Liz Atzberger
Visiting Artist / Lecturer, Florida Atlantic University
Back to Basics

I am honored to have the opportunity to be the juror for the “Back to Basics: Exploring Natural Materials” exhibition at Gallery RFD. The pool of submissions was of high quality and diversity, and it was not an easy task to make the final selections. The exhibition called for works that employ, document or comment on natural materials and the natural world. I attempted to choose works that gave a new interpretation of this theme in a contemporary context, where the inter-relationship of humanity to the natural world is as strained as it is impossible to ignore. I looked for works, such as “Blue Tide, Black Water” that took an abstract or phenomenological approach, as well as those that utilized natural materials to explore the relationship of material s to representation. I appreciate works that use a minimal approach to call attention to the natural materials themselves, such as “Keysville Canvas” and the quirky, grotesque, humor of works such as “Horrified Squirrel” are strangely refreshing. I hope to have selected a wide-ranging exhibition that expands the conversation about the use of natural materials by today’s artists.

I would like to thank everyone at Gallery RFD and all the artists who are participating for giving me the opportunity to be involved in this exhibition and offer my sincere apologies that I cannot make it to the opening.

 

 

 

Zig Jackson
Professor of Photography, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA
Four Feet

First, I would also like to commend the founders and staff of Gallery RFD. I find it both impressive and gratifying that these individuals, some of whom are my former students from SCAD, had the courage and initiative to embark on this project and, as a result, are now contributing to contemporary artistic and social dialogue. Illustrating the power of photography and the creative impulse, their efforts demonstrate that artists can help shape not only the sometimes insular art community, but on a greater lever, society at large.

Due to the high quality of all of the work I reviewed, I had great difficulty with the jurying process and regret that I was unable to select all of the submissions. That said, my selections were based on various criteria. I chose works which I felt most successfully challenged contemporary artistic conventions and spoke to immediate social and cultural issues—including images which addressed both the public (e.g., street photography, etc.) as well as the private domain (e.g., personal spaces and domestic realm). In addition to these considerations, I also took into account factors such as process, composition, conceptual sophistication, and visual complexity.

 

Joseph Del Pesco & Scott Oliver
Co-Founders, Shot Gun Review on-line art journal
Beautiful Losers

The results of the seemingly paradoxical act of selecting "winners" for an exhibition entitled Beautiful Losers - the group of 19 artworks you see in the room around you, intersect with narratives of failure at different points and through a variety of approaches. From the literalness of Shelley Bird's "Humpty Dumpty" to more oblique strategies such as Terry Berlier's video "Miss Measure Meant", these works are fueled by what-ifs and doubts - that potent combination that makes us want to root for the underdog. It is the attempt in the face of defeat that thrills us more than the outcome. Art, in trying to overcome life itself, is the perennial underdog, and so every artist is familiar with failure. They leave behind a trail of false starts and fruitless experiments as they evolve their practices. In this way the selected participants you see here are equal to those omitted. To modify an old sports aphorism, it's not whether you win or lose, but how you lose. Because we are all losers in our own way. Leonard Cohen's experimental novel, from which this exhibition borrows the title, gets at this in its own convoluted way - refusing to admit reductive binary categories. In Cohen's world everyone is beautiful, everyone is a loser. We tried to select the works that best embodied this bitter sweet sensibility.

 

 

Maggie Fost
Art Director, Merge Records
Contextualized

"ConTEXTualized" is composed of media that spans the territory from the sculptural to the digital. Collectively, these works ask the viewer to consider our cultural compulsion to read and to examine how the ubiquity of text relentlessly mediates experience.

The predominance of work in black and white lets us acknowledge the elemental beauty of the letter, the word, and the page. To this end, artists like Bobbie Daughtry and Liz Craig highlight the pleasure found in the abstract forms of letters and text. At the other end of the spectrum, Peter Prusinowski's photograph of a man walking by a mural asks us to consider the presence of language in the absence of text.

Becky Blosser's photographs of newspaper exoskeletons address the transience of not only the medium from which they are crafted, but the words within, rendered illegible in this shredded and fragile form, yet still luring the viewer to find meaning by words left intact.

