THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 25, 1994 TAG: 9409230058
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: TERESA ANNAS
LENGTH: Long : 146 lines
CORY LANGLEY'S answering machine message is a Tarzan yell. Ahhhh-AH-ah-AH-ahhhh-AH-ah-AH-aaaah!
Fair enough, for a jungle regular.
The Virginia Beach adventurer looks like somebody who spends more time outdoors than in. Baked skin and sun-bleached hair. When he smiles broadly, he looks as if he knows rare and tasty secrets - or, at least, a good joke.
The man has seen some things. ``I bought an around-the-world ticket one year and took off,'' he said.
Since 1988, he's visited 81 countries, some of them more than once. He figures he's toured the globe 10 times.
Along the way, he taught himself to document what he encountered in still photography and on video.
Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Virginia Beach Center for the Arts, Langley will give the latest in a series of offbeat travelogues. His all-video presentation, ``Cheetah Needs a Mechanic,'' promises to take patrons on a fast-paced, 50-minute trek into the jungles of New Guinea for a tribal ceremony, to the famous Angkor stone temples in Cambodia and a dozen other wild sites.
Over the years, he's been collecting footage on various themes. These, too, will be presented as part of ``Cheetah.''
One theme is ``Crazy Vehicles Around the World,'' which includes scintillating scenes of motorized rickshaws in the Orient and funky clunkers in South America.
He also made pit stops in the strangest places, resulting in ``Bathrooms Around the World.'' A preview: ``Many, many countries have these porcelain holes in the ground. You buy it in a hardware store and put it in your bathroom. No seat. It's a ground-level situation. Comes in different colors. No plumbing.''
Langley has taken two trips this year. He spent January and February in Asia, then Siberia in April.
He's not a trained anthropologist, nor is he schooled in photojournalism. ``I wouldn't know any of the famous photographers by name,'' he admits. ``And they wouldn't know me.
``I just go to remote locations, find different cultures and document them. What I'm known for is capturing a day in the life of the culture.
``I don't do much scenery. I consider that plain Jane stuff. I just want to shoot what I call the reality of the world.''
And when he's home at the Beach? ``I do trivial things - cut grass, photograph weddings. I'll do anything. Just like one giant hobby.''
He recently landed a contract with Corel Corporation, a leading producer of graphics software. In July, he sold the company 200 of his still pictures - 100 photographs of New Guinea, which he has visited four times, and 100 photos of ancient cities of the world.
The pictures will be sold as a photo collection on CD-ROM through the Corel Draw program.
Admission to Langley's presentation is $5. The center is at the westbound entrance to the Virginia Beach-Norfolk Expressway near the oceanfront. Call 422-6064 for more information. ART & NATURE
Entering the galleries housing the ``Fabricated Nature'' show at the Virginia Beach Center for the Arts, which opens on Friday, you might think you're swimming underwater. Or walking through a garden. Or tromping through a jungle.
But what are these things? They look viney, or jellyfishy, or tree-trunky. Yet they don't look exactly like anything you've seen.
Sculpture alluding to nature in that way is called biomorphic. There's a 20th century tradition for such forms, starting with sculptors like Jean Arp and Henry Moore.
The show, which consists of recent works by 16 sculptors, was organized by the Boise Art Museum in Idaho, where it premiered in April.
New Yorker Jill Viney is among the artists. Her plexiglass works were inspired by swimming in the ocean, and observing sea creatures with transparent bodies - like jellyfish.
Her semi-transparent sculptures allow the viewer to see through to an underlying, colorful structure. Imagine an ice-glazed Morris Louis ``color stain'' painting.
Viney plans to attend the 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. reception, which is free and open to the public. She will speak informally on her work as well as the show.
Also in ``Fabricated Nature'': Carol Hepper's ``Cross Bend,'' consisting of twisted willow branches held tight by steel pipes; Joan Livingston's ``Mace,'' a tall, twisted felt piece that looks like a cross between a giant drill bit and a flower bud; and an untitled Peta Coyne piece that resembles a dirt-clogged root yanked from the earth.
It has become a presumption in the art world that women are more inclined to create nature-derived images than men. Women are expected to be more in touch with the earth. As it happens, in ``Fabricated Nature,'' all but two of the artists are women.
``What propels these artists,'' writes curator Sandy Harthorn, ``is their contemplation of and response to questions about the future of the environment and the impact of civilization upon it.''
The show continues through Nov. 6. Hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 4 p.m. Free. Call 425-0000. AT THE CHRYSLER
Dig out your rare treasures and prepare to learn more about them - style, maker, period, value.
On Saturday, four specialists from Sotheby's New York, the renowned auction house, will be at The Chrysler Museum to appraise certain categories of art objects. The experts will look at furniture, paintings, prints, drawings, Asian art, silver, porcelain, pewter, glass and ceramics.
For a $12 fee per appraisal ($10 for museum members), specialists will give a verbal estimate. A limit of three appraisals per household has been set.
If the object is too large to carry, bring photos and dimensions.
Reservations are mandatory. Appointments are available from 1 to 4 p.m.; museum members may also opt for an 11 a.m.-to-12:30 p.m. time slot. Call Jill at 664-6200 by noon Friday.
On Wednesday at 10:30 a.m., Dr. Michael T. Mezzatesta will lecture at the museum on Gianlorenzo Bernini, the greatest sculptor of the 17th century. Mezzatesta is director of the Duke University Art Museum in Durham, N.C.
The talk should be of special interest here, since the Chrysler has a fine example of Bernini's work in its permanent collection.
The 36-inch-high marble ``Bust of the Savior'' (1679-80) was Bernini's last work, undertaken in his 80th year as a gift to Queen Christina of Sweden, his special patron.
Christina wouldn't accept the work, feeling she had no comparable gift in exchange, so Bernini willed it to her. When she died in 1689, it passed to Pope Innocent XI Odescalchi, according to the museum's American and European collections handbook.
Walter P. Chrysler Jr., the museum's late chief benefactor, purchased the work in 1952 from a private French collector, Vicomte Jacques de Causon. Chrysler, in turn, gave the work to the museum in 1971.
In 1988, the Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant'angelo of Rome staged an exhibition around the influential bust, even though the Chrysler was unable to loan its Bernini, said Jeff Harrison, the Chrysler's chief curator.
A 10 a.m. coffee precedes the free talk, which is sponsored by Norfolk Society of Arts. The museum is at 245 W. Olney Road, Norfolk. Call 664-6200. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
A New Guinea man wears ceremonial regalia in this still photograph
by Cory Langley. The Virginia Beach videographer and photographer
will present his latest travelogue, ``Cheetah Needs a Mechanic,''
Tuesday night.
Photo
Carol Hepper's ``Cross Bend'' is on view at the Virginia Beach
Center for the Arts.
by CNB