Category: Sculpture Page 1 of 27

Heloisa Promfret @ N’Namdi Center for the Arts

On November 22, 2024

In Ceramic, Drawing, Installation, Paintings, Sculpture

Heloisa Pomfret, Installation image, and image of the artist in a black dress. All images courtesy of DAR

On November 1, 2024, the George N’Namdi Gallery opened a solo exhibition, “The Brain,” by Brazilian-American artist Heloisa Promfret. This collection of 45 artworks builds on her earlier work, including abstract paintings using the palimpsest process, where layers of paint are scratched into the surface, revealing further colors beneath. Despite lacking a specific context in contemporary art history, Pomfret’s work combines mysterious marks, multiple colors, and shapes executed on burlap, paper, and ceramic objects.

Helosia Pomfret, Untitled #7, Diptych 34 x 36″ 2024

Diptych, Untitled #7, displays a multicolored, organic, abstract composition in which the canvas is cut, re-arranged, and re-stitched. She says, “My work involves the transformation first from the idea of an impulse to scientific representation and measurement, and second, from scientific representation back to abstracted mark-making, color, texture, and re-purposed and re-constructed materials.” These plant-like shapes illustrate a new environment for the viewer to ponder.

Helosia Pomfret, Glimpse Series, #2, Oil on Stitched Canvas, 38 x 53″. 2024

In the painting Untitled #2, the artist confronts her audience with a wall of movement that contrasts these vertical panels against a sea of shapes and colors moving from right to left in the background. The small, dark shapes feel like microbes swimming over the scratched surfaces. It is a primitive dance, as energy, order, and chaos co-occur during the movement concert. Raised in Brazil and later relocated to Detroit for her study of art, one wonders if something in her South American DNA makes these compositions so unusually new and fresh.

Heloise Pomfret, Untitled # 6, Glimpse Series, 36×34″ 2024

The series of Mandala-like circular paintings located in the gallery provides a contrast to the horizontal compositions and flirts with the idea of scientific explosions on the planet. They are an entirely different kind of sensibility that occupies the artist’s conceptions, especially when making the transition from rectangle to circle.

She says in her statement, “My work involves the transformation first from the idea of an impulse to scientific representation and measurement, and second, from scientific representation back to abstracted mark-making, color, texture and re-purposed using re-constructed materials.” There is a mobile and versatile side of Heloise Pomfret’s work in the exhibition when you consider the paintings, the structures, and the ceramics.

Heloise Pomfret, Construction # 8, Burlap, oil, and Bamboo, 25 x 12″. 2024

In Bamboo, the relief construction uses oil to create a dark vertical grid that feels like something produced by native people of South America. Stitched onto burlap, it suggests some spiritual practice to this viewer. She says, “The philosophy of my work is about the energy, order, and chaos that occurs during psychological or physical stress, which serves as theoretical support to the mark-making and constructs of my work. The surface is often an analogy to the body and memory, in which experience occurs and is transformed.”

Heloise Pomfret, Clarity Series, Stoneware, 6 Pieces, 9×5″, 2023

It is not often that an artist whose primary work is two-dimensional will make drawings, prints, or photographs, but even less frequently will they create a ceramic body of work. Yet, in this exhibition, Heloisa Pomfret presents a series of 15 ceramic objects. Most are wall reliefs; she chooses stoneware with a black glaze to express her ideas. In the Clarity series, she scratches her motifs into the glaze, in keeping with the other bodies of work she has created for this exhibition.

Heloise Pomfret, Installation, small circular objects on plywood.

The work in this exhibition reflects the varied mediums and materials that Pomfret employs to explore her personal psychology in paintings, installations, and ceramic objects. A large piece of plywood displayed in the center of the gallery demonstrates yet another approach, reflecting the diversity of the artist’s aesthetic means. These circular stitched and scratched smaller pieces reflect the translation of her emotional impulses into physical form, “The Brain” is a delightful and multifarious collection of original objects, literally unlike anything this writer has seen.

Heloisa Pomfret is a Brazilian-American interdisciplinary visual artist. She earned an M.A. and an M.F.A in Painting/Drawing from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. She also earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Casper Libero College in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The Helosia Pomfret’s exhibition is on display through the Christmas Holiday at the N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art, Detroit Michigan.

Lois Teicher @ Galerie Camille

By Michael Hodges

On October 13, 2024

In Drawing, Sculpture

Lois Teicher, Quiet Performance: The Stillness of Shape at the Galerie Camille

An installation shot of Lois Teicher – Quiet Performance: The Stillness of Shape, at Galerie Camille in Midtown Detroit, up through October 19. In the picture, Teicher is the one gesturing with her hands. (Photos courtesy of Galerie Camille, except where noted.)

Sculptor Lois Teicher has mastered the art of weightlessness, which is all the more challenging when working in steel and aluminum. Whether diminutive or huge, her curved, geometric forms in strong primary colors pose as delicately as dancers, high-wire acts often seeming to balance on one toe. In her new show at Detroit’s Galerie Camille, Quiet Performance: The Stillness of Shape, the eighty something artist who’s still working at full clip gives us a range of her small works, a couple of which echo her massive public sculptures in Detroit and elsewhere.

Lois Teicher, Curved Form with Rectangle and Space – ed 21, Aluminum.

The best example of that echo is Curved Form with Rectangle and Space – ed 21. The descriptive title pretty much sums it up — this is a narrow, concave rectangle, maybe 8 inches tall, balanced on one corner and leaning slightly to the left, with a tall, symmetrical hole cut slightly off center within the dark-blue metal. People who know Detroit well will experience a jolt of recognition, for this is the exact form – almost a tiny maquette – of Teicher’s 14-foot-high, white sculpture of the same name that’s the commanding centerpiece of the Hudson’s Art Park between the Scarab Club and John R Street, right behind the Detroit Institute of Arts. In his highly useful guide to the city’s public sculpture, Art in Detroit Public Places, critic Dennis Nawrocki notes that the opening cut in the work allows the viewer to see through, “subtly playing with negative and positive space.”

There’s something immensely satisfying and graceful about both pieces, small and large. In the case of the latter, which went up in 2000, the sculpture brings a stamp-sized pocket park alive that years ago had been nothing but a drab patch of grass. Students of Detroit urbanism won’t be surprised to learn that the park was the brainchild of urban planner Sue Mosey at the University Cultural Center Association (now Midtown Detroit Inc.), who in her 30-year career brought countless overlooked bits of Midtown back to vibrant life. In this case, Teicher’s sculpture delivers a striking grace note on a stretch of road that was in desperate need of it.

Galerie Camille director Marta Carvajal, who curated the show, praises Teicher’s gift for simplicity and “the unstable balance – she finds balance using the least amount of surface. Her mind,” Carvajal adds, “works on a different level than ours, with very sophisticated laws of physics.”

Lois Teicher, Curved Form with Rectangle and Space, Powder-coated stainless steel, 14 x 7 feet, 2000. (Photo: Detroit Art Review)

Teicher, who lives in Dearborn, graduated from Detroit’s Center for Creative Studies (now the College for Creative Studies) when she was 61, after raising her three children, and then went on to get her MFA at Eastern Michigan University. She currently maintains a studio in Eastern Market. Working with fabricators and engineers, Teicher has immersed herself in industrial processes that would scare off many, developing, as Maryann Wilkinson, former executive director of the Scarab Club wrote in Essay’d, “a unique style for large-scale sculpture that emphasizes tension and a suggestion of movement that serves to deny her work’s complexity and weight.”

That tension is equally present in the mostly diminutive work on display in Quiet Performance, like the 10-inch-high Dynamic, which stars a bowed crimson circle a bit like the rising sun on the Japanese flag, pleasingly perched at the far left edge of a convex white platform. It’s a graceful, beguiling orb – and one that’s echoed in Cosmos, one of a number of pencil-and-oil compositions framed on the wall, though it must be noted that in the case of Cosmos, the painted “sun” is rising out of a nebulous, sooty cloud.

Lois Teicher, Dynamic, Welded aluminum, 10.5 x 12 x 7 inches.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the artist just likes playing with elemental geometry, as with the mid-sized, dark-blue sculpture, Linked. Here Teicher gives us two flat circular discs intersecting at right angles, almost as if a circular buzz saw had made it halfway through a flat circle before stopping. Again, the composition is perfectly balanced on the two rims, yet also suggests imminent collapse, however unlikely.

Lois Teicher, Linked, Aluminum & enamel, 13.5 x 26 x 19 inches.

