I saw more than this, but I'm just too tired to write about it all

Tonight I find myself in the position I’ve dreaded for so long, though this position is, at least in part, why I committed myself to the idea of writing these reviews. I have a hard time being openly critical (in the post-modern sense of the word). “Big C” Critical, no problem; I can analyze from here to the here after and feel right at home. I just have a really hard time fessing up to just not liking something, especially when I like the person who made it. I’m not saying that my not liking it makes it bad (there’s a difference), but I hope anyone who reads the next paragraph will take it in the constructive manner in which it is intended.

All that said, it’s with a heavy heart that I tell you that the show at DLG tonight was largely awash in the banal. There were some great pieces by artists I know and by some I don’t and they were swamped by literal mounds of the sorts of things that that make me dread going to local commercial galleries. Rather than opt for the energetic, quasi-salon style of the previous “Price is Right” shows I’ve seen there, the majority of the works tonight were hung in an almost haphazard fashion. Each artist was given a slot on the wall and the works that didn’t fit at or just above eye level were literally stacked below. It felt like a craft fair without the cover band and funnel cake.

The thing that makes this so hard to write is that 1) I really do have the utmost respect for David and the work he does in that gallery, 2) it’s so very unlike them to treat work with so little apparent concern for presentation and 3) if you could get through the clutter, there was some damned good art in there. Mel Spillman’s new work absolutely sings (caveat: I know her). I admittedly wasn’t that fond of her figurative paintings of the last year or so, but she’s found a magnificent voice in these patterned panels. I remember being struck last time by her larger work from the same series, which was able to overcome a rather unfortunate placement at the L Ross gallery a few weeks ago. I’m looking forward to seeing what all she’ll do with this.

Tonight also gave me my first shot at seeing a real live Don Estes. I’d seen the slides over at Artmemphis and knew Don as the owner of the wonderful (if now defunct) Second Floor Contemporary, but I’d never actually seen his work. In a word, they are gorgeous. The one hung tonight, entitled Say You Didn’t, seemed to simultaneously take on the roles of seismograph, landscape, and Rorschach, neither at the expense of the other.

My favorite installation job of the evening was from an artist I’d never heard of before: Paul Villinski’s Regalo 4. From across the room they appeared to be just the sort of aluminum can carvings you’d see at the county flea market pinned to the wall like bugs in a display case. When you got up on them however, it was impossible to ignore the amazing care and precision with which each one was carefully mounted and counter balanced so that they fluttered and shimmered as they were struck by the winds made by passers by.

There were also some other new (or at least, new to me) artists making a strong showing as well. Chief amongst them was Herb Reith. His series of acrylics featured interactions of a collection of small space-suited beings with common place objects or concepts. In one the huddled explorers appeared to be being smote by the hand of some angry elemental god. In the one below it, they were gathered in what appeared to be a small unit, looking like attendees to an inerstellar family picnic, cast against a sea of urban camouflage.

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If you’d asked me this afternoon if I thought there was any artistic value left in the caricature, I’d have told you, “absolutely not.” Post Hirschfeld, the idea of doing highly stylized drawings of famous people usually comes off as the basest of commercialism. Artists making a living off their work is one thing (and a thing I fully support), but flatly pandering to the tourist dollar by filling your gallery with half assed marker drawings of celebrities is something else entirely.

That would have been my answer this afternoon.

Tonight, I can tell you that the fine art caricature is alive and well at the L Ross gallery on Sanderline. Mike Caplanis’ show “The Pen is Mightier” was a joy to behold. Each watercolor and pen portrait built the character of its subject from the ground up. Caplanis seemed not so concerned with capturing the recognizable physicality of his subjects, but more in conveying the spirit which made the person worth knowing in the first place.

It is the nature of the celebrity portrait that they trade on the repertoire or mystique of the portrayed. Not necessarily so with Caplanis. Further, it would be easy to dismiss the work as simply superbly crafted, and though it was, it also functioned on another level entirely. Caplanis made his subjects properly Mythological. He carried forward each iconic figure allowing it to signify for his viewer something at once more abstract and yet more immediate than any straight rendering of their legend could possibly do.

His Mark Twain was the very definition of rapscallion. His Johnny Cash was taken back from his status as icon and made once again subversive (pompadour and all). Perhaps the most expressive of the some 40 works on display was the very mischievous if slightly disheveled looking Mary Cassatt, whose half lit grin peaked out from under an unruly mane of dirty blonde hair which seemed locked in a strange type of combat with her equally unruly fur coat.