“Crafting ldentity:Commemorative Objects byMary Douglas” Wearley Studio Gallery Royal Oak, MI Mary Douglas is always ready to give us a view of Americans who, through material and intellectual culture, collectively shape our national identity.
Joseph Wesner
Rochester, MI Meadow Brook Art Gallery,Oakland University Joseph Wesners mid-career retrospective exhibition included an impressive sampling of abstract sculpture. The show traces his development from early conceptual work of the 1980s to recent work inspired by his residencies in Beijing and Shanghai, China.
Margery Amdur
Grand Rapids, MI Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts Children watching old black and white movies might innocently be led to believe that the world before technicolor was toned in shades of gray. Margery Amdur embellishes a similar sort of innocence in her recent installation at the Urban lnstitute for Contemporary Arts by transporting her viewers
Wendy Ross
Washington, D.C. Gallery K Wendy Ross, a Washington-area sculptor, has often exhibited with other artists who explore organic abstraction, an ongoing interest in this region. Her work in “Elusive Source,” a 1995 group show at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, probed the inner life of crafted objects.
Emilie Benes Brzezinski
Washington, D.C. Corcoran Gallery of Art Two remarkable installations honor the tree’s struggle against the vicissitudes of time and weather, highlighting Emilie Benes Brzezinski’s 10-year quest to penetrate and reveal the tree’s essential core. Using a chain saw chisel, and axe to create highly expressive gestures, she has perfected what she terms a “vertical wedge”
Andrea Sunder-Plassman and Sigi Torinas
San Francisco Gallery 16 Browsing Beauty, by artists Andrea Sunder-Plassman and Sigi Torinus, has the aura of cyberspace, a Web site expanded to the third dimension which engulfs the viewer in a barrage and complexity of images.
Walter Robinson
San Francisco Catharine Clark Gallery The ribbed, prehensile tail of Walter Robinson’s burnished wood sculpture Sub Sahara (1997) seems to rise out of the Precambrian murk of a typical Alexis Rockman painting, creating a threatening, fetishistic fossil record of its own.
Kathryn Spence
San Francisco Stephen Wirtz Gallery The recent installation Pigeons (1997), by artist Kathryn Spence, is exactly that, a gathering of our fine feathered friends… see the print version for the full review.
David Ruddell
San Francisco Braunstein/Quay Gallery Like the work of artists as diverse as Robert Rauschenberg and Joseph Cornell, David Ruddell’s elegant hybrid constructions incorporate elements of both sculpture and painting… see the print version for the full review.
Clifford Rainey
San Francisco Dorothy Weiss Gallery By titling his show “Homo Faber,” Clifford Rainey placed the emphasis in this exhibition on the artist’s role as the fabricator… see the print version for the full review.