An undeniable touch of whimsy also permeates another of Teicher’s ink and oil compositions on the wall, Envelope Series 3 – a loosely rendered picture of two overlapping envelopes, each unsealed with the flap sticking straight up. There’s something about the concept’s lack of consequence – Really, a painting of envelopes? – that makes the conceit amusing. But there’s real visual interest here, too, in the way Teicher has turned the simplest of images into an affecting color study. An open business envelope seen from the back, of course, divides into five isosceles triangles — three very broad, and two quite narrow. In this work, the bottom of the top envelope is colored with deep crimson that edges over the lines, while its partly covered cousin is smoky black on the outside and a strong yellow within. The work is simultaneously oddball and charming.

Lois Teicher, Envelope Series 3, Ink, oil sticks, Bristol board, 14 x 16 inches.

Playfulness or capriciousness also seems to have been the leitmotif behind Teicher’s first big public commission in 1996, which is worth mentioning in any essay about the artist. Paper Airplane Series with Deep Groove was constructed for Flint’s Bishop International Airport. Three separate sheets of steel have been folded into the classic shape of childhood paper airplanes. The largest sits on the floor in the airport’s main terminal and is painted white with blue lines to perfectly mimic the sheet of school paper commonly employed for the purpose. There are even holes for the standard three-ring binder. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Lois Teicher, Paper Airplane Series with Deep Grove, Bishop International Airport, 1996.

Lois Teicher’s Quiet Performance: The Stillness of Shape is up at Galerie Camille in Midtown Detroit through October 19. The gallery will host an artist’s talk on October 18 from 5 to 8 p.m.

Ethiopia at the Crossroads @ Toledo Museum of Art

By K.A. Letts

On October 8, 2024

In Ceramic, Paintings, Photography, Prints, Sculpture

House of Yatreda (est. 2021), Abyssinian Queen, 2024, 1/1 NFT single-channel video. “Beneath the dense canopy of an ancient forest that divides her realm and blurs the line between history and legend, the Abyssinian queen journeys from one kingdom to another within historic Abyssinia, carried with solemn grace by her devoted attendants.” All photo images by K.A. Letts unless noted.

Ethiopia’s long history as an important but often overlooked center of world art is getting a sweeping survey in the Toledo Museum of Art’s newly opened exhibition, “Ethiopia at the Crossroads.” From now until November 10, images and objects from the horn of east Africa illustrate the region’s importance as a point of contact for trade and cultural exchange beginning in the 7^th Century BCE. Myths and stories derived from a wealth of sources, from indigenous religions to archaic Judaism to Byzantine Christianity and Islam, form the basis for a composite culture that is uniquely coherent and remarkably complex.

In antiquity, the Nile provided Ethiopia’s traders and envoys with access to Egypt and the civilizations of the Mediterranean Sea. Contact with the Byzantine empire brought eastern orthodox Christianity, which then developed, in conjunction with other local mythic influences, its own idiosyncratic religious identity. Ethiopia was only the second country—after Armenia–to adopt Christianity as its state religion in the 4^th century CE.

(l. to r.) Cross with St. Blaise, 10-11 c., copper alloy (Walters Art Museum), Processional Cross, 10 c. – 12 c., brass alloy, (Dallas Museum of Art), Processional Cross, 13 c. bronze, (Institute of Ethiopian Studies Abbas Ababa)

“Ethiopia at the Crossroads“ can be described as two exhibitions in one, actually. One collection of artworks, along with extensive photo documentation, centers on the country’s rich and lengthy art history. Another strand of the exhibition, woven seamlessly into the historical record, presents the work of contemporary Ethiopian artists and makes a convincing case that these living creatives are successfully carrying their unique cultural identity into the 21^st century.

After entering through the circular rotunda at the beginning of the exhibition, museum visitors will journey through a complex narrative of the region’s cultural patrimony that includes more than 225 artifacts stretching over 1750 years. Devotional painted icons, manuscripts, coins, textiles and basketry, metalwork and carved wood crosses of various scales from periods from 7 century BCE through the 19^th century CE form a beautiful and emotionally resonant parade that marches down the center of the main gallery. The exhibition design features a long, purpose-built terracotta-colored display structure that organizes what could easily be a baffling collection of diverse influences and objects. On the outer perimeter of the central structure, smaller groupings of objects amplify elements of Ethiopia’s long and complex story. Included in these collections are small, glazed black terracotta figurines characteristic of the Ethiopian Jewish community and wooden Waakaa memorial figurines from the Konso people of South Ethiopia. Illuminated manuscripts of both Christian and Islamic provenance are represented as well as magic healing scrolls that illustrate the hybrid beliefs characterizing Ethiopia’s Orthodox Christianity.

