Selections 21

Opening in 1983, the works in Selections 21 were rich in predominantly representational imagery and rendered in a variety of media and techniques, both two and three dimensionally. The artists in Selections 21 were: Nevin Berger, Juan Boza, Elena Coon, Domenic Cretara, David Fitzgerald, David Humphrey, Joel Janowitz, Stephen Lack, Michael McKeown, Minnie Maude May Schuyler, Thomas Slaughter, and Linda Warren. All had been selected through the Artists' Viewing Program at the Center.

Domenic Cretara's large detailed paintings on paper were contemporary genre scenes which referred to other works of art through similar lighting and arrangement of figures. At first glance, Nevin Berger's drawings appeared to be fairly straightforward figure studies, but both the figures and their illumination were from the artist's imagination. Mountains and chunks of landscape became objects alongside teapots, cups, and saucers in Linda Warren's bizarre still lifes. In the same vein, Thomas Slaughter propped up oversize cutouts of vases on armatures forming still life arrangements in space.

Interiors of greenhouses viewed by night were the subject matter of Joel Janowitz's elegant watercolors. Also working in watercolor on a much smaller scale, Elena Coon's intimate sketchbooks provided a diarylike compendium of tiny landscapes. The simple pencil drawings of Minnie Maude May Schuyler were similarly diaristic in their pictorial description and accompanying written notes — all expressing nostalgia for life on a farm.

Boldly colored and heavily painted whales in seascapes characterized the works of David Fitzgerald, and cars often appeared in the spontaneous drawings of Stephen Lack. The images in David Humphrey's oil paintings on paper were fragmented and sprang from memories and observations of other images related to art and media. Juan Boza invented an alphabet of semi-representational linear shapes in a series of sequential works. The only artist in the exhibition working abstractly was Michael McKeown, and his monumental drawings related to his work as a sculptor.

All of the artists in Selections 21 participated in a symposium on Wednesday evening March 9 at 7:30 p.m. At this time each of the artists discussed their work and answered questions from the audience.