Socially engaged art considers site, history, and the public as equals, the artist’s vision working in concert with the audience’s reality. Jon Rubin has been a defining force in this arena, creating and blurring boundaries within a very young practice that carries huge implications.
Jane Manus
MORRISTOWN, NJ Simon Gallery Over the last four decades, Jane Manus has followed a Minimalist tradition in her geometric-inspired sculpture. Like previous sculptors exploring new avenues of three-dimensional, non-narrative form, Manus is determined to stretch the boundaries of contemporary sculpture; she meticulously pieces together hollowed-out, square, elongated tubing, albeit sparingly, to form connective symmetrical linear lines that are seamlessly welded together. Following David Smith, Anthony Caro, Mark di Suvero, and Donald Judd, Manus celebrates the creative challenge of reducing shape and form, introducing a pronounced simplification of lengthened shapes that generate a recognizable visual harmony.
Julia Bland
NEW YORK On Stellar Rays Keep an eye on Julia Bland. Her exhibition, “If You Want to Be Free,” featured six large “tapestries” that are (more accurately stated) multimedia, textile-based constructions. Each one unfolds an intricate weave of complex dualities: simple geometric elements evolve into variegated compositions of seemingly mismatched swaths of material; a reverence for the traditions of drawing, painting, weaving, sewing, and sculpture gently shifts to allow irreverent trespasses across formal borders.
Susan Knight and Suzan Shutan
GARRISON, NEW YORK Garrison Art Center Suzan Shutan and Susan Knight met 20 years ago when Shutan was a fellow at the Bemis Foundation in Omaha, Nebraska. They admired each other’s work and discovered a mutual interest in patterns of weather, land, and scientific behavior related to the natural world. In 2011, they decided to join forces and develop an exhibition with the goal of providing viewers with artworks that inform, educate, and inspire interdisciplinary communication, community participation, and scientific and artistic literacy.
Nancy Cohen
JERSEY CITY, NJ visual ARts Gallery, New Jersey City University Hackensack Dreaming, Nancy Cohen’s powerful, affecting installation, attempted to salvage a bit of nature from the depredations of manmade interventions at Mill Creek Marsh near the Hackensack River. Cohen characterizes the site as among the ugliest in the state, a concrete jungle that leads nowhere. At the same time, life persists—specifically in the stumps of a former cedar forest, which provide an unlikely home for plants and birds. The confluence of these two environments—one manmade and dominant and the other natural and determined to survive—is key to Cohen’s work.
Peter Bahouth
ATLANTA Hagedorn Foundation Gallery Bathed in red light and filled with space-themed music, Peter Bahouth’s installation Birth of a Red Planet offered an otherworldly environment that blended past and present, boyish wonder and adult concern for planetary ills. Dioramas, stereoscopic images, viewing stands, archival prints, and relics from Bahouth’s childhood toy collection told the story of a young boy who builds a spaceship and flees earth in search of a better life. Bahouth, a stereoscopic photographer, worked as a prominent environmental activist before turning his attention to creating three-dimensional illusions of space.
Wayne White
FORT MYERS, FLORIDA Bob Rauschenberg Gallery, Florida Southwestern State College Wayne White’s recent exhibition opened with a puppet performance by the artist that paid homage to the gallery’s namesake. Best known for his Emmy Award-winning sets and puppets for “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse,” White has had a foot in the art world since the beginning of his career. Here, he brought the playful gestures of a comedian and prankster into the gallery, transforming it into an immersive space. Viewers were greeted by a logo painted on the wall outside the space—the Florida Southwestern college mascot morphed into White’s image.
Mary Shaffer
WASHINGTON, DC Katzen Arts Center, American University Recognized as a pioneer in the American Studio Glass Movement during the 1970s and honored as a Visionary by the Museum of Arts and Design, like many women of her generation, Mary Shaffer has followed a curvilinear career and life path. Born in South Carolina, she grew up in Central America and Europe, studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, and moved many times with her family before establishing her current base camps in Taos, New Mexico, and Marfa, Texas.
Anthony Cervino
WASHINGTON, DC Flashpoint gallery Anthony Cervino’s “Ejecta” exhibition combined well-crafted sculptures with a pointed narrative and a book of insightful conversations between artist and curator. The role of the curator is to balance objective decision-making distance and intimate knowledge of the work. In its best form, the relationship between artist and curator works as a true co-dependency, one crutch holding the other up, but at its worst, it becomes a distraction obfuscating the artist’s intent.
Ricky Swallow
LOS ANGELES David Kordansky Gallery Ricky Swallow’s work alludes to the real while posing as abstraction. As per the title of his recent exhibition, “Skews,” his intimately scaled bronzes “skew” reality so that their material representation performs a different version of factuality. Interacting with them requires putting into play something the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan referred to as “looking awry.” When you confront these objects directly, objectively, you see a collection of mis- matched, somewhat crudely assembled elements drawn from daily life.
