RAW
Doug Cason
Mark Greenwalt
Lisa Qualls
O’Kane Gallery
University of Houston – Downtown
August 27 – September 25, 2009
RAW is both exhibition title and theme, uniting the work of artists Lisa Qualls, Doug Cason, and Mark Greenwalt. As a writer, not an art critic, I offer a personal impression of the exhibit, not a review of technique. Although if provoking thought and stirring emotion in a viewer are some measure of an artist’s technique, Qualls, Cason, and Greenwalt each convince me of their mastery. Entering the O’Kane Gallery, I immediately find my prior knowledge and experiences challenged, my expectations played upon. The three artists meld ancient, historical, and modern concepts into images ranging from the beautiful to the grotesque, each one capturing a moment amid the mutability of body and mind.
The connection between artists and medical students in their studies of the human body has been much on my mind after reading Dr. Christine Montross’s medical school memoir. In Body of Work, Mediations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab, Montross combines the story of her education as a physician with her expressive gift as a poet. I am fascinated by her descriptions of the structures and workings of the human body, of the cadaver dismantled in the laboratory, and moved by the author’s unfailing reverence for life amid death. Similarly, I am inspired by RAW’s unflinching depictions of the body, in whole and in part, in beauty and decay.
On a membrane of vellum, Lisa Qualls draws nudes, classical in line, perfectly formed. Each figure is alone in its frame. In some drawings, while the body is exposed, the face is covered by an exotic mask. In others, only the torso is covered by a rough garment that would rub soft skin raw. In fact, my first impression of “Wicker Jacket” is of a lovely woman whose torso and arms have been skinned, until I realize the ruddy color belongs to the woven wicker that encases her upper body. The translucent quality of the figures’ skin, their flawlessness juxtaposed by rough textures or ritualized scarification, their very smoothness heightens my perception of the raw.
In his work, Doug Cason presents a strange curriculum with painted book covers for censored copies of Magnificent Obsession, his florid and romantic images linked to underpinnings of organic decay. Echoing the chaos of revolution and civil war, Cason’s battlefield paintings twist history lessons of the heroic standard of brave warriors, swords drawn, charging into the fight. He depicts the soldier’s eye view—the smoke and confusion of the battlefield, images and events distorted as bodies are distorted and destroyed. I see, as if in funhouse mirrors, reflections of the carnival of violence. With swirling shapes and fluid colors, a scrap of uniform, a glint of metal, Cason simultaneously creates a clash of armies and reveals what is left when the battle ends—bloated corpses, tangled entrails. Raw, indeed.
Mark Greenwalt’s meticulous anatomical drawings also suggest duality—the past of Leonardo sketching the interplay among muscles, tendons, and bones and a future in the uncanny results of genetic tampering. Over yellowed and sepia-toned panels, some spattered with rusty-red drops, as if the subjects’ blood mingles with the artist’s ink, deformed shapes emerge: a peculiarly plump old baby with a bird’s head for a foot, a creature part chicken and part twig, a man with madness in his eyes and a depiction of madness growing out of his head. I think of Leonardo’s prescient advice to artists: “dispel from your mind the thought that an understanding of the human body in every aspect of its structure can be given in words.”
For artists seeking to represent human experience, as for physicians seeking to understand the human body and mind to cure disease and repair wounds, the body must be seen, observed in motion, exposed, laid open, and touched—taken in by the senses, even as it defies them, seduces and repels them. Christine Montross, reflecting on her time in the anatomy lab, wrote: “The human body harbors mysteries that are not solved by textbooks or studying, and, as I have been confronted with them, I have found myself amazed, humbled, and unnerved.” Beauty abraded, magnificence destroyed, mutability caught in a moment—all part of the amazing, humbling, and unnerving images rendered by the artists of RAW.
Showing posts with label Lisa Qualls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lisa Qualls. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Drawing Inspiration
Each weekday morning on the way to the office of my day-job at a community college, I have the pleasure of passing the small, glassed-in campus art gallery. Then, each evening I catch another glimpse of visual inspiration on the way out, which often sparks ideas to mull over on the commute home and later apply to my night-job as a writer. The January exhibit of works by Lisa Qualls has captured my imagination and begun the New Year and the new semester with a remarkable blend of the timely and the timeless.