Folding Processional Icon in the Shape of a Fan, late 15 c., tempera with ink on parchment, wood handles, 24 ¼” x 154 1/8” x 4 ¾” (Walters Art Museum) photo: Toledo Museum of Art

The gallery holds a particularly rich trove of religious artifacts from the liturgical history of Ethiopia. A standout is the rare Folding Processional Icon in the Shape of a Fan, created in the late 15^th century and one of only 6 known to exist. Illustrating the influence of European artists in icon painting are two side-by-side pictures representing the Madonna and Child. The two paintings demonstrate how European religious tropes were routinely translated into Ethiopian visual language. One is by Ethiopian artist Fare Sayon (active 1445-1480,) and the other is from the workshop of Venetian Bartolomeo Vivarini (ca. 1485.) Using the vivid colors characteristic of the Ethiopian palette, Sayon makes the image his own by adding two flanking angels important in Ethiopian Christianity, Michael and Gabriel, and interpolates elaborate textile patterns into the figures’ garments.

(l. – r), Fare Sayon (Ethiopian) Diptych (right panel) Virgin Mary and Christ Child with Archangels Michael and Gabriel, ca. 1445-1480, glue tempera on panel Workshop of Bartolomeo Vivarini, Venice, Madonna and Child, egg tempera on panel.

The co-location of work by contemporary Ethiopian artists alongside historical artifacts demonstrates how a coherent identity based upon shared myths and traditions has persisted over time. Of particular interest is work by the House of Yatreda, a family-based artist collective now in a year-long residence at the Toledo Museum of Art. At the entrance to the exhibition, a large photo portrait (Mother of Menelik) minted on blockchain combines the traditional folklore of Ethiopia with web-3 technologies. The House of Yatreda’s leader, Kiye Tadele, poses as Makadda, the legendary Queen of Sheba, pregnant with Menelik, the offspring of King Solomon and founder of Ethiopia’s Solomonid dynasty. In a large gallery towards the back of the exhibition, a series of large-scale black and white single-channel videos by the House of Yatreda, entitled Abbysinian Queen, is on display. Described as “in the style of tizita (nostalgia or longing for the past),” the narrative follows the journey of an imaginary Ethiopian queen traveling through mystical forests to new kingdoms.

House of Yatreda (est. 2021), Mother of Menelik, 2023, NFT single channel video, photo: Toledo Museum of Art

The many creatives in the exhibition are a testament to the ongoing vibrancy of the region’s visual culture. Elias Sime of Addis Ababa, London-born Theo Eshetu, and Helina Metaferia of Washington, D.C., among many others, showcase the ongoing cultural significance of present-day Ethiopian art. Their work demonstrates that the artists share a strong stylistic correspondence between their art’s historical antecedents and their own work. Elias Sime’s Tightrope, Zooming (2012), now in the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art, is an elaborate longitudinal mosaic made from discarded elements of digital technology—circuit boards, computer keyboards, and the like. Helina Metaferia has created her version of a traditional metalwork crown that carries a meaning that is both royal and religious. With it, she honors Empress Taytu Betul, a national hero of the resistance against the invading Italian army in 1896. The traditional crown installed next to it shows, once again, the common sensibility that unites these artists with their patrimony.

Elias Sime, Tightrope, Zooming (2012), reclaimed electronic components and assorted small ephemera on panel, 83 ½” x 313” photo: Toledo Museum of Art

The abundant and varied collection of artifacts that makes up “Ethiopia at the Crossroads” is deserving of multiple visits, but if you can make only one trip, the beautifully illustrated and scholarly catalog of the exhibition is highly recommended and available from the Toledo Museum. Ethiopia at the Crossroads, edited by Christine Sciacca, is a comprehensive introduction to this neglected yet significant sub-section of world art history.

(l. – r.) Crown, 18-19 c., brass (Peabody Essex Museum) Helina Metaferia, Crown (Taytu) 2023, brass sculpture with etching (Toledo Museum of Art).

Ethiopia at the Crossroads @ Toledo Museum of Art, on display through November 10, 2024. https://toledomuseum.org/exhibitions/ethiopia-at-the-crossroads

Daniel Cascardo & New Exhibitions @ BBAC

By Ron Scott

On August 25, 2024

In Drawing, Paintings, Sculpture

Daniel Cascardo, Installation image

The Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center gets a jump on the new fall season with three exhibitions opening in the last days of August that include Daniel Cascardo: Vision of Reality, An Artist’s Perspective in the Robinson Gallery, the Birmingham Society of Women Painters in the Kantgias-DeSalle Gallery, and work by Hannah Miller. The exhibitions opened on August 23 and extend through September 19, 2024. “It’s really a very inclusive show,” said Annie Van Gelderen, president and chief executive of the art center, noting the range of emerging and veteran artists in the exhibit.