Gina Rymarcsuk's animation, "Airplane", synthesizes many themes of the show by evoking a children's circle-the-word game seen through the iconic shape of an airplane. Aesthetically, Rymarcsuk shares a stripped-down pleasure in the texture of letters ordered in a grid. Animating more quickly than we can read, this is partly a tease, however, that highlights the human compulsion to find order and sense in something we believe should be legible. Set in the context of a symbol irrevocably altered in the American consciousness by a singular event that continues to call for interpretation, Rymarcsuk's elegant piece suggests that no matter how long we look, sometimes there is no sense to be found.

 

 

 

Emily Holt
Nashville Artist & New School Art Instructor
Lost

What is a found object? Can it be purchased at a store? In the final piece does the object even need to be physically present or can it inspire the artwork? The found object, in an art context, can be interpreted in a variety of ways. I wanted this exhibition to represent as many possibilities for the found object as were available in the field of submissions. Although none of the pieces can be reduced down to fit into a simple category, I felt it important to establish what I was thinking about when I looked at the submissions and why I chose as I did. Initially, when I think of found objects in art, I think of Joseph Cornell's work and that of other artists influenced by him. Some of the work in the exhibition represents this more typical use of found objects in art, whether it be family heirlooms housed in shrine-like assemblages or anonymous artifacts left behind by strangers. In assemblage work like Cornell's, the found object becomes the focal point for an evolving and open-ended narrative. For example, in Reflections of an Old Man at the Funeral by Chris Livingston, the title alone evokes a story with the clues of old photographs, objects behind glass and text fragments placed around the composition. Some objects were collected from the streets--scraps of paper, metal or cloth conditioned by the elements for a second life given to them by artists who perceive the universe as a large art supply store. These objects hold traces of their past lives--what they were and who possessed them. In some cases, the stories are inseparable from the object, as in Chernobyl by Veronika Boekelmann; a jar of mushrooms grown in the region prior to its contamination. But others are more subjective as in the found scraps of paper collaged together in Seaweed by Emily Barthel and Addie by jean Hess.

Artists can also alter store-bought objects to give them new meaning. Alight by Ajean Ryan, in which matches morph into insects, demonstrates this approach.Some may argue the place of photographs or electronic media in found-object art. But in Stolen Moments by Scott Kildall, for example, the artist acquired the images in the same way as someone looking for graphic images on the ground might, searching for some interesting or beautiful scrap of paper and making it their own. Instead, this artist found his or her object online, therefore it lacks a certain physicality. Similarly, in Fake Squirrel, I imagine the artist discovered someone's decorated yard and captured what they saw in a photograph. Photography, in this sense, becomes another form of collecting found objects, as memories trapped in two dimensions.

These artists' varying interpretations of found objects share a willingness to look at an object with fresh eyes and see it in a different way. Any object, no matter how seemingly worthless or trivial, can be transformed by an artists' imagination.

 

 

Paula Katz
Assistant Curator of Art, Columbus Museum, Columbus GA
Unfamiliar Ground

First, I must offer a sincere thank you to all those who submitted entries to this exhibition of New and Non-Traditional Media. I was extremely impressed by both the number of submissions and the variety of approaches and techniques. Although every single entry was exceptional, the job of the juror is to ascertain what should be represented in the actual exhibition.

For me, it was important to determine the work that was truly pushing new boundaries, the work that I hoped would present the biggest challenge to install, present and understand. I selected this work with a gleeful smile. Not because I am cruel or wish to torment the staff of RFD, perplex the audience or piss anyone off. I chose this work, because it simply said, "welcome to the art of today".

 

Bryan Ghiloni and Mary Wilson
Gallery RFD Directors
Georgia Folks: Willie Tarver, Howard Finster, R.A. Miller, Chris Hubbard
(Miller and Finster works are on generous loan from the Dr. William Norton Collection)

The terms commonly used to describe work produced by artists without formal art training—Folk Art. Visionary Art. Outsider Art and Art Brüt—are less than satisfactory. As with most attempts to label what is difficult to categorize, what doesn't neatly fit gets left out. Like "lady cops" or "male nurses," each one of the tags adds a derogatory qualifier that undermines the strength of its subject by implying that lack of formal training relegates this work to a subcategory of Art.

Take Visionary Art, for example. It comes from the idea that artists who work in this style or method are often compelled to depict visions of a religious or spiritual nature. R. A. Miller and Howard Finster were both practicing ministers at one time and their work is replete with spiritual messages, but isn't the work of all artists, formally schooled or not, a product of how they envision the world? Or how they'd like it to be?

While it is true that these artists work independently in small towns far from major art capitols and often came to art later in their lives after careers in other fields, Outsider Art implies an exclusionary Insider Art that doesn't do justice to the level of dedication with which they work. And Art Brüt, a term coined by French artist Jean Dubuffet in the 1940s to describe the "raw art" produced by artists who work according to their own desires as opposed to the market's, is accurate in practice, but excludes the traditional forms and social or moral values that the Folk Art embodies.

Whatever term you decide on to describe the work of artists like Tarver, Miller, Finster and Hubbard, we invite you to look around and enjoy the work of each of these Georgia artists who happily work outside each of these brutal categories and remain true to their respective artistic visions. Perhaps, in the end, Art is the best category of all.
-Mary Wilson
May 2008

Gallery RFD thanks Dr. William Norton and the Tarver family for their support in making this exhibition possible.

Darby Bannard
Professor of Painting, University of Miami
Classicism, Modernism and Beyond

I was very impressed by the quality and variety of the 203 paintings I was asked to look at and impressed in turn by the highly organized and professional way this procedure was handled. Here in southeast Georgia, well into the country, you have an arts organization which is doing a far better job than most big-city outfits I have juried for. Somebody is doing something right. Or perhaps I should say you all are.
The most common question a juror gets asked is "what are your criteria". Well, there are no criteria, none that can be spelled out at any rate. You look and then look again, measure them against your experience and see what holds up. It is as simple and as difficult as that.

I can name a few characteristics which give a picture an edge, even though these too must be judged intuitively. One is skill, which is a feeling of authoritative handling of the medium. It is just as evident in abstract as in realist work. Another is graphic strength - an image that stands out, that catches the eye and keeps on catching it. Also there is originality; is this artist making do with a lot of received techniques and ideas or is there something really new going on? And finally there is size. 40 years of looking at art tells me that a larger painting is actually "more" than a smaller one. However, you will see by the great variety of sizes here that I consider this only in those rare cases where all else is equal - two pictures by the same artist, for example

I will not evaluate style, method and "trends". A picture either measures up or it doesn't. Everything else is secondary. This is one reason why you see such variety here.

First I looked at everything about three times through, to size things up. Then I culled 2 or 3 more times through and dropped the number from 203 to 111. A few more times and I was down to 72.

I was told that this was a community effort and that it was a good idea to show as many artists as possible, so I limited the final selection to one picture per artist. This dropped the number to 60. A little more pressure got me to 42.

By then I was just about as familiar with these paintings as I am with my own, so I went at it from the opposite end: what pictures could I not eliminate. Bit by bit, one by one, the strongest paintings drifted to the top until I ended with the 27 I sent back.

Of course the painful part is that middle ground; there were at least a dozen paintings that were a toss-up, that could easily have been in the show, and maybe some that shouldn't. I would not be at all unhappy with my top 60, but I was told to choose between 20 and 30, for the sake of the space, I suppose. This is when one regrets the very real necessity of judging by digital image. I know it can't be helped but at the end it does make a difference. Anyway, congratulations! This certainly is a show anyone could be proud of.

George Scheer
Collaborative DIrector, Elsewhere Artist Collaborative
Collectives and Collaborations

Thinking ideas about other things is an amazing way to make a collaboration, and thinking through things is a wonderful way to have an idea. Our most splendid imaginations come through ideas about other things, like unicorns, narwhals, and adjectives.

Unfinished puzzles in a series are collaborating. There is rarely only one puzzle in any collaboration. Collaboration begins with a knock on the door and sounds in the hallway. Collaboration sounds like a relationship and sees compositions. A group of sentences might look like collaboration and not necessarily like a paragraph. Among several paragraphs there is a situation, but rarely does just one paragraph suit the event. Collaboration happens between people and things and things and things and things and people and things.

When someone asks about collaboration they are interested in sharing. When people share they make note of something that is communicated between them. The thing of note shares several places with other things of note and people connect them together wherever they are. Connecting things relate the people that connect them, and the time for connecting relates the things that were noted. The artist is always collaborating but doesn't always practice collaboration and over time always has collaborators.

Ideas don't collaborate like things do because ideas have boundaries in their collaboration and things have boundaries that collaborate. The thing that collaborates with people is sometimes called an intervention. Things that collaborate with things are called arrangements, compositions, coincidences, and similes. Intervention uses like and as to relate people with things. Collaboration can come from intervention but so can dictation. Arrangements collaborate without being seen, so do compositions. When arrangements collaborate with other arrangements we call them coincidences, especially when they don't speak directly with one another. Curating is like collaborating, and things curated collaborate. People who see things curated don't necessarily collaborate but people who see things curated by curators who connect things have an opportunity to speak with the curators and the artists and the things.

I don't have to talk to you to collaborate. I don't have to be near you to collaborate. I do need to see you to elaborate, but you don't have to see me. I don't think I could only hear you to collaborate, but you do need to hear me. When she picks something up she collaborates. When she puts something down she collaborates. If he picks something up and she doesn't put some down they collaborate. We'll know a collaboration when we see the same thing picked up or put down. When collaboration catches people listening it asks them how they make things up.

When someone sees the same thing we didn't see, we collaborate. There is no part of a same thing; there is only a part that is same. Same things may be totally different, that's normal. Insane is when totally different things are the same, that's scary. Same differentness is the best collaboration

Thomas Valenti
President of Allied Artists of America
The New World: America

When I judge an exhibition, my findings are based on the Principles of Art, from age old thinking to contemporary points of view. I appreciate all media in all dimensions. Putting my own interests aside, I let my intellect guide me through the selection process. It is also important that the artist shows that he/she has a full technical facility of the medium of choice and at the same time not compromising the "art". I also consider the viewer, a main concern. The exhibition, after all is said and done, should make an indelible impact upon all who see it. I found all the work to be very impressive and most diverse and it is nice to see that Patriotism is alive and well.

My choice for Best in Show, " Red Gingham by Mary Wilson", was selected for many reasons. First of all, the composition was very strong and well balanced with equally appealing color and lighting effects. The glistening light transforms this profoundly common scene into a hallowed place. Pristine, pure and free of any clutter. All very ordered yet not restrictive. A simple, perhaps ideal view of life. One other thing that stuck me was my reaction to the way the verticals seemed to suggest the stripes of the flag, making the implication without it being there. Another work by this artist, "Government Housing" captured the bare bones reality of those living on the edge. "Square Dance" defines a time of innocence and good old fashioned home grown fun almost lost now, in the 21st Century.

My selection for Juror's Choice is Freedom Before Fortune by Anthony Faris. Impressive in size, this piece makes perfect use of a limited palette of colors. The materials used work in harmony. This work will undoubtedly be a centerpiece for the exhibition. I could have given this award to any one of the pieces I selected from this artist. "East and West" makes great use of iconography to make a statement. It is worth taking the time to read the message in "Nationalism", ignoring the blacked out parts."American Chair" is beautifully composed and has a truly " authentic" look.

"Memories for Sale" by Bridget Conn is also worth mentioning". Repeating an image and seeing it transform is like art in motion. This scene is something we are all familiar with so it adds a bit of nostalgia and as we look through the different "frames" we see time fading in and out of our minds. Very nice piece.

I truly appreciate the childlike quality of Aliens Invade New York by Joseph Griffith, and how the artist works so freely.

The photographs by Bryan Ghiloni are all very good. He brings something different to each one of these whether it's color or composition. Texture or content. Even black and white. Really superb.

In "Skyquilting" by Chris Cassidy, every frame of the video works. The background sound is especially intriguing as it really comes across that beyond the space that the artists allows us to see, is a very large open area that resonates sounds in an almost haunting echoing manner.
works. The background sound is especially intriguing as it really comes across that beyond the space that the artists allows us to see, is a very large open area that resonates sounds in an almost haunting echoing manner.

