THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 11, 1994 TAG: 9412090106
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E9 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: TERESA ANNAS
LENGTH: Long : 132 lines
HELENE BRANDT'S sculpture has a sensitizing mission.
``That's a lot of the function of art - to make you awestruck by the world,'' said the New York sculptor, during a gallery talk last month. She was explaining her work to the museum's docents, charged with interpreting her welded steel forms and related drawings for visitors.
At a glance, Brandt's sculptures seem austere and decidedly analytical. They require an extended visit, really, to grasp the choreography and the human story contained in each.
Today at 2 p.m., Brandt will offer a free workshop at the Chrysler Museum. Brandt's show is aptly paired with ``Scent of Ink: The Roy and Marilyn Papp Collection of Chinese Painting,'' a major exhibit gorgeously installed on the first floor.
Neither show could be grasped in a dash. Both encourage viewers to slow down, become immersed in a single work and heighten the level of observation. That's a very calming exercise, a kind of meditation.
Brandt's background in modern dance, including studying under Martha Graham, is very evident in her work. The sculptural movement is elemental, and reminiscent of the contraction-and-release basis of Graham's technique.
More specifically, collapse-and-recovery is the running theme in Brandt's work. Such changes in the life of a character are key to the success of a play or novel; switching character for form, Brandt works hard to finding compelling solutions within a fairly basic plot.
But the idea - collapse and recovery - also has its roots in her life. Close family members have been quite ill; her late mother was seriously depressed, her brother is mentally ill.
She is presenting her early life, with all its pain and trials, in the ``Memories of Childhood'' exhibit on view at her New York gallery - Steinbaum Krauss - through Jan. 8. Dealer Bernice Steinbaum has a unique and revered stable of multicultural, mostly female artists, many of whom have been featured at the Chrysler - Beverly Buchanan, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith.
Suggested in many of Brandt's forms is the idea that sometimes, for some stricken souls, just getting out of bed is a major achievement.
Her 1992 ``Calligraphic Progression'' presents a series of springy, curved and angular forms - like an abstract grasshopper. The basic form starts out on what appears to be its back. In five steps, it becomes upright then folds in on itself in what resembles the ``child's pose'' in hatha yoga. The ``child's pose'' is the quintessential posture for finding comfort within oneself.
In ``Curva,'' another work from '92, seven similar forms placed on a pedestal undergo a similar path. A fleshy pink C shape begins on its ``back,'' then slowly gets up and turns over.
Brandt has painted the steel support for the pink shapes black. She sees the the black supports as akin to black-clad Japanese puppetmasters, making their puppets come alive and themselves inconspicuous.
Another influence to be traced in her work is five summers spent in Italy, home of the Renaissance, where a new and sophisticated means of rendering perspective was celebrated in the art.
Brandt utilizes perspective in unusual ways in the design of her work, affectionately toying with it toward adding interest to the forms. In one of her recent wall sculptures, she chalked perspective lines directly onto the wall, placing tiny welded chairs along its prescribed path.
In that piece, the 1994 ``Daydreams,'' it appears that two chairs are approaching the same point from divergent directions. One has a curved back, the other's back is squared.
``It's a tender love story,'' said Brandt. And it's right there, once you see it. In the foreground, the two chairs meld, becoming a double-backed seat, one side curved, the other angular.
Also worth noting is the fact that Brandt makes her drawings after she completes the sculptures. Usually, drawings shown with sculptures are assumed to be preparatory sketches.
For Brandt, the drawings are a way for her to enjoy and further explore the forms. She considers the play of shadow a very important element in her work. In the drawings, she does something she can't do to the actual forms in a gallery: she moves around the light source from one cluster of forms to the next.
Brandt's show continues through Feb. 19 at the museum, 245 W. Olney Road, Norfolk. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sunday 1 to 5 p.m. Free, though a donation is suggested. Call 622-ARTS for recorded information about other events and exhibits.
Two other exhibits open today: ``Majorie Content: Photographs 1925-1935'' and ``Benjamin Wade Owen III: Potter.''
Though her work was admired by Alfred Stieglitz in the 1920s, the late Content never received the acknowledgement that many feel is her due. On view are works from the '20s in New York, when she photographed cityscapes, flowers, still lifes and portraits, and the '30s in New Mexico, when she photographed Southwestern Indians.
Owen, a contemporary North Carolina potter and a descendant of several generations of clay artists, is represented by about 50 traditional forms and Oriental translations. Today from 2 to 4 p.m., Owen will give a pottery demonstration in Huber Court.
Also at that time, Virginia Beach artist Lee Gerry Wertheimer will offer a workshop on Chinese brush painting in connection with the ``Scent of Ink'' exhibit. O'KEEFFE AGAIN
Four months into motherhood and Lucinda McDermott is back at work, pretending to be Georgia O'Keeffe.
The Norfolk actress's one-woman show, ``O'Keeffe!'' gets its Hampton Roads premiere Friday through Sunday at Generic Theater in Norfolk.
The theater piece opens with O'Keeffe, who died in 1986 at age 98, as a ghost in her late 20s. The painter relives episodes from her life, beginning with that crucial moment when she decried her own derivative works, and became committed to expressing her own vision.
``Pretty little pictures, and not a one of you that cries out O'Keeffe,'' rages O'Keeffe as drawn by McDermott. ``I have things in my head, shapes that no one has told me how to draw. I have feelings inside that no one has taught me how to get out.''
O'Keeffe is best known for her sensuous, larger-than-life paintings of flowers, but she also painted New York skyscrapers, animal skulls, sea shells, and the mountains of New Mexico, where she spent her later years.
McDermott began writing ``O'Keeffe!'' while in New York studying acting with Michael Moriarty of ``Law and Order.'' She has read extensively about O'Keeffe and her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, the photographer and art dealer.
By now, she has performed the work more than 40 times, including New York but most often at college settings where the show is paired with a lecture on O'Keeffe. That was the setup last month at Randolph-Macon's Woman's College in Lynchburg. In January, she will perform in Bermuda.
With a baby girl, ``Going on the road is a little different now,'' McDermott said. ``Now I take my mom.''
More family news: McDermott's cousin, photographer Anne Peterson will be on exhibit this month in the Generic lobby. Peterson also is featured through Jan. 15 at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center, where she is showing documentary work regarding a Mathews County family.
Show times for ``O'Keeffe!'' are 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $8 and $10. Call 441-2160 for reservations. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Steinbaum Krauss Gallery
New York sculptor Helene Brandt offers a free workshop today at 2
p.m. at the Chrysler Museum.
by CNB