Notes of Persistent Awe
Columns by Benjamin Terrel
12/20/2020 0 Comments #4: 12/20/2020Finding Our Way Through the Landscapes of Joan Nelson by Benjamin Terrell Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2019-20, spray enamel, acrylic ink and marker on acrylic sheet 24h x 24w in Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. All eyes on Portland protests has turned the city into an art gallery of commentary, and if the blocks and blocks of boarded windows are her newest creation, the city is a particularly prolific artist. Adams and Ollman gallery fear not, the serene smolder of the imaginary landscapes of Joan Nelson (on display there until Dec. 19) has become the city's sacred stained glass. Never has something so harmonious and holy begged to be plugged in like Nelson's electric plexiglass paintings. Having previously painted on wood, it's as if the artist shed surface for shimmer, perhaps next seen on foil as maps and manuscripts to faraway lands. Who among the locked-down and housebound hasn't evolved into an escapist or a would-be sailor of anywhere but home? Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2020, spray enamel, acrylic ink, marker and burnt sugar on acrylic sheet 20h x 20w in Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. Our current digital home life is a life without landscape and is therefore a life without a place for our authentic selves to roam. In traditional landscape painting, self (most always male) is often at center. Joan Nelson's work is intriguing and opposite - she paints landscapes taking place before and after "us" and uses reverence to restore agency to her subjects. In doing so, the artist puts the "m" back into what IMAX reduced to "-other earth." If her work is feminist, it is because she sets landscape free from ownership and paints past a masculine need to conquer. Picture Casper David Friedrich forgetting figure or cross, only to focus solely on the steam off a rock formation or how an unanticipated pink light from an unnamable source suspends the urge to capture in exchange for jaw dropping awe. "...an unanticipated pink light from an unnamable source suspends the urge to capture in exchange for jaw dropping awe." Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2018, spray enamel and acrylic ink on acrylic sheet 12h x 12w in Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2019-20, spray enamel and acrylic ink on acrylic sheet 24h x 24w in Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. Sometimes a work by Nelson borrows directly from art history, including details from famous paintings excluded from their original context. The artist even reuses her own imagery. The mystery is how she sews important and incidental parts into a seamless whole so well, like a poem or an ode made from only one word. In her work, volcanoes foam and glow, meteors swish and swoon, rainbows aren't reluctant and pure awareness lights up the resplendent unknown. For her show, the plexiglass paintings are placed on ledges, and if you are lucky enough to get to see their opulent other side, then there are further codes to be cracked. Painted, scraped, and drawn in with unusual materials like glitter, wax and sealant, expressive colors and shapes reveal a backside becoming a switchboard to the divine. "In her work, volcanoes foam and glow, meteors swish and swoon, rainbows aren't reluctant and pure awareness lights up the resplendent unknown." Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2020, spray enamel, acrylic ink and marker on acrylic sheet 24h x 24w in Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. What I admire most about Nelson's work is the same thing that I find intriguing about classical Indian satellite radio. Rapturous meditations intimately heard from afar remain nameless (by language barrier over the airwaves) and therefore, ask for all your attention, like a divine secret spoken only once. Also, like radio sounds from a distant continent, details and passages emerge like finding a feather but not the bird. What is known and not known is made more mysterious and resplendent by the detail. Both audio and the artist's visual are symphonic palaces of the in-between. Both are the "thin places" of creativity, where the curtain that conceals us from everything eternal is at its most transparent. Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2020, spray enamel and acrylic ink and marker on acrylic sheet 20h x 20w in Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. We are nostalgic for what cannot be named or can never be known, and for Nelson that quest is center stage. Her artistic visions are like biblical prequels or like discovering the planet's Lonely Planet guide or, imagine if you can, a Jules Verne book as a coy pond. To reimagine a landscape without us is to look away from what we think is the real world. To make great art from that expression is to gaze higher, discard everything not needed in prayer, empty ourselves out and find patterns in our transformation. If we choose to look at the world through Nelson's creative spiritual lens, past training and limitations, a coherent world is restored in which nature remains an ally and mystery is always greater than knowledge. Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2020, spray enamel and acrylic ink and marker on acrylic sheet 24h x 24w in Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. New Works: Joan Nelson was on display at Adams and Ollman (December, 2020). Coda: Nelson told me about a trip she took from New York to Oregon to visit her parents on the coast. After flying into Portland, she began driving in the opposite direction of her destination because the GPS of the car had dropped and reset. It wasn't until reaching the gorge that separates Washington and Oregon that she realized the error and rerouted. But by then, Nelson explained, the mistake had led to discoveries of magnificent and unexpected new landscapes. Embracing the misstep and continuing on an unknown path, the artist was lead on a different journey around the state, that was both "perfect and beautiful." The road trip story is also a perfect analogy for how the artist approaches a new painting. The Columbia River Gorge that divides Oregon and Washington.