Richard Lou
Chair of Art Department, University of Memphis
Instant Headlines

I was very honored to be asked to serve as the juror for the Headlines exhibit at the RFD Gallery. Guillermo Gomez-Pena wrote several years ago, to paraphrase, that our world has reached the point where artist do not have the luxury of systemically removing themselves from the crucible of political life in order to achieve an artistic distance from which we can create. He said we must become "Citizen-Diplomats" using our creative abilities to offer alternative models to seek social justice. Artists are needed now more than any other time in our history to create counter-definitions and counter-images to the current meta-narrative of neo-colonialism, consumerism, and pseudo democracy. In viewing the work submitted for this exhibition it has again buoyed my since of hope and has given me a great sense of pride in the work and hopes we all share. Thank you for your bravery.

Brandon Fortune
Curator of Painting and Sculpture, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery
Portraiture and Presence

I was impressed with the variety and quality of the work submitted. There was a preponderance of photography, and much of it was very compelling. Choosing a best in show was quite difficult, and I suspect that my own predilection for portraits made me quite particular. I'm delighted that the entrants are so interested in this genre!

 

 

Craig Burkhalter
Director, Contemporary Arts Exchange, Macon GA
Growing Up and Looking Back

I was very pleased to be asked to be part of the Growing Up: Yesterday and Today exhibit. My Master's Thesis was heavily steeped in the shared consciousness of the personal narrative and the majority of the images I presented dealt with childhood memories as themes.

Much of the artwork in Growing Up is wonderfully nostalgic imagery of love and magical childhoods. Other work shows a much darker and disturbing time. An impressive range of styles, themes and stories allow all of us to relate to certain images and force us to confront our own fears and dark thoughts while viewing others.

My choice for Best in Show goes to The Citizen. This video stands out as a perfect representation of our own fleeting reflections and thoughts. With our memories often being disjointed and sudden, we still have the ability to play, replay, re-wind and obsess as much as we like.
Behind the Average American Family there is, more often than we realize a dark and secretive side. The Juror's Choice is The Go Cart. This photograph will make us confront thoughts and memories we wish would stay buried. Whether from personal experience or from tales our friends, we have all been touched by "family secrets". Being forced to hide behind a mask, for the sake of the family, would have to be one of the hardest things a child could do.

 

 

Anthony Faris & Timothy Bryan Ghiloni
Co-Directors, Gallery RFD
Plagiarism and Appropriation

When the idea for an exhibition on plagiarism came up a few months back, we thought that it would be almost comical to take on something so taboo (legally and philosophically). Since February, we’d been working hard to create themed exhibitions that challenged our audience and artists. We had explored issues like Religion and Spirituality in the modern world, the Evolution of Photography from analog to digital, and how past art movements inspire contemporary artists. A plagiarism exhibition seemed like a break-loose, liberating experience for us and we expected our artists to feel the same way. As with any idea, the show evolved and is almost unrecognizable from its humble beginnings.

One of the great things about exploring new territory (new to us) is that you often receive great challenges to your thinking and actions. When we first posted call for entries online for this exhibition, we received several letters threatening to boycott our gallery and charging that this show was irresponsible and damaging to progress in the art world. We expected such letters from lawyers but not from artists. After some reflection, we responded as such:

We, at Gallery RFD, appreciate your feedback on our upcoming exhibition "Plagiarism and Appropriation." If you find the time, we would appreciate you reviewing our website and list of exhibitions. Part of Gallery RFD's mission is to explore complex, challenging, and relevant subject matter to our artists and our community. We currently serve a rural community of about 7000 people who are being exposed to such diverse topics in art for often the first time. Because the history of art is full of borrowed and revised ideas, we thought this topic especially relevant. Inspirations for this exhibition include Warhol, DuChamp, and Picasso. The evolution of art from the Greeks to Romans, from Classical to Modern has been contingent on those who appropriate styles, ideas, and compositions in an effort to further explore the boundaries of art and expression.

