Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 13, 1992                   TAG: 9203130447
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JEFF DeBELL
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PAINTER SHOWS PUPILS THAT THE ART IS IN THE PROCESS

That's because Sieveking didn't do the conventional thing, which is to make the art elsewhere and bring it to the gallery. Instead, he created the works in the gallery itself.

Appropriately, the show is titled "Work in Progress." It continues through March.

The opening reception, on Feb. 23, was called a "partial completion party."

Making the art on-site was the artist's idea.

"It's a school, and they like to say the gallery is an educational gallery," he said. "If we really want it to be educational, we might as well paint it while it's up."

Shirley Johnson, who teaches art and runs the gallery, agrees.

"I liked the idea because students usually only get to see finished work," she said. "I thought it would be interesting and educational for them to see work in progress, to see how an artist begins and gradually works and the follow-through to completion."

Using oil sticks and other media, including photo-prints and computer-generated images, Sieveking makes pictures of what he calls "American symbols" that are recognizable but "sort of on the fringe." In the North Cross show, they include singers Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, baseball hero Ty Cobb, various handguns, Moon Pies and circus star Johnny Eck.

The artist works large, often grouping 30- by 40-inch drawings in clusters of up to eight, and sometimes juxtaposing black and white personalities in a sort of checkerboard pattern to remind viewers of the close interplay between the races in Southern culture.

"I want to make people think about something, make people deal with things on their own terms," he told one group of eighth-graders. They seemed interested, but were not forthcoming with questions. Johnson said that's probably because eighth-graders don't like to call attention to themselves by asking questions.

Upper-classmen were less shy. They showed particular interest in Eck, who was an identical twin but differed from his full-sized brother in that he existed only from approximately the waist up. Thanks to this dramatic birth defect, Sieveking said, the brothers were able to develop an impressive act in which one of them appeared to be sawed in half.

Such information flows generously from Sieveking, who says his own style has been influenced more by circus posters than any of the masters in painting. It was prolific folk artist Howard Finster, he said, who taught him the importance of going ahead and painting - as opposed to trying to commit profundity - and of painting what one knows and is interested in.

Johnson said she believes North Cross students have heeded that message from Sieveking (who is an alumnus of the school).

"I think what will come out of this is they will value their own experiences more," she said.

Lanvan H. Reid's negative response to "The Piano Lesson" was an exception, according to Jere Lee Hodgin of Mill Mountain Theatre, where the play closes today.

In a letter published by this newspaper, Reid described the play's humor as "sick" and objected to its frequent use of the word "nigger." Reid, who said he left the performance at intermission, wrote that the play put blacks in a "dehumanizing condition."

"Not at all," said Hodgin. "I feel like it shows the humanity of the black man and how we strangled that as a society."

Hodgin is the theater's executive and artistic director. He also directed "The Piano Lesson." He said audience response, as measured by comment cards and mail, has been strongly positive.

Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play is set in 1936 Pittsburgh and has an all-black cast of characters. It is part of the black playwright's announced plan to examine the experience of being black in America by setting a play in each decade of the 20th century.

Admirers of electronic music will want to head for Radford University on Thursday night because one of the major figures of the medium will be appearing there.

It's Gilbert Trythall, who is well-known as a speaker, writer, composer and performer of synthesizer music. Among his credits are "Switched on Nashville," a popular collection of country music standards performed on synthesizer, and a book titled "Principals and Practice of Electronic Music."

Trythall will speak and perform in Preston Hall at 8 p.m. Admission is free.

A review of Sieveking's show. Page 10.\