HEROES AND VILLAINS

                                    by Karen Braun Malpas

Artwork currently displayed in the Frank Bette Center is linked thematically on the notion of good guys and bad guys, their balance teetering between 49% and 51% into eternity.  It has been estimated that out of 100 people, only four or five are always good because they cannot be otherwise. Most of us live in neither the black zone of treacherous villainy nor the purity of heroic white. Possessing both, we inhabit mostly the gray.

Carmine M. Gaidasz shows a smallish photo of a cat with yin yang marking on its face symbolizing this push-pull, on-off, light-dark phenomenon. Charlie Lucke shows two impressive black and white photos of a male figure painted as a starkly stylized skeleton whose face is cast downward in a nearly poetic expression.  In one, the figure holds a decorative heart to his own heart yet the image escapes the tragic, suggesting there are things worse than death that can happen to a person.

Susan Hackett shows two pictorial quilts featuring nymph-like women in a forest setting. The figures are elusive, appearing and disappearing in the winking blinking mottled light of the vertical slats of trees. We imagine their loveliness luring hikers into the woods where they get disoriented and lost, snared.

Ken McGhee's "Rocket Man" is "burning out his fuse" up there where "it's cold as hell." He's got a kid in tow, ecstatic to be included in the flight, rapt in his fantasy. But, if they get to Mars, what then? "It ain't the kind of place to raise your kids...and there's no one there to raise them."

Two large sister pieces by Darwin Price point to the passage of time and beauty, the inevitable cycle of ashes to ashes,dust to dust.Totally democratic, it happens to everyone and, all so fast!

A diptych portrait of arch evil entitled "Atomic Bomb" is shown by Ashley Jones. The aggressive image is rendered in thick pigment with no detail distracting from the full unequivocal horror of all we now associate with the mushroom shaped cloud.

An extremely competent portraitist, Paul Feinberg, shows 8 heads of equal size, some heroes, some villains, all looking directly at us, each convinced of his/her own rightness, oblivious to the judgement of history.

The middle room of the gallery is dominated by a series of sincere, pious images of invented saints by Cecelia X. Berber.  Something about the panels and the nearly primitive innocence of the images evokes dank masonry walls imbued with the smell of old cold incense.

Margaret Fago shows a characteristically lush watercolor of 3 sailboats, nearly evenly spaced, catching the same wind yet, only one will cross the finish line first to become hero for the day.

This month, an attractive display of handmade gifts is available for Valentines Day. Hearts abound in photos, as candy novelties, as jewelry. There are gifts as light as DonnaSue Jacobi's lavender sachets and as weighty as Genie Scott's signature necklaces combining beads and stones from around the world in wearable art. There are hand-painted picture frames to hold the image of the beloved behind glass and cards to send loving sentiments any day of the year.

In the back room, Chris Rochette has a solo show of photographs of the monolithic stone sculptures of Easter Island. While a member of the Coast Guard, Rochette patrolled seas all over the world and saw incredible sights. However, the day he picked up a camera, his "seeing" took on a whole different dimension which has evolved into a consuming passion. By now, he perceives the world in frames and designs.

This particular show features the immense Moai sculptures which surround the Easter Island. Shrouded in mystery still, are they drawing something in or repelling it, gazing out or within? Some people have speculated the island is the remnant of a lost continent or was perhaps even created by extra-terrestrials.  Because the sculptures bear a striking resemblance to each other, we wonder if they represent members of the same tribe out in force or are they all the same stern, joyless individual? Long after the civilization disintegrated, archeologists assembled the sculptures in the order we see today...evoking huge chessmen on a gigantic invisible chessboard playing for stakes as large as good and evil.

Heroes and Villains

February 3 - March 31

                          Image by Ken McGhee

                           Postcard by Genie Scott