Art Lies, Volume 23, Summer 1999 Page: 52
60 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Faultlines: Drawings On/Off Paper
ARTSCAN GALLERY
HOUSTON
by Caroline GoeserAs a deliberately provocative show, Faultlines:
Drawing On/Off Paper engendered expansive
thinking about the properties of drawing. It
asked viewers to question their preconceptions
about a medium normally conceived of rather
narrowly as lines in ink, pencil, or charcoal on
paper, and often connoting a study for a future
work in painting or sculpture. It suggested
instead that drawings could be made on
surprising surfaces, from the braille-embossed
paper of Michael Golden, to the bare wall
utilized by Annette Lawrence and Margo
Sawyer, to the three-dimensional space of an
ancillary gallery. They could be made of tradi-
tional media, such as Katherine Amman's oil
pastels, or unexpected materials, such as
Hilary Harnischfeger's glued paper collage or
Kathy Hall's horse bridles. They could even be
made with chain saws on wood!
Beyond extending definitions of drawing,
the works in Faultlines gravitated toward three
basic themes: the experience of tactile surfaces,
spatial relationships, and the passage of time.
Michael Golden's drawings conveyed textures
I
visually. In three untitled drawings on paper
that had been embossed with braille letters,
Golden accentuated the bumpy surface with
velvety forms drawn in powdered charcoal. In
his Side Effects, drawn in Chinese ink on 25
sheets of braille-embossed paper, he featured
one iconic image on each sheet, as for example
a bird, a feather, and a key. With his braille
paper and sensuous drawing materials, Golden
has developed his hieroglyphic language to
suggest his own experience of losing the sight
in one eye, choosing objects that convey his
heightened sense of touch, such as the feather,
or his process of unlocking a new form of
perception, as the key connotes.
52 ARTLIES SUMMER 1999In her Room with a View, an installation
in the gallery's small project room, Kathy Hall
explored the possibility of drawing in three
dimensions. Beginning with dots on the wall,
she extended lines of wire out into the space of
the room. She then attached horse bridles to
the wires, suspending them in the center of the
room to create a three-dimensional drawing of
a horse. Because her installation only defined
the outlines of a horse's form, one would not
want to call it sculpture. Rather, the viewer
discerned a drawing suspended in space.
Though not actually three-dimensional, James
Surls's lithographs, such as Speak, were also
suggestive of spatial relationships. By printing
his abstract images on both sides of semi-
transparent paper, Surls portrayed a vast
expanse of space, his swirling lines alluding to
planetary orbits in the galaxy.
Annette Lawrence's drawings marked the
passage of time but also investigated varying
properties of time. In the center of her wall
installation, titled Morning, she drew three of
her signature spiral shapes. Overlaying the
composition, she enlarged and transferred the
musical notation and lyrics of a Negro
>piritual: "We'll Understand It Better By and
By." She said that the work explored different
kinds of movement, from the fast, improvisa-
tional motion of the spirals, to the more rigid
lime measurement of the music. But, she also
explored another aspect of time in her wall
drawing by adhering four photographs of one
)f her works of art, in which she charted the
morning sunshine at different intervals. While
these photographs physically marked points in
time, they also implied a process of enlighten-
ment or artistic self-discovery, which resonated
with the refrain of the overlayed Negro
Spiritual: "By and by when the morning
comes, When the saints of God are gathered
home, We'll tell the story." Lawrence consid-
ered relationships across time in her John
Eaton and Thomas Grady, acrylic and graphite
drawings on brown paper. Employing
photographs from her mother, she created
large drawings of her male relatives in white
acrylic, while superimposing the outlines of
her head and shoulders in black toward the
bottom of each composition. In these worksshe collapsed the passage of time to assert
cross-generational relationships between
herself and her ancestors.
The strength and diversity of the works
chosen for this show owe debt to the creative
mind behind the exhibition. As much curator
as gallery director, Volker Eisele has carefully
developed a theme for each of his shows,
choosing works from a wide community of
Houston and Texas-based artists, many well
established, some at the beginning of their
careers. Perhaps because of the thematic
emphasis, however, the quality of the art has
sometimes been uneven. In Faultlines, Todd
Severson's Four Chainsaw Drawings detracted
from the quiet subtlety of the other works on
view. While the technique of "drawing" with a
chain saw on wood was interesting in
expanding definitions of drawing, his portraits
of women on death row were heavy-handed,
and his installation of them in slick metal
enclosures was forced.
Nonetheless, this new gallery holds great
promise. Its renovated, airy warehouse space in
Vine Street Studios, with exposed brick and
wood beams, accommodates a wide variety of
art, from traditional paintings, to multi-media
installations. With Eisele's thematic shows,
ArtScan is an intriguing hybrid between
gallery and alternative space. O
TODD SEVERSON
Four Chainsaw Drawing, 1999
Photo: Courtesy of the Artist
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Lightman, Victoria H. Art Lies, Volume 23, Summer 1999, periodical, 1999; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth228053/m1/54/?q=%22Bryant%2C+John%22: accessed May 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .