THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 18, 1995 TAG: 9506160055
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E9 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Art review
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
ALL ART HAS its precedents, and looking at Joseph Dillabough's abstract painting ``Sacrifice'' - which took top prize for a regional exhibit at the d'Art Center - you could imagine the Chesapeake artist had certain painters in the back of his mind.
The '70s abstract work of Richard Diebenkorn, a California painter, may well have been an inspiration for the interlocking patterns of geometric shapes in ``Sacrifice.''
Or, perhaps the Chesapeake artist was thinking of Diebenkorn's great influence, painter Clyfford Still, a cantankerous creator of palpable, almost topographical abstracts.
Still believed his images had a spiritual purpose - to ``aid in cutting through all cultural opiates, past and present, so that a direct, immediate and truly free vision could be achieved,'' he wrote.
At the center of ``Sacrifice'' is the insinuation of a cross.
In such a modernist painting, an art-educated viewer would suspect the artist is re-examining the meaning of this common and complex symbol. Such an approach was a major contribution of Pop artist Jasper Johns.
But Dillabough is a supervising art director at the Christian Broadcasting Network; as an employee at a corporation run by Christians, it is possible the cross and the work's title have a different significance than the average mainstream artist might have in mind.
Dillabough may be referring to the martyrdom of Christ, although his promotional material suggests he was thinking of ceremonial rites of primitive cultures.
Cultural shifts are in progress. These days, within the art world, a wise person re-examines knee-jerk notions. A cross may be a cross. A banana might be a smoking gun.
Dillabough's work may trigger sticky issues, but it looks attractively benign at the end of a hallway niche at the d'Art Center in downtown Norfolk, where the Fifth Annual Mid-Atlantic Juried Exhibition remains on view through next Sunday.
Works by 90 artists from nine states are on view. Dr. Joyce Howell, an art history professor at Virginia Wesleyan College, was the show's sole juror.
In her choice of Dillabough for the top award, and Jeanne Goodman's ``The Waiting Room,'' for the award of excellence, Howell appeared to lean toward formalism.
Goodman added interest to an image of a mundane waiting space by turning the background walls, doors and windows into an abstract composition of rectangles and squares. Figures with diagonal impetus add dynamism to the static geometry.
Serafina Nankervis' elegant ``Enigma'' is an abstract sandstone form rising from a marble slab base. The Richmond artist carved the barest suggestion of a figure, as if the figure's rear and front were bookends pressing through muslin.
Howell awarded a juror's choice ribbon to Nankervis and to Wilfred Loring of Massachusetts. Loring's ``Lines are Busy'' is a sumptuous aquatint print of clothes flapping in the wind on a clothesline. This is a complex image, beautifully handled.
I was much less taken with North Carolina painter H.H. Kbir's ``Eleanor Rigby,'' which Howell gave an award of merit. The collaged lace and drapery fabric seemed heavy-handed, and the palette was downright muddy.
Peyton Campbell of Virginia Beach - who can always be relied on to add intellectual substance to a show - also earned a merit award.
Besides the award winners, other notable works include the linoleum block prints by Foust, a Richmond artist with a knack for quirky glimpses of weird moments in human encounters.
It was great to see a James Warwick Jones painting in the show; until recently, the realist spent his quality time as director of the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News.
Ruth Scarlott's handmade paper collages, lately with suggestions of ancient writings and scrolls, are timeless and gorgeous.
Hal Weaver's ``Self Portrait with Sid and Nancy'' is especially fabulous - from the broken, nail-riddled fetishistic frame to the faux three-dimensionality to its tough-but-gentle-guy attitude. Go, Hal, go. ILLUSTRATION: ``Sacrifice,'' an abstract acrylic on canvas by Chesapeake
artist Joseph Dillabough, took top prize for a regional exhibit at
d'Art Center. At the center of the painting is the insinuation of a
cross.
by CNB