It’s an odd idea to think that something so “damaging” to art is actually one of the building blocks of its foundation. Appropriating and even plagiarizing is a way (in the long term) to keep ideas, compositions, and subject matter that are important to us in the forefront of our culture. It is a way of passing along a story. For centuries, early Christian artists simply repeated the same iconography in their homage’s to Christ. Picasso was so heavily inspired by African mask that he appropriated their features in many of his greatest works. DuChamp changed the Mona Lisa in a few strokes of paint and forever changed the way we look at Da Vinci’s most famous portrait.

In the same way, the artists in this exhibition have used the compositions, ideas, styles, and subject matter that preceded them and appropriated them into new works that challenge our ideas of ownership and art. Whether it be Robin Feeley‘s reinterpretation of Frida Kahlo self portraits into canines, Matt Montgomery transforming Michelangelo’s 2-Demsional painting “The Last Judgment” into a 3-Deminsional sculpture or Desmal Purcell offering viewers the opportunity build on DuChamp’s “original” reworked Mona Lisa, it is obvious to us that this exhibition is not really new ground, but rather a reflection of the advancement of ideas among artists and viewers despite time, place, and in our case, legal ramifications.

 

 

Greg Cradick
Executive Director, Working With Artists, Denver CO
Far From Home

Hello all,

Jurying this show has been extremely interesting for many reasons, the most fascinating of which is the fact that I juried it from afar via the internet. Not only does this fall into the same nifty category as the thesis of the show, but it speaks to the coming age of being able to be everywhere anytime while also not really being anywhere. This does not seem like that bizarre
of a thing to most of us in this the 21st century, we are used to laptops hooked up to the internet in coffee shops all over the globe. The fun part is that I did not have to dress up for the jurying process. In fact I did not have to dress at all, I could be half naked chucking Molotov cocktails at my neighbor’s orange Chevy Malibu for letting his mutt puke on my porch
while writing this- for all you know.

In regards to this show I feel that the gallery made a wise choice in selecting a juror who was not a resident of the state of Georgia. It speaks to the theme of travel and distance. It forces me into the interesting predicament of judging something from a distant, forced perspective. Passing judgement on works that are not in front of me for a show that will take place 1800 miles away in a gallery I have never been to, yes. It actually is not a stretch considering that when we travel we might see a city or a place for a weekend and decide “its touristy”, “its rundown”, “its fabulous”, “its changed a lot since the late 70’s when the people who lived here were ‘real’”, “this town has bad coffee”, etc. We judge places on small clues, snap decisions, and weather patterns all the time- so what better way to jury such a show than from
afar...

So, when selecting works for this show I was concerned with craft, content, originality and the aesthetics of the group as a whole.

By craft I mean is it well made- is it well crafted. For me this is a personal selection thing based on initial reactions and close scrutiny. One dilemma I have run into in this process is
deciding how well crafted the digital photographic images are. I can decide if the image was well composed, processed and technically well captured- but what of the output? What if someone decides to print this absolutely phenomenal image using a first generation fax machine from the mid 80’s? Ouch! It could happen (it may have)! So, the print quality is impos-
sible to judge- but the quality of the image can be seen easily. Also, the craftsmanship of the other mediums involved (painting, sculpture, printmaking) are fairly easy to see.

For me an artist can have an amazing concept, but if it has poor craftsmanship and it is slopped together, I won’t waste my time with trying to listen to what they are trying to say.

By content I am looking to see that the artist read the call for entries prospectus and is addressing those concepts. For me, this can be a loose reading, it does not have to be literal.
In fact I rather enjoy a varied interpretation of the theme, I feel that it makes it an interesting show. These types of shows are fun specifically for that reason, we get to see different artists
vision of a similar topic.

Originality is exciting because it implies it is something I have not seen before.

Finally when this show got culled down to the top sixty pieces it came the super fun part of designing an aesthetically cohesive show that flows. For this show what started forming
was a number of somber toned pieces. Works that were emotionally low key. Technically I was drawn to pieces that were simple in composition. These pieces let the negative space make a comment or two, sometimes speaking louder than the subject itself. Extremely quiet works. Images that made you slow down and whisper in a hushed voice. All of the works are very limited in their color palette- not jumping into mad chaotic color schemes, but sticking to one side or another of the wheel. The simplicity of these works lend themselves to asking more questions rather than revealing answers, which I find super engaging.

