Good Company

The region's artists show their stuff at FAM

by Leon Nigrosh

65TH REGIONAL EXHIBIT OF ART AND CRAFT
At the Fitchburg Art Museum, 185 Elm Street, Fitchburg, through September 3.

For 65 years the Fitchburg Art Museum has invited area artists to participate in an annual regional exhibition. The goal of these ventures has always been to encourage and display regional talent. For this latest outing the screening committee, made up of Worcester Art Museum assistant curator Maura Brennan and DeCordova Museum's Gillian Nagler, selected 174 works by 130 different artists from nearly 300 entries. But, just as without darkness you cannot appreciate the light, many of the ubiquitous bunches of flowers, numerous landscape watercolors, and pictures of solitary rowboats serve as background for a few remarkable and engaging objects.

The highlight of the entire exhibit, Gabriel, is a life-size welded steel sculpture by Fitchburg sculptor Gage Prentiss. Placed at the entrance to all the galleries, this mass of sheet steel has been masterfully transformed into a zoot-suited, jazz-playing, winged angel armed with a real (if battered) cornet. Prentiss has imbued his expressive figure with a feeling of joy. The body language, the tilt of the head, and the articulated hands have captured this very expansive mood -- and a museum prize as well.

As if purposefully created in obvious opposition to the positive emotions his horn player engenders, Prentiss's other entry, Winter Totem I, appears filled with foreboding. Executed with the same painstaking techniques, a single, gnarled steel branch extending more than six feet into the air tenuously supports a silent, hanging bell -- along with a large, menacing, ink-black raven. Prentiss has only recently begun to show at the FAM annuals, and his consummate work is a welcome addition.

Several area photographers acquit themselves well in the show too. Sterling's Will Sherwood presents us with his large black-and-white Nymph I, an atmospheric, piney-woods setting that shelters a luminous female nude, apparently oblivious to her surroundings. One of very few exhibiting photographers attempting to capitalize on color, Leominster's Murray Rubin presents us with Birds of Paradise, showing these magnificent flowers in full bloom artfully arranged and brilliantly lit in sharp contrast to a black background.

But it's first-timer Carl Flowers from Dunstable whose witty and technically brilliant black-and-white images take the cake (and overall first prize). In Garden Vegetables, he has created an enticing composition of pea pods in a small wooden basket complemented by a spray of carrots and a group of tomatoes and a few scattered, tiny peas. Only after admiring his competency at arranging objects for tone and texture do we realize each vegetable has been hand stitched with black thread. Continuing within his food métier, Flowers offers us Sole, a beautiful lace-covered table with antique silver saltcellars and a bone-handled carving set arranged around a platter garnished with greens, a pineapple ring, pea pods, and tiny potatoes. These mouth-watering delicacies slowly lead our eyes to the main entree -- a perfectly grilled sole of a human foot. We need to see more of this guy's stuff.

Charlotte Andry Gibbs took the top painting prize for Checkers, a slice-of-life oil on linen. It's as if we're getting a sneak peek at two young girls in deep concentration over a game of checkers. The colors are soft and warm, creating a relaxed atmosphere. Even though the brushwork and the tonalities are studiously flat, and there is no horizon line, Gibbs is still able to effect a sense of volume and depth within the characters and the entire scene.

Check out Auburn artist Richard Shilale's pencil-on-board Marking Time and see how many of the 60 faces of famous people you can recognize. But perhaps the most humorous and off-the-wall piece in the show is Lunenburg artist Michael Blake's Gum Desk. It's an actual school desk/chair covered in artist-chewed pink bubblegum -- get close and you will even recognize the smell.

As you might imagine, this exhibit runs from the sublime to the ridiculous, and back again. It is a typical regional exhibition: no theme, very eclectic, and all encompassing. But it is an important, and even necessary, endeavor allowing neophyte and emerging artists the opportunity to show their work. For established artists, it gives them a venue to exhibit experimental works and test out the new directions their art takes them. And for the public, it serves as a colorful and energetic reminder that art is alive throughout Central Massachusetts.

The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. Call (978) 345-4207.