Daniel Cascardo, Luminosity

In the work of Mr. Cascardo, the painting Luminosity reflects the most traditional abstraction with a large and diverse collection of colorful shapes and patterns that rely on his black line borders to hold the composition together. There is a calculation of placing swaths of color in positions across the rectangle from left to right and from top to bottom. If you wonder why this abstraction feels right, it is because of this calculated balance of line, color, and shapes that make their way equally into all parts of the composition.

He says, “The versatility of acrylic paint allows me to work quickly, capturing the energy of the moment through a freestyle technique. My inspiration comes from my imagination, spirituality, life experiences, creativity, music, and the arts. Through my work, I strive to communicate joy, happiness, and beauty, inspiring others to explore their creativity and engage in the artistic process.”

Daniel Cascardo, Rooster’s Melody

In the artwork, Rooster’s Melody, a similar technique of colorful patterns is encapsulated by a black border outline. Still, it supports a rooster motif near the center of the composition and is less abstract in its intent.

Daniel Cascardo, O Soi Mio

In the work Ol So Mio, the composition is more formal and illustrative in its intent. Balanced in shape and design, the composition is easier to understand, and the color is now heavier and darker in the lower half of the canvas, providing a top and bottom.

Daniel Cascardo, Harmonic Encounter

By using a variety of standard and recognizable shapes, figures, animals, instruments, and a landscape, Harmonic Encounter is a universe unto itself, even more illustrative in the artist’s attempt to create an overall happy place for us. Cascardo says, “My childhood experiences and cultural influences have significantly shaped my artistic vision, particularly my deep connection to my Italian American heritage. The food, travel, people, architecture, and fashion that have shaped my life inspire my artwork, allowing me to create unique and powerful imagery. Through my art, I hope to evoke emotions, inspire creativity, and engage in the world’s beauty.”

Dainiel Cascardo, Virtuoso

Daniel Cascardo attended College for Creative Studies, Detroit, MI, Art Direction/Design, 1985

Henry Ford College, Dearborn, MI, Fine Art, 1983

Goldman Sachs 10k Business Alumni, 2018

Birmingham Society of Women Painters

Birmingham Society of Women Painters, Installation image

The Birmingham Society of Women Painters, founded in 1944, comprises residents from the surrounding metro Detroit area. With more than 50 members, they exhibit a diverse approach to painting, including watercolor, oil, acrylic, and mixed mediums. This exhibition, Brushstrokes, is in the Kantgias-DeSalle Gallery through October 8, 2024, and the juror is Meigan Jackson, a contemporary fine artist whose work is both a painter and paper artist, between the visual real and its abstracted essence.

Hannah Miller, Oddly Silent

Hannah Miller: Parallel Seekers Here, in her Hopper-esk painting, the artist reflects a socially conscious creator and innovator who uses art and design to make the world a more inclusive, kind, and welcoming place.

www.bbacartcenter.org

In the fourth gallery are works by BBAC students of Tim Widener.

Hours: Mon-Sat, 10a-4p

248.644.0866

Exhibitions supported by Bank of Ann Arbor / Birmingham

Eric Mesko @ Hatch Gallery

By K.A. Letts

On July 24, 2024

In Assemblage / Collage, Drawing, Paintings, Sculpture

Eric Mesko, Self Portraits, 1990, 10” x 15”, acrylic on cardboard.

Disorientation, exhilaration, and amusement are feelings gallery visitors will experience upon walking into Hatch Gallery right now, where work by Detroit artist Eric Mesko is on display. “Eric Mesko Ain’t Dead Yet” is a retrospective of sorts, though not a complete one. Christopher Schneider and Sean Bieri, who curated the exhibition, have selected a generous slice of Mesko’s 50-year output from a rich trove of art and artifacts in the artist’s Ferndale house and studio. Most of the work is from the 1990s and gives a taste, at least, of the preoccupations and style of expression of this artist and activist, whose work was described by Rebecca Mazzei of the Detroit Metro Times in 2005 as “extreme expressionism.”

Eric Mesko, Oil Wars, 1990, 24” x 36” acrylic and oil stick on board.

