Eugene weekly., May 20, 2004, Page 18, Image 18

BY SYLVIE PEDERSON
Andrade Paintings at
Jacobs, Walsh
installation at DIVA
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18 MAY 20, 2004
D
isposition of Age,” at the Jacobs
Gallery through May 29, showcases
Grants Pass artist Virginia
Andrade’s recent abstract paintings. Her
desire to come to terms with society’s attitude
toward age and the invisibility of older peo-
ple, women especially, led the artist to exper-
iment with new forms and materials.
Andrade’s paintings have a pro-
nounced, seductive, tactile quality. She
uses an unusual combination of layered
powder pigments and gouache and
manipulates the colors directly with her
hands. “There’s no separation between
body and medium,” she said. “The
whole process is quite intuitive.”
The paintings are all earth tones:
ochres, sienna, blue-grey and green,
muted reds and pinks — colors of the
Southwest, the desert. They retain an
appropriately powdery quality despite
the gouache. She investigates the effects
of time on the surface of rocks, walls,
earth, skin. Her pigments evoke the col-
ored dust of crumbling stone, fine
residues accumulating on the surface of
boulders, traces of lichen. Ink lines
drawn in a gesture add further markings,
and the paper contributes a granular tex-
ture and buckles slightly, like old parch-
ment or tanned animal skin retaining
some life does.
Another effect of time is wear, tear and
erosion. Andrade subjects the surface of her
paintings to “scratching, scraping, rubbing
and scoring,” yet beauty, softness and a sense
of serenity result. This “beauty in how things
age” is what Andrade wants to convey —
how “color fades and softens, lines blur.” She
wants us to acquire “a new awareness of, and
sensitivity to, the mysteries of aging.”
Into the abstract palimpsests she creates,
one may read the creased surface of a boul-
der (First Impressions 1) or that of old,
cracked walls with their successive layers of
paint peeling off, shreds of posters still glued
here and there, traces of graffiti marks, plas-
ter falling off in places (Life Force, Pulp
Friction, Life Force, Somerset). Or one may
envision a desert landscape viewed from the
sky (Soul Mates 1, First Impressions 2).
The paintings are often horizontally or
vertically divided by arbitrary lines evoking
the subjective lines that separate internal and
external perceptions of reality. Yet relation-
ships are born, bonds are created, links are
made. She represents this simultaneous
process by mysterious abstract characters
that appear on the surfaces — circular marks
or shapes viewers may variously construe as
pebbles, eggs or cells.
They huddle together (Spoke the Walrus
6, Lean on Me), squat like boulders on either
side of a dry riverbed (Soul Mates 1), rise like
bubbles (Paradigm Shift 1, Soul Mates 5),
perch together over an horizontal line like so
many Humpty Dumpties on a wall (Lean on
Me, Grounded), peek on either sides of win-
dow-panes (Bi-Partisan), mate (Soul Mates
4), play balance games (Spoke the Walrus 3)
and in general engage in all manners of social
behaviors (The Egg and I, Soul Mates 3).
Andrade views them mostly as eggs,
symbols of the new fertility she experiences
now. “The eggs are still there waiting to be
born and come to life, but now I’m produc-
ing ideas,” she said. “This is about a renewed
feeling of fertility, a rebirth, reinventing
myself by accepting my age.”
Lean On Me by Virginia Andrade
“End of the Line: Fragments of the
Material Age,” Mike E. Walsh’s site-specific
installation at DIVA through June 26, indi-
cates the artist’s formal range yet is consistent
with his interest in history and an archaeo-
logical approach to human artifacts. Walsh
selected 252 cards from The Oregonian file
on the Eugene Library’s defunct card catalog
for his installation.
On opening day, I observed viewers as
they stepped into Walsh’s room — first,
expressions of surprise and delight, followed
by playful exploration. The cards, hung low
from the ceiling with mono-filament in an
otherwise empty room, form six groups of
six-tiered rows of six cards each, with a
dozen small piles of shredded cards on the
floor beneath. Like pale butterflies or leaves
hovering in mid-air, the cards transform the
space and impart an impression of lightness.
It’s a catchy mood. Pathways encourage you
to walk around and immerse yourself. Move,
and the cards come alive. Blow, and they
flutter about you.
Walsh describes the installation as an act
of mourning, “infused with nostalgia and
reverence [that] laments not just the passing
of the card catalogue, but the spirit and
sense of our own history that vanished with
it, as we forgo slower, more scenic routes,
the green valleys, for the sterile speed of
cyberspace.”
It is not just filing systems that become
obsolete, but the very items filed away. By
choosing the catalogue of a newspaper,
Walsh reminds us how short-lived, quickly
obsolete and easily forgotten news stories
are. Walsh’s work is rich in conceptual rami-
fications, with a spareness of means and del-
icacy of touch that brings us to reflection
through seduction.
ew