THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 14, 1996 TAG: 9604120072
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 145 lines
BESIDES THE widespread diversity in contemporary American art acknowledged by the juror, a surprising calm infuses ``The 33rd Irene Leache Memorial Exhibition'' at The Chrysler Museum of Art.
A lot of new art being heralded in this country is shocking, disgusting or agitating. That is not a value judgment; it's just a fact.
By contrast, art in the Irene Leache show makes statements that are thoughtful, nuanced and tradition-honoring.
The mix includes painted figures in a garish-hued paradise, a nostalgic painting of a train station, and faux ritual objects attached to the wall like displays in an anthropology museum.
The most disturbing work in the show was created not by some fresh upstart but by a 74-year-old painter who devoted his prime years to teaching art at Old Dominion University. Portsmouth-based Charles Sibley, who founded ODU's art department four decades ago, received first prize for his heroic painting, ``Sarajevo.''
While painterly and lush, ``Sarajevo'' is also grisly in its description of piled-up, naked bodies, half-eaten by the vultures that stand watch. A blood-red horizon sheds light on this ghastly scene, where a dead man's mouth is frozen open in gaping horror and a discarded shoe signifies the Holocaust half a century earlier.
The juror - Jock Reynolds, a painter and director of the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. - told a group at the Norfolk museum that the work reminded him of the horrors-of-war series by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya.
``Right away, when I saw it leaning up against the wall, it struck me with great emotional force,'' he said.
Carter Grandy Scott, president of the Irene Leache Memorial organization, pointed out in her brochure statement that Sibley had won four other Irene Leache show prizes through the years, including the top award in 1970.
``It is indeed fitting,'' Scott wrote, ``that Mr. Sibley - who has had a great impact on many students, artists and collectors in the area - should be honored again this year.''
During a slide lecture, the juror said that much of the work submitted for the show seemed ``inspired by the deep history of art,'' he said. He suggested that such art expressed an awareness of ``the richness of the collection'' at the Chrysler Museum.
He chose from 753 works submitted by 251 artists who live along the Eastern seaboard. The resulting show includes 89 works by 62 artists, 19 of whom live in Hampton Roads.
The top prizes went to very different kinds of art. Reynolds awarded second place to Richmond painter David Kohan, whose tumbling jumble of chairs, toys and classical architecture could be a symbol for the whole show's diversity. Kohan pushes the envelope of what kinds of objects can be plausibly rendered in the same pictorial space.
Walter Garde's ``Tough Guy,'' which earned third place, has an obsessive, fetishistic quality. This is a straightforward description, delicately executed in soft pastels, of a man in boxer shorts doing pushups with his tongue. Of course, nobody could do what this man appears to be doing.
If there's any meaning behind ``Tough Guy,'' perhaps it's to point out how impossible tasks are being asked of us in dehumanizing times. Or, as the juror surmised, maybe it's just a joke about fitness fads.
The exhibit opens comfortably enough, with melancholy scenes of industrial rail yards in Newport News by Andrew Harmantas. Also in an Edward Hopper vein are Constance LaPalombara's people-emptied urban scenes; ``The City,'' by the New Haven, Conn., artist, earned her one of five honorable mentions.
In the next gallery, Norfolk sculptor Virginia Van Horn's handsome, nearly life-sized horse torso - made from wood, straw and chicken wire - jolts the viewer as he ``flies'' through the wall.
Richard Dana's ``Legacy,'' also an honorable mention winner, is a mysterious, heroic image with a beautiful, abstract painted surface. It looks as though a war is under way; a town is burning, and a monument looms in the foreground, perhaps marked to be toppled.
Other area artists in the show are: Dana Adams and Hyun Chough of Suffolk, Peyton Campbell and Pete Mihelich of Virginia Beach; Karl Watson of Chesapeake and Isaac Harrell of Hampton.
Norfolk artists include Marcia Brown, Richard Dooling, Matthew D. Fine, Gertrude Gaba, Jeanne Goodman, Janet Shaughnessy, Helen Singleton, Jill Snapp, Amanda Stephens and Gregory Willis.
Other honorable mention winners were Michael Ananian of Greensboro, N.C.; Timothy McDowell of West Mystic, Conn.; and James Rosen of Augusta, Ga.
The show continues through next Sunday. The museum is at 245 W. Olney Road. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m. Free admission, although a donation is suggested. Call 664-6200.
Common causes
Like the Irene Leache show, the pleasing melange now at the Virginia Beach Center for the Arts reflects the vision of guest juror Jenny Moore, executive director of the Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art.
The exhibit, ``CommonWealth Collects: Reaching Across Our Borders,'' features about four works by 100 artists from Virginia, North Carolina and the District of Columbia. You'll find a Polaroid transfer photograph of a plantation path, a painting that follows a dog for a day, a sleek hand-blown glass goblet with a ripe tomato base and a sculpture that balances demitasse cups on a metal seesaw. Plus, plenty of more traditional landscape and figure paintings.
While the quality is a bit up and down, a viewer could find quite a few pieces to get excited about, from Tar Heel painter Alix Hitchcock's capricious interpretations of Matisse to Beach painter Bruce Bingham's irreverently humorous updates - cellular phones included - of religious icons.
It's amazing that the center's curator, Jan Riley, and assistant curator Neill Hughes arrived at such a smooth installation, given the unruly variety. As a result, the exhibit appears a little less overwhelming than last year's premiere outing.
The arts center makes it clear that ``CommonWealth'' is a fund-raising project, not a curated show. It's a visual arts event with multiple benefits: In an open and friendly way, the show encourages businesses and individuals to consider collecting original works by regional artists. And that benefits the artists as well as the center.
Art shown at the Beach center often is for sale, but purchases are not pushed, even though a percentage of sales goes back into the center's coffers. That's because the center has a non-commercial function, which is why the center gets tax-free status and can seek public and private support.
In such fiscally trying times, however, such income is quite welcome.
Last year's ``CommonWealth'' show netted more than $60,000 in sales of fine art and crafts. Already, red dots signifying sold works are peppered throughout the gallery.
Besides those advantages, the show provides an excellent opportunity for a glimpse at the range of art being produced in this region. It's becoming the center's main annual means for highlighting local art in its main galleries; the other, better-known forum is its Virginia Beach Boardwalk Art Show, set this year for June 13 to 16, in the context of the center's first Boardwalk International Arts Festival, opening June 7 and featuring theater, dance, opera, film, a blockbuster art show and national musical acts.
Meanwhile, ``CommonWealth'' continues through next Sunday. Hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Saturday till 4 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 4 p.m. Free. Call 425-0000 for more information.
Pencil it in
Today is your last chance to see the ``American Drawing Biennial V'' at The Muscarelle Museum of Art in Williamsburg.
First-prize winner David Dodge Lewis of Farmville was among 62 artists from 24 states selected from a field of 200 artists from 37 states. The juror was Thomas Armstrong, former director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and New York's Whitney Museum of American Art.
Eleven Virginia artists were juried into the show, and four were from Norfolk - Richard Poe, Jeanne Goodman, Bill Wagner and Steven Wolf.
The museum is on the campus of the College of William and Mary on Jamestown Road. Open today from noon to 4 p.m. Free. Call (804) 221-2700. ILLUSTRATION: THE CHRYSLER MUSEUM OF ART
``Sarajevo,'' a 1995 oil on canvas by Charles Sibley of Portsmouth,
won first prize in the Irene Leache competition. The juror, Jock
Reynolds, noted that the work reminded him of Goya.
by CNB