All in all the works that comprise this show speak to the viewer in a hushed common voice that leaves the viewer slightly curious and maybe more than a little thoughtful.

 

 

Holly Koons McCullough
Curator of Fine Arts and Exhibitions, Telfair Museum, Savannah GA
Art Movements Past and Present

Everything old is new again. A tired adage, perhaps, but still a pertinent one, as the selections for "Art Movements Past and Present," demonstrate. Artists today may be even more aware of the accomplishments of their predecessors than previous generations were. Art can be accessed everywhere—on the television, over the internet, in widespread publications, and through an ever-growing gallery and museum scene. Remaining ignorant of the achievements of the past is difficult in this day and age.

How do artists develop new ideas against such an overwhelming art historical backdrop? The "end of art" has been declared before, notably after the proliferation of photography, which some believed would render other art forms redundant. Yet artists have continued to draw upon the past to revitalize the present and redefine the future. It is the artist's role, perhaps, to take what is old and make it new again.

In jurying this show, I was struck by the diverse sources of art historical inspiration I detected in the selected works. Most reflect an awareness of various 20th-century movements, ranging from surrealism to abstract expressionism to pop art and beyond. Some, produced with the aid of digital media, reflect the art of our own time and exploit technological possibilities that didn't exist even a generation ago. A few return to earlier movements, echoing classic impressionist subject matter or drawing upon traditional Asian imagery, but interpreting these subjects with fresh eyes and contemporary methods.

While few of the works in this show appropriate actual images from art history, all reflect an awareness of pivotal art of the past. Lush and energetic abstractions call to mind the works of Hans Hoffman, Philip Guston, and other seminal abstract expressionists; woodcuts, lino-cuts, and even photographs evoke time-honored Asian traditions and processes; images of ordinary objects, repeated sequentially and distinguished only by a change in palette, recall the pop art of Andy Warhol; and collages that incorporate actual tubes of paint as well as other mundane found materials owe a debt to Picasso, Duchamp, and Rauschenberg. Even the time-honored tradition of the self-portrait has been reconsidered here, revealing an awareness of examples both historical and contemporary, but reinterpreted with new media and a fresh perspective. Everything old is new again.

 

 

 

Dr. Bruce Little
MFA Program Director, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA
Divine Inspiration

In the beginning… human passions stirred and the never-ending quest for spiritual meaning was embarked upon. Based on the number and quality of the entries submitted to this exhibition, I would conclude that the primal passion that provided impetus for the quest remains as powerful as ever. That should not really be a surprise, because art has been and continues to be one of the most effective and satisfying means through which humans participate, preserve and pass along spiritual beliefs and practices. Across vast expanses of human time and geographic space, artists have recorded the transformative events brought about by participation in religious practice. In other cases, artists of diverse traditions created the ritual objects, so much a part of the religious practice itself. For centuries, artists have depicted their deities, holy men and women, and the instructional narratives that grew up around them. In an effort to pay homage to their gods, humans have erected remarkable physical and social structures, which ultimately dictate back to them, the collective actions and reactions of true believers. Religion has simultaneously spawned heroic acts of compassion and self-sacrifice for the good of others as well as the most selfishly self-contradictory and malevolent of atrocities. The search for spiritual meaning and purpose continues unabated until this very moment, in all its glorious and ignoble manifestations. The passions stirred "in the beginning" are very much alive in the works selected for this exhibition. Congratulations to the selected exhibitors and to the Gallery RFD staff for sponsoring and mounting such an exhibition opportunity. Thank you for allowing me to participate.

 

 

Pete Christman
Professor of Photography, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah GA
Documentation and Distortion

The invention of photography altered how we perceive history. We know Abe Lincoln really existed because we have seen a photograph of him, but George Washington exists as an artist's interpretation on the dollar bill. Photography has been the documentary medium for the past 168 years. Almost twenty years ago digital imaging began eroding this trust in the reality of a photograph. This exhibition does not pass judgment on this complex relationship of the camera and the computer; it illustrates the numerous directions these mediums are moving toward. The craft of the darkroom has rapidly been replaced by knowledge of digital workflow and Photoshop, but the real value of a photograph is still in the content of the image. A good picture is a good picture no matter how it is made. Some things never change.