Photos by David Schell
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11/19/2020 0 Comments #3: 11/19/2020The Semi-Finalist is celebrating artist and writer Benjamin Terrell's first column under the heading "Notes of Persistent Awe." To kick things off he wrote about the poetic, understated work of Lois Dodd that was up at Adams and Ollman last month. Terrell will be the primary writer for "Notes of Persistent Awe" and will contribute to it on a monthly basis. You can also find his writing in the Eugene Register Guard (Eugene, Oregon). Lois Dodd By Benjamin Terrell "There is artistic evidence of egoless allowance in the intimate paintings of Dodd." Lois Dodd, Tree + Flowers, 2009, oil on masonite, 12" x 19 1/2" Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. While viewing an exhibition of paintings by Lois Dodd at Adams and Ollman gallery in Portland, I was reminded of the 2016 Japanese film, Sweet Bean. In the film, director Naomi Kawase sums up existence as this, "We are born into this world to see and to listen to it. Since that is the case, we don't have to become someone. We have, each of us, meaning to our life." There is artistic evidence of egoless allowance in the intimate paintings of Dodd. The artist, now in her nineties, has quietly painted through many major artistic movements, content to observe and intuit the seasons surrounding her home in Maine. In her work, expansiveness is acceptance of life rather than the contraction of trying to control it. That idea absorbed into an unusual year full of uncontrollable events is as welcome as flowers seen blooming in a fire ravaged landscape. Lois Dodd, Japanese Red Maple in October, 1986, oil on masonite, 20" x 13" Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. In a work by Dodd: The rich orange red of an October maple pictured through the four pains of a window appear geometric, shapes evenly exchange foreground for back like a living chapel's stained-glass, reluctant to solidify. (Japanese Red Maple in October, 1986) Lois Dodd, Queen Anne's Lace, 2012, oil on panel, 11" x 11" Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. A wildflower often considered a weed, a plethora of Queen Anne's lace forms a symphonic spiral when seen from above. For that moment we have the vantage point of a butterfly or the sky. (Queen Anne's Lace, 2012) Lois Dodd, Pink Geranium + Window Lock + Ochre Tree, 2011, oil on masonite, 15 3//4" x 10" Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. A small indoor bloom is partially seen, separated by a window through which we view a large tree, its branches abstracted and reaching out of the picture as if to say a cut flower in a vase speaks to our own perishability as an entire tree expands to a limitless sky. (Pink Geranium + Window Lock + Ochre Tree, 2011) Sharif Farrag, Watermelon Warthog Jug (foreground), 2020, glazed porcelain, 13"h x 10"w x 11"d Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. Another show featuring Dodd at Parts and Labor in Beacon, New York pairs her work with the imaginary and fantastical landscapes of Shara Hughes. Both galleries pair Dodd with younger artists, in Portland with the animated and whimsical vessels of Sharif Farrag. The contemplative nature of Dodd's work becomes more evident in these pairings. Dodd's work is grounded and grounding. By abstracting line and shape we are kept from focusing on specifics; she reminds us that nature exists before our ability to name it. To paint landscapes en plein air as Dodd does is to look beyond limitation of self, is to bottle awe at its source and is the closest we can come to conversing with creation. Such direct perception is a privilege possible with heart, not head, and is a way to look past the contradictions of a world seemingly on hold. Mary Oliver describes the act and the landscape of gratitude in her poem, Mindful: "...to lose myself inside this soft world- to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation." Lois Dodd, Lily Buds, 2007, oil on masonite, 19 1/8" x 11" Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. Sharif Farrag, Skarhead VCR Jug, 2020, 8 1/2"h x 6"w x 6"d Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. Lois Dodd's and Sharif Farrag's work at Adams and Ollman was on display from September 12- October 31, 2020 and can be seen at adamsandollman.com
10/9/2020 0 Comments #2: 10/09/2020Artist and writer Benjamin Terrell recently wrote a column that touches on fire, regeneration, and the works of John Dilg, Helen Mirra, and Harold Ancart. You can also find this and other columns by Terrell in the Eugene Register Guard. you can't be afraid to leave it all behind |
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