| reviews & features | galleries | art museums | schools & universities | other museums | hot links |

In good time

Artists count the hours and minutes

by Leon Nigrosh

FROM TIME TO TIME At the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery, College of the Holy Cross, through October 26.

Time. What is it anyway? There are Greenwich Mean Time, sidereal time, ephemeris time. Most of us don't even think about time, until we realize that we are going to be late for something. But with the end of the millennium fast approaching, co-curators Sarah Slavick and Kevin Rainey decided to look deeper into the subject. After extensive research, they chose seven artists who have explored the possibilities and ramifications of time, and managed to incorporate it in their work.

Conceptual artist William Anastasi, well-known for his association with 20th-century musical pioneer John Cage, infuses his art with performance -- movement through space and time. The act of making his art is as important, if not more so, as the finished work. At the opening reception for the exhibition, Anastasi spent precisely 32 minutes creating a five-foot-by-five-foot drawing of a cross while listening to music and drawing directly on the wall with a pencil in each hand -- blindfolded.

Untitled, Oct 9th 1987 Time: 16:45 to 17:30 is a simple series of graphite marks on paper. An accompanying recording plays the original pencil sounds, thus infusing the aspect of time into the piece. Through these works, and others on display, Anastasi presents food for thought regarding the fourth dimension as it relates to the process of making art and, by extension, to the entire life process.

Sarah Bapst also concerns herself with how time affects the cycle of life. This Borrowed Dust consists of a length of string wrapped about a stick at one end with the remainder still on its bobbin at the other. She explains, in an accompanying statement, that the string represents the length of her mother's life and the rewound portion represents hers. All at once, these everyday objects take on a much broader, more profound importance and make us turn our thoughts inward.

Los Angeles artist Joyce Burstein presents her large floor piece Untitled ("And songs that only sirens sing"). In it, a dozen tiny ships, painstakingly constructed from eggshells, perch on bits of abandoned black granite gravestones. On the one hand, the boats could merely be taking a lighthearted romp over the waves. On the other, these fragile ships could be perceived as being helplessly tossed around as they pass through a storm. Even with this ominous interpretation, Burstein still offers a positive note. On many of the stone shards we can see engraved Stars of David, crosses, and words like "beloved," "devoted," and "hope."

Dove Bradshaw's Contingency paintings passively incorporate the element of time in their presentation. The two large paintings and a "book" are made of linen that has been coated with a thin wash of silver and liver of sulfur. The chemicals continually react with each other and the surface, bringing about an infinitely changing melange of dark, cloudy patterns and shapes. The changes are imperceptible from moment to moment but easily recognizable after the passage of time.

Bradshaw's Zn + S + CH3OOH not only uses chemical change for its artistic effects, but employs repetitive ritual as well. Each morning gallery director Ellen Lawrence must pour a vial of white vinegar onto the mixture of zinc and sulfur. This catalyst causes the chemicals to react and etch the slate tabletop. Eventually, at some incalculable moment in the distant future, the chemicals will eat completely through the slate. Bradshaw's work exists concretely in each instant of time, but it never remains the same.

Zebedee (Z.B.) Armstrong (1911-1992) was not nearly so cerebral in his approach to his art. This visionary was a cotton picker and a factory laborer for most of his life. One day an angel came to him and told him that the end of the world was coming and not to waste time. He began to make calendars to record the moment of the Second Coming. Twenty-six of his fanciful wood and cardboard objects are on display -- each one with a unique method of dating and registering the appointed time. Painted with red and black lines, several simply note the days of the week and months of the year. But one box has a series of numbered cardboard slips that need to be moved consecutively by hand to a new slot each day.

In each of these pieces we think of new ways to interpret time. And, believe me, a chance to look at how a number of artists interpret time is no waste of it.

The Cantor Gallery is open Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. Call 793-3356.