Resound

The Holland Project is hosting an exhibition this month of local artists who have been influential in the region. Included are some professors from UNR, some ex-professors, and some names who have made the local circuit and extended out from here, spreading what they’ve taken through observation from our plot in the high desert.
 
A lot of those involved were people I had heard of or knew and this was a good chance to finally experience their work. My girlfriend and I arrived a little past halfway through the reception to an array of familiar faces. The subdued conversation lent the room an atmosphere like the calm after rush hour and I thought to myself that we’d arrived just in time. I snuck between the circles of people, moving toward a corner where I imagine dust might accumulate if the staff were to neglect sweeping, and began my examination of the first of a series of artworks called “Untitled Sketches” by Robert Morris. It was no coincidence, I think, that I arrived at them first. They were simple and attractive. Of non-representational art, I find that I appreciate the simple kind most. It’s hard for me to sympathize with non-representational things. The objects tend to lose my interest as more and more elements are added, as the complex of relationships and references deepens. I try to appreciate them, and so spend a long time standing in front of them, but I’m often rebuffed. These pieces, however, were small structures, built out of folded paper, wood sticks, something that looked like a marble, and a little bit of red paint. The first was a mobile, reminiscent of something by Alexander Calder. I blew on it and it spun around, like something between a delicate weather vane and a drifting paddleboat, on a wooden skewer axis. The piece next to it was a stack of paper folded in quarters and unfolded. On the topmost sheet, each quarter had a word printed on it. I can’t quote them exactly, but somehow I think they all related to sickness. A small, shiny, presumably metal ball sat like a paperweight in the center at the vertex of the folds.

A prominent figure in the local art community came up and she commented how beautiful these tiny, fragile sculptures were. I embarrassed myself, saying “Yeah, I don’t really get them, but I like them, too…” In hindsight, there probably wasn’t much to get. They were as I’ve described them. Simple, elegant, kind. Standing there I fished for connotations of architecture, tipping points, shelters, beds, stilts, trying so hard to infuse them with meaning in order to feel like I had really pinned it down. Artists talk so often about how their work is trying to create conversations about this or that. I don’t think that serves much purpose except to make me uncomfortable actually trying to have a conversation about it.

Eventually I found my way to a group of pieces by Jim Mccormick. They seemed to be encaustic covered panels with the cut shapes of wood and twine arranged on the surface. I really enjoyed these. It was like finding figures in the clouds. The variety of texture was rich but not too intense that it was hard to look at. It was pleasant, earthy, warm, and maybe a bit haunting in the way that a crowd of mannequins in a dusty attic is haunting. There was some desolation there, but a happy humanity, too. One of the pieces reminded me of an elephant whose thoughts and attention followed along a strand of twine which led the eye toward a partial figure along the bottom of the composition, its friend I suppose. There was worry and grief in those surfaces. I liked that something so nonrepresentational could carry so much subliminal emotion in the arrangement of its contents. It was engaging.

I was impressed by the quality of work and thought throughout the gallery, but personal taste constrains what speaks to me. In so much of what was there I could feel the effort, time, and refinement that had gone into the production. It emanated from each object. At the same time, with some of it I could only get so far, could only break open a tidbit of the shell, could barely peak into the heart of it. But I suppose that’s the fun of art: in the trying to understand.