Yesterday was the third and final tour. We viewed work in three galleries, all exhibiting group shows. At the Adams and Ollman gallery, I found a piece called “Pulled Thin” by Austin Eddy the most interesting. At each gallery, instructor Amy Bay selects a piece to discuss in detail, and the Eddy piece happened to be the one. We look at what first strikes us about a piece, then try to determine the techniques, and finally we read the title and any information about the piece and/or the artist to see if they provide ideas we hadn’t considered. We hold off on the latter so as not to be influenced by this information. As a writer I’ve always read the titles when first viewing a piece, because I find well-chosen titles (visual art or writing) often supply an insight I might not have considered on my own, so Bay’s approach has been interesting for me. What I noted about Austin’s piece is the use of repetition of circles and curved shapes. The collage felt well balanced and I couldn’t help but notice how the piece kept my interest as my eyes moved around the shapes over and over. Through his work he wants to express a sense of belonging, of connecting, and a need for acceptance.
The artwork at this gallery was connected through the use of neutral colors, mixed media–paper in particular, and a collage technique. While we didn’t discuss the work of Blair Saxon Hill, I found her use of wire and bulldog clips as part of her collage interesting, something I haven’t seen anyone else do. She owns a bookstore in Alberta Arts called Monograph Bookwerks handling new, used, rare, and out of print art books. She is interested in surfaces, collage, and layering when making an image, then photographing and reworking it.
