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My Last Visit to Artomatic 2008

June 8,2008

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Lisa Schumaier's crows
Sondra and I managed a final visit to Artomatic before I blow this town. I will confess that I was a teench stoned, (hey, I'm not running for Supreme Court Justice) which may explain why my tolerance level was diminished, or maybe I tried to take in too much at one go but it all started to blend together in a slightly overcooked stew after a couple of floors. I did, however, find some good stuff, which will herein be described. Lisa Schumaier's collection of crows was appropriately spooky and a touch threatening; I loved it. The same for Shamus Ian Fatzinger's paintings. (Did he have the "Shamus" in the last Artomatic or is that new?) They show a dark, horror-movie underworld - as in the Hades kind of underworld - where people seem to be decomposing and screaming for help. It's the kind of subject matter that art students love, but Fatzinger rises triumphantly above the cliche.

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S.A. Fatzinger
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Kim Reyes
Another overworked subject matter is the body image thing: I hate my body, you hate my body, the media hates all our bodies, let's mutilate my body, yadda yadda yadda. Anyway, having said that, Kim Reyes has some lovely work touching on the general theme but gently and subtly. Her boxes combine a female image with artifacts that speak of archaic "woman's work" and they just look beautiful. Sheila Crider shows "Constance Stitching", a fiber piece that is a tribute to her mother. Made of such elements as cotton thread, magnet wire, tarpaper, recycled papers and wood, her mother stitched the piece to help Sheila prepare for a show just after herself being diagnosed with breast cancer.

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Sheila Crider's Constance' Stitching
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Holly Burns' napkins
A couple of other things caught my eye. First, Holly Burns' drawings on napkins. While it was too late in the evening for me to muster the concentration required to puzzle out any narrative that may (probably does) connect the series of drawings, the charm and finesse with which they are executed was enough to pull me over in admiration (and it's all about me, isnt it?). Second, and last, were the series of tornado paintings. Come to think of it, foreboding seems to be the emotional theme of this visit to Artomatic. Hmmm. I couldn't find the tornado artist's name. Maybe someone will tell me.

 

 

 
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