BOTH

Tory Fair Megan Goltermann Leah Giberson Nicholas Higbee Greg Mencoff Susan Scott

February 11 - March 26, 2005

Opens >> February 11, 7 - 9 pm

Artists' Talk: Saturday, February 12 @ Noon

review in someothermagazine.com by Meg Chuprevich

(go to "More art articles:Mixing mediums on the orange line")

Green Street Gallery is pleased to present six artists that feel free to slip between two and three dimensional approaches as needed. These artist don’t care as much about how they are categorized as they do about getting the idea, emotion or formal relationships across to the audience. The dynamism and intrigue generated by being "both" a painter and a sculptor keeps the work of all these artists remarkably fresh and inventive.

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Tory Fair draws boundaries in three dimensional lines across the domestic landscape. Using another sporting material, thick rubber, she divides up the personal space of a chair or stool. In her intricate pencil drawings these arrangements of furniture become areas of regulated competition with soccer field and tennis court lines running up and over elements that were never intended for outdoor use. The action of pulling these lines up off the ground, court, rink or field cleverly transforms a two dimensional area into a physical space where the line is both boundary and form.

Leah Giberson combines mediums so convincingly that it is surprising to zoom in on just where the transitions happen. From a few steps away the graphic lines of the composition lead us around these modestly scaled urban landscapes. But upon closer examination, the surface dissolves into thread and collage and trompe l’oeil that fractures areas of the same color into a variety of geometric forms. Thickly painted edges of sky push against thin photographic wires and grass and pavement buzz with activity, rendered in paint, photo and embroidery thread at the same time. The image wraps around the side of the work as it is distilled into rectangular blocks of simplified color.

Megan Goltermann uses the white wall color to seemingly splash and stretch the painted surface of the wall. Her bulbous plaster forms extrude seamlessly from the wall drooping and expanding from the surface. The humor and physicality of these luminous works adds an animated playdough fun-factory quality to the action. The elegance of these monochrome works tempers their playful nature and allows the work to possess a wide range of associations. The gravity and action of these wall works operate in opposition and create an anticipation that is as varied as the forms themselves.

Nicholas Higbee takes his painting deep into sculptural territory with welded steel support brackets and pedestal-like paintings sitting directly on the floor. But the dazzling, hard edged color and immaculate surfaces barely contain the active compositions that use all of the power of painting. These works hover above and below the spaces usually occupied by canvases and in doing so connect us with the antennae and transformers that the artist has been investigating for the last two years.

Greg Mencoff carves, sands and paints symmetrical forms that bolt together invisibly to create deep relief wall sculptures that employ exquisitely subtle coloration. The softly tinted color allows the shape of the surface to read simultaneously as smoothly changing color and curving form. The attention to the painted finishes of these solid wood diptychs makes the luxurious matte or semi-gloss finishes glow from within. The waves in the surface vary between the smoothly pointed movement of a 1960’s Thunderbird hood to the stressed curves of an open book.

Susan Scott starts with painting in the strictest sense, oil on canvas, and ends up constructing sculpture by deconstructing the finished painting. The result escapes any dependance on the original work, yet reveals the eye hooks or wooden stretcher bars of its earlier life adroitly. The thick surfaces and the corners that were created to hold the canvas onto the original stretcher conspire to create bold geometric forms. The variety of scale and color activates these works which inhabit the floor and walls with equal comfort.

– James Hull, Curator