Mesko’s childhood in the 1940s, as the son of a lieutenant colonel in the Marines, gave him a unique position from which to view the place of America on the world stage, for good or ill. His frequent moves from military base to base, both in the U.S. and worldwide, gave him a global perspective on both his own American identity and world cultures. Though an inveterate natural draftsman from an early age, Mesko didn’t take an art class until his last year in high school. He enlisted in the Marines after graduation and served three years, until 1967, and only began to study art seriously in the late 1980s when he earned both a B.F.A and an M.F.A. from Wayne State University.

Eric Mesko, installation, Exhibition poster (2024), small Uvalde Kid, (n.d.) wood, found objects.

In a 2002 essay on Mesko, Dick Goody, Director of the Oakland University Art Gallery, described his work as “more steeped in the traditions of cartoon comics than twentieth-century art,” a statement that is both accurate and incomplete. While many of the works on paper undeniably reference the visual tropes of comic books, Mesko’s sculptures equally suggest his deep familiarity with Chicago Imagists like H.C. Westermann and with post-World War II folk art traditions such as hand-painted signs and improvised cultural artifacts. He also claims familiarity with, and appreciation for, American regionalists like Thomas Hart Benton, and even names Jackson Pollock and El Lissitzky as influences. In the end it is impossible, and possibly pointless, to describe Mesko as either an insider or an outsider. His work, while encompassing all these influences, has coalesced into its own unique perspective; he is both insider and outsider, a sophisticated thinker making work within a primitivist visual idiom.

Eric Mesko, Batter, (n,d) wood assemblage, found objects,

Eric Mesko, Uvalde Kid, 1998, 30” x 42” x 17” wood, found objects.

Many of the recurring images in the exhibition circle around the identity and meaning of American masculinity. G.I.’s., baseball players and cowboys figure prominently In Mesko’s personal iconography as symbols of American values past and present. The Uvalde Kid, named after one of many childhood homes of the artist, is one of the larger assemblages in the exhibition. Astride his horse and brandishing a pistol, he is a reminder that frontier violence is an enduring feature of the American psyche, recently made immediate by the mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas. The G.I.’s in Mesko’s pictures, too, practice sanctioned violence in furtherance of national goals. Yet they seem helpless, cogs in an oil-fueled war machine. His large acrylic and oil stick painting on panel Oil Wars (1990) and the small wooden tank that sits in front of it, are two of several artworks that reference the wars in Iraq and the U.S.’s historically vexed relationship to the oil economy.

Eric Mesko, Oil Warrior, 1991, 11” x 14,” Ink and watercolor on paper

Lest all of this should appear too grim, let it be noted that many of Mesko’s images and artifacts are comic. In Self Portrait as Lord Greystoke, the artist pictures himself as Tarzan, bemused atop a herd of hippos. In another large painting, Mesko portrays the sculptor Tony Smith in a battle for art supremacy, King Kong vs. Godzilla style. Mesko’s pictures can be light-hearted, even silly, although they often make an ironic point, as in his American Voter drawing.

Eric Mesko, Self-Portrait as Lord Greystoke, 1984., 11” x 14,” ink and watercolor on paper.

The world’s oceans and the fish that swim in them are also favorite images in “Ain’t Dead Yet.” The sculpture Moby Dick (1990, now in the Wayne State University art collection) is a virtuosic evocation, in found materials, of Captain Ahab’s mythic nemesis. The series Jonah and The Whale, ten paintings on vintage New York Times papers, tell what would have been a really big fish story if only there had been newspapers in Biblical times. The altered book Fish or Cut Bait recounts another, more intimate tale of idyllic fishing trips. A large assemblage, Great Fish of Ferndale, anchors the center of the gallery.

Eric Mesko, Jonah and the Whale (series), 1989, acrylic on New York Times

Mesko describes and critiques contemporary mass culture in America as more conformist, more materialistic and more predatory than the local, particularized regional artifacts and architecture of his American childhood in the 1940’s. “I grew up,” he says, “in the last era where idealism still meant something …The innocence of all that is lost but it wasn’t a fake innocence because in the late forties there was still a lot of idealism in the country and somehow that was important to me from an early age.”

Eric Mesko, American Voter, 1992, 9” x 12,” Ink on paper

After the initial shock and awe of encountering Mesko’s extraordinary vision, we begin to understand his unsentimental assessment of America and Americans. He may be a disillusioned patriot, but he retains enough optimism to keep working into his eighties. As he has put it, “We have to face our future head-on and accept our tasks with determination.“ Or, in the parlance of the show’s title, “We ain’t dead yet.”

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