Sphere city

Dana Kim Wolfson's circular reasoning

by Leon Nigrosh

THE ART OF CIRQULAR REAZONING BY DANA KIM WOLFSON
At the ARTSWorcester Gallery at the Aurora, 660 Main Street, Worcester, through July 7

Dana Kim Wolfson started drawing years ago, and after nearly three decades she has yet to make a representational image. Her unique repertoire of abstract configurations permeates throughout her works, including the 39 two- and three-dimensional objects on display at the ARTSWorcester Gallery at the Aurora. Her marks -- call them doodles, squiggles, or scribbles -- are notations that flow across whatever surface she chooses to embellish.

CPR, one of Wolfson's works from the early 1980s, is the most densely packed of all her ink-on-paper pieces. Hours were spent penning in the tiny ovoids, curves, dots, and lines that emanate from the center of the page. Each mark has been independently constructed to create an overflow of complex yet homogenous characters that piques our imaginations as we attempt to link the images to something recognizable. This compelling inter-activity continues even in Wolfson's somewhat simpler color compositions.

Her Untitled #2, an ink-and-sign-paint work on a sheet of white-painted aluminum, appears as a large X composed of colorful devices balancing on a single point. Wolfson's colored ink-on-paper works, like So Which Ear is It? and Oh Romeo Oh Romeo Where ART Thou?, both produced in 1997, have a sense of playfulness as her tiny shapes weave and skip across the page much like musical notes.

In fact, music plays a part in Wolfson's work. Her interest in classical music and jazz manifests itself throughout her intricate drawings. Get close enough to examine the shapes, and likenesses of drums, flutes, stringed instruments, and musical semiquavers appear among the curvilinear configurations. It is not by accident that several of her drawings were made on drumheads. Although we want to see an American-Indian influence in 28" Parchment with Black & Gold, Wolfson claims it was only the round, natural surface that prompted her use of earth tones in the abstract presentation.

Wolfson is obviously compulsive about her art. She works on her improvisational images every day, making marks on one page while contemplating a possible composition for another. Or she is out collecting stuff with which to make her large three-dimensional constructions. Her tall, 1988 wallwork A Big Roll on a Short Board is a melange of buttons, costume jewelry, old piano keys, and other odds and ends that strongly reference a pinball machine. The real fun with this piece -- and the other wallworks, hanging mobiles, and free-standing sculptural objects -- is trying to figure out what the materials are.

Although Wolfson treats both types of work equally, the three-dimensional pieces (aside from their scavenger-hunt surprises) are more static compositionally than her two-dimensional drawings are. She admits they are "premeditated" and constructed with an "ominously slow process." Because of this approach, the constructions seem out of place in the exhibit. Only her Favri Globe and Marbles Around -- Mode contain the sense of immediacy found in the two-dimensional compositions.

Over the years, Wolfson has plunged into different artistic mediums. Most recently she has started etching and has included five examples in this exhibit. These clear, sharply delineated images are alive with Wolfson's dancing ciphers, but they also contain a hint of change in her aesthetic development. Look closely at Seven Figures and that number of almost-people can be divined; in Silhouettes you will see the unmistakable representation of a woman pushing a baby in a stroller. But the strongest indicators of Wolfson's next direction are Turn Knob Counterclockwise, a Rolodex filled with ink drawings on celluloid, and 2001 Nites, a small filing cabinet filled with hundreds of drawings on paper. Wolfson plans to scan this library of pictures into a computer. Who knows where this might next take her troupe of gyrating gestures?

The gallery is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Call (508) 755-5142.