commission projects. This led
to the opening of Hail Mary, a storefront-
gallery-studio that was an arts and
community fixture in Portland for 12 years.
Tapogna’s mosaic portraits are fabricated
using various accumulated materials,
images and layering. The work can take
weeks to months to complete, depending
upon size and challenge of the project.
Tapogna honors the traditional art form by
striving for the same tedious intricacy, while
incorporating contemporary unorthodox
materials and subject matter.
Erik Seeger paints with oil on paper or
canvas. His images are made using minimal
symbols representing the face, and basic
primary colors, with the evolution of line
and light, to create a maximal effect on the
emotions of the observer. Seeger views art
as the ultimate attempt to provide clues
to one’s real identity and is the subliminal
epitome of human expression.
“Making Faces” will be on show through
Monday, Nov. 4, available to view daily
except Tuesdays. The Chessman Gallery is
inside the Lincoln City Cultural Center at
540 NE Hwy. 101 in Lincoln City.
For more information, call
541-994-9994.