Selling the past

The high price of nostalgia

by Leon Nigrosh

WORCESTER TREASURES: LOST AND FOUND

paintings by Mark Waitkus, at the ARTSWorcester Gallery at the Aurora, 660 Main Street, through December 31.

Nostalgia you want? Nostalgia we got. Watercolorist Mark Waitkus has captured on paper the likenesses of many of Worcester's famous architectural landmarks, including several of the city's favorite lunch carts that no longer exist. For some, this exhibition is a trip down memory lane. For others, including this writer, it brings to mind a question about the differences between fine art, illustration, and flat out commercialization.

Waitkus is obviously competent handling watercolors -- one of painting's most difficult mediums to master. When true to its inherent qualities of transparency, immediacy, and luminosity, watercolors can be easily destroyed by an accidental flick of the wrist, too much water, or the charged brush lingering a moment too long on the paper. In the majority of the 30-plus images on exhibit, Waitkus avoids many of these pitfalls by eschewing the traditional approach and instead, suffusing most of his images with a great deal of opaque color, more along the lines of gouache than of true watercolors.

Waitkus studied painting with Alexander Gazonas, one of the region's premier watercolorists (inducted into the prestigious Copley Society in 1980), who has made nearly 200 paintings of Elm Park alone, going to the site at all times and in all seasons to paint en plein air, always working directly from the subject, never from photos. He has even been quoted as saying, "Photography is a dirty word." (Worcester Phoenix, February, 18.) Here is where master and former student diverge. Like his teacher, Waitkus has set out to memorialize Worcester's great landmarks, but Waitkus works almost exclusively from photographs, including those borrowed from the Worcester Historical Museum and other sources. Here, too, is where their motives diverge 180 degrees. Gazonas, after more than 60 years, still paints for the love of it, while Waitkus appears primarily to seek remuneration -- offering his original watercolors at four figures, or same-size reproduction prints for $50 each.

This wasn't always true. Several of Waitkus's earlier works, such as First Snowfall and Lewis Bay, Hyannis do capture the sparkle of his medium -- the feeling of the instant, the feeling of being there. But in his historical series, with his zeal to record the diners, Waitkus gives us too much information, adding elements that were never present -- like the graphics on the side of Fleming's Diner -- or introducing period vehicles parked here and there. This is perfectly acceptable under the rubric of "artistic license," but in his endeavor to recreate nostalgic moments, something happens, and the lightheartedness of his approach disappears in favor of commercial-illustration techniques.

The focus of these works is commendable. Through his research, Waitkus has resurrected the Purple Diner, which used to feed the denizens of Holy Cross, and created a monochromatic rendition of the long gone Parkway Diner as it looked in the '70s. For some of his other diner paintings, we can check out his representational accuracy by driving by, or stopping at, the Boulevard Diner on Shrewsbury Street, the Corner Lunch, and the Miss Worcester, all of which are still serving good eats.

His Firehouse, Franklin and Plantation Sts. and Webster Street Firehouse, Oldest Station in the Country show us the quirky mix of architectural styles that pervaded that genre of building at the close of the 19th century. It's both a marvel and a shock that these antiquated buildings are still in use today by Worcester's finest. And Waitkus's rendition, completed only weeks before last year's devastating warehouse fire, of the Kenmore Diner, serves as a reminder of that fateful event. (Fortunately, a new Kenmore is nearing completion, truly rising like a phoenix out of the ashes.)

Why images of Tiger Stadium and Wrigley Field are included in a show devoted to Worcester landmarks remains unclear -- unless they're subliminal messages regarding a proposed local baseball stadium.

So we're stuck. On the one hand, this exhibit is an enjoyable caprice through days gone by, but on the other, it soon becomes a tedious foray through too many layers of detail -- proficient handiwork in terms of reproducing images that's nearly devoid of artistic humanity. We get to watch as Waitkus, unfortunately, metamorphoses from creative artist to pedantic illustrator in his attempt to make some change by strumming the chords of nostalgia.

The ARTSWorcester Gallery at the Aurora is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Call (508) 755-5142.