 

 

Nick Nelson
Curator of Education, Albany Museum of Art, Albany GA
Industrial Identity

The caveat of "Industrial Identity in the American South", as stated in this exhibition's theme, presented me with the difficult task of seeking out a Southern esthetic within the submitted works. As an artist, curator, and educator living and working in the South, I find the question of a Southern esthetic particularly relevant. I can only search for this esthetic in my own experiences and observations of the South. From my experiences and observations, I find the South to be a land of contradictions and dualities. The South is a land of strip-malls and farm fields, pastoral beauty and urban sprawl, spiritual fervor and banality, great human/natural resources and crushing poverty, gentility and brutality, hospitality and hate. I believe that the beginnings of a Southern esthetic exist within the expression of these dualities. In choosing work for this exhibition I looked for pieces that expressed a duality, either within themselves or within the context of other works.

The single work that I felt best epitomized the development of the South was Caroline Cannon's photograph, Du Pont. In this work, a rainbow-colored Dupont Chemical sign is juxtaposed with the drab wall of an old building. Here the old and the new clash together: the strip-mall meets the farm field. A similar juxtaposition of polarities is found between individual works in this exhibition. Traditional pieces, like Joan Dunn's watercolor, Emanuel Harvest, are displayed with more cutting-edge pieces, like Wendy DesChene's installation of live pine trees and potatoes. The surreal and spiritually charged Conservation vs. Construction 8 by Desmal Purcell is counterbalanced by the stark materialism of Margaret Strickland's Break Room Table. The tension between development and nature/ technology and tradition, is expressed in works like Michel Varisco's Hairy House and Adam Kuehl's Industrial 3. In Hairy House nature reclaims the human landscape, while in Industrial 3, an enormous water tower, like a machine from H.G. Well's War of the Worlds, looms over the surrounding countryside. In Valvoline and Fina Cups , Michael Schmidt offers the viewer a drink of oil, using humor to express apprehension toward the pollution that accompanies industry. Chad Arnholt's Winterville, GA 1 provides a more hopeful, balanced rendering of nature and technology, one in which an industrial site sits nestled within an idyllic landscape. A strange confluence is found in works like Joshua Camp's Its all in Perspective 1, Kurney Ramsey Jr.'s Sawmill, Creedmoor, NC, and Jennifer Shaw's Railroad Ties. In these works the progression from living forest to industrial product is played out before the viewer's eyes. Taylor Davis’ Catface, winner of the Heritage Award, presents a single point within the production process. The title Catface, refers to the herring-bone cuts used to extract sap from pine trees used for turpentine production. Juror’s Choice Award winner, Katerie Gladdys places the viewer within the chain of production in Point of Origin. In this interactive installation, video images relating to orange juice distribution are projected onto a jug of juice. Viewers are invited to drink juice from an alternate jug, acting as the final step in the process of distribution. The viewer is not only a witness to the progression from orchard to consumer but becomes an active participant in this progression. On another level the viewer becomes an active participant in the process of artistic production and, literally, a consumer of the work of art. In all, I feel that the chosen works celebrate and critique industrialization and development while expressing a duality, which I feel describes the American South.

 

 

Kristin Casaletto
Printmaking Professor, Augusta State University, Augusta GA
Bloodlines

Casaletto earned a BS in physics and a BFA in drawing from Ball State University. She worked in painting conservation at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., contributing scientific examinations of art objects to numerous NGA catalogue publications. Casaletto traveled in Europe and Asia and worked as a freelance writer and art critic before earning an MA in art history from Michigan State University (with one year at Universita’ di Firenze, Italy) and an MFA in painting with minor emphasis in printmaking from Western Michigan University.

Casaletto is an active artist whose work incorporates printmaking, drawing, and sometimes painting, video, and sound. She has been awarded numerous grants and artist residencies and has exhibited widely across the United States as well as in Italy and Australia.

Casaletto is currently Acting Chair of the Department of Art of Augusta State University, heads its printmaking area, and teaches printmaking, drawing and World Humanities.