Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 13, 1995 TAG: 9501130067
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: SALLY HARRIS SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
Their ideas echo off each other and take on new forms, repeating shapes or themes or symbols in a new way of experiencing them. That's the reason they call their exhibition opening in the Perspective Gallery at Virginia Tech "Enchanted Echoes."
"It's the enchantment of spaces and the mythical aspect of working with each other and echoing each other," Truman Capone said.
"We bounce ideas off each other," Faith Capone said. "We connect and disconnect. It's hard to tell sometimes which ideas were whose - but we always know, really."
They have entirely different methods of working. He experiments with different materials - ceramic tile, Plexiglas, wood, metals, slate, acrylic, watercolors - even concrete from his days of working with a contractor. From the beginning, Faith has stayed mainly with the metals and stones of jewelry.
He does large painting and sculpture of materials so cumbersome that he sometimes has to do the work in the yard. Her jewelry is contained in a small indoor space.
Yet the two styles meet. He'll create a sculpture and she'll echo it in a pin. She'll create a necklace and he'll pick up a shape or symbol from it in a painting.
For example, Truman has two still-unnamed pod-like sculptures in the window of the gallery. The large, writhing forms made of concrete, copper, Teflon and stainless steel with red resin on the ends are echoed in Faith's small pin made of sterling silver and 18- and 24-karat gold with citrine, a gold and yellow stone, on the end.
The Capones have been collaborating since they met in art school at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania where Faith was a goldsmith and he a sculptor and designer. When he enrolled in the architecture school at Virginia Tech in 1973, Faith taught art in Craig County, doing jewelry at home in the evenings. They traveled to shows. "And then we had children," she said.
No longer able to work all day and create jewelry at night, Faith worked with a jeweler in Roanoke, designing pieces while learning the business end of the job. Truman, trained in architecture, industrial arts and fine arts, has done graphic design and taught art at both Virginia Tech and Radford University.
In 1986, with Truman's encouragement, Faith started Capone's Fine Jewelry in Blacksburg, confident that all her experience would come together. The two are co-owners.
Capone's Fine Jewelry is "a full-service jeweler that does a great deal of custom-design work," Faith said. "We try to fulfill people's ideas and their visions of what they would like to see in wedding bands, engagement rings. ... We're usually connected emotionally with people because it's usually a happy occasion."
The Capones' show at the Perspective Gallery "deals with the spiritual and sublime concepts of art," Truman said. He believes that "today, the significance of spiritual art is sometimes ignored" because of the scientific, technological emphasis on understanding nature and the universe. "The sacred, the symbol, the icon and the myth are the very substance of spiritual art," he said, and he tries to honor those things in his works.
The pieces incorporate ideas from various religious traditions and philosophies, from the trinity of Christianity to the circle of Chinese universalism.
But the exhibition isn't all other-worldly. The visitor to the gallery in Squires Student Center must walk around sculptures of male and female forms connected with vacuum-cleaner-type hoses piercing them through the "hara" (center) or through the heart in very down-to-earth symbolism of love and feelings.
But the human forms are encased in Plexiglas boxes, and Truman describes them as "hermetic." Air tight.
"We have become sterile in our relationships," Faith said. "These represent the mental as well as the physical, emotional and spiritual connections."
Down-to-earth materials such as computer chips and concrete blocks keep the exhibition grounded.
Space is also very important to the artists, who fill the walls, the floors and the corners so that the viewer must interact, step over and around works. Many of Truman's paintings and sculptures create the feeling of entering sacred space.
The installation is an extension of his studio, Truman said, and some of the works are still in progress. But installation art, which, in "Enchanted Echoes," includes architectural elements, sculptures, paintings, jewelry, and concept art, "develops depth with the collaboration of another artist," he said. In this case, that's Faith Capone.
Back again to the echoes, to the back-and-forth play of their art. They include in that exchange the help of various students and apprentices as well as the responses of their children, Harmony, 14, and Austin, 11.
"We value the experience of working with other people," Faith said. "We learn a lot." Art is more than just personal expression, she said. It's "personal expression plus what happens because of it."
Although they may lock themselves away to create paintings or jewelry sometimes, more often they enjoy making their work a group effort. "Ours are not lonely arts," Faith said.
"Enchanted Echoes," an exhibit by Faith and Truman Capone, opens Tuesday and will run through Feb. 14 in the Perspective Gallery in Squires Student Center at Virginia Tech. An opening reception will be held Jan. 22 from 3 until 5 p.m. in the gallery. The gallery is open Tuesdays through Thursdays, noon to 10 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays from 2 to 10 p.m. It is closed on Mondays.
by CNB