Imagine hoop skirts covered with diaphanous silks in the colors of ivory, saffron, cocoa, and cayenne, all floating in the space between floor and ceiling, seemingly waltzing on light and air. This is the vision that stopped me in my tracks, then compelled me into the gallery for a closer look and to hear the artist’s commentary on her creations. Since my work as a novelist focuses on the mid to late 19th century American South, I immediately thought of plantation mistresses in their restrictive crinolines. But these skirts suspended in the gallery are so much more than costumes from a bygone era.
The series Lisa Qualls has entitled “Paris is Burning” combines the artist’s research into the complicated relationship between Europe and Africa with her own experiences of meeting African immigrants in Europe. Qualls states she is “interested in how cultures absorb and share garment forms, patterns, body markings, and ritual objects.” Her artwork reveals aspects of cultural identity, issues of immigration, and influences of colonialism that have shaped history and continue to affect current events. Some of Qualls’s drawings incorporate period European textile and wallpaper patterns with African ritual masks or body markings. One especially arresting pencil drawing on vellum presents the image of an African man dressed in a stylish 19th century European suit and displaying ritual scarification on his face. Another depicts a hauntingly lovely African woman dressed in white, the hem of her gown blending into the intricate pattern at her feet, the design pigmented with coffee and beeswax.
And then there are the skirts of silk organza over cotton and boning, echoing the past and the caging and concealing of women’s bodies, but offering, as well, other compelling layers of meaning. The artist calls her grouping of skirts “Surveillance Maritime”, explaining it “is about Africans leaving in boats from the Canary Islands and trying to reach the coast of France.” Qualls has applied text in English, French, and Spanish to the dyed silk, describing the European reaction to illegal African immigration. European surveillance of the coastal waters leads to the apprehension and return of Africans trying to enter Europe illegally and sometimes leads to the rescue of people in danger of dying in the boats. In the context of the exhibit, the hoop skirts become vessels, ribbed boats covered over with a skin of fabric that tells a story of a modern quest for freedom. Yet, they are reminders, too, of long-ago ships that carried Africans into slavery.
With “Paris is Burning”, through layers of line, color, texture, and text, Lisa Qualls captures layers of complexity found in the enmeshed histories of Africans and Europeans. From her work I gratefully draw new inspiration for my historical fiction, a deeper sense of the ways cultures exploit and engage each other, and a greater appreciation for the interplay between the visual and literary arts.
Rosemary Poole-Carter, author of Women of Magdalene
For more about artist Lisa Qualls:
www.lisaqualls.com
http://lisaqualls.blogspot.com/
Imagine hoop skirts covered with diaphanous silks in the colors of ivory, saffron, cocoa, and cayenne, all floating in the space between floor and ceiling, seemingly waltzing on light and air. This is the vision that stopped me in my tracks, then compelled me into the gallery for a closer look and to hear the artist’s commentary on her creations. Since my work as a novelist focuses on the mid to late 19th century American South, I immediately thought of plantation mistresses in their restrictive crinolines. But these skirts suspended in the gallery are so much more than costumes from a bygone era.
The series Lisa Qualls has entitled “Paris is Burning” combines the artist’s research into the complicated relationship between Europe and Africa with her own experiences of meeting African immigrants in Europe. Qualls states she is “interested in how cultures absorb and share garment forms, patterns, body markings, and ritual objects.” Her artwork reveals aspects of cultural identity, issues of immigration, and influences of colonialism that have shaped history and continue to affect current events. Some of Qualls’s drawings incorporate period European textile and wallpaper patterns with African ritual masks or body markings. One especially arresting pencil drawing on vellum presents the image of an African man dressed in a stylish 19th century European suit and displaying ritual scarification on his face. Another depicts a hauntingly lovely African woman dressed in white, the hem of her gown blending into the intricate pattern at her feet, the design pigmented with coffee and beeswax.
And then there are the skirts of silk organza over cotton and boning, echoing the past and the caging and concealing of women’s bodies, but offering, as well, other compelling layers of meaning. The artist calls her grouping of skirts “Surveillance Maritime”, explaining it “is about Africans leaving in boats from the Canary Islands and trying to reach the coast of France.” Qualls has applied text in English, French, and Spanish to the dyed silk, describing the European reaction to illegal African immigration. European surveillance of the coastal waters leads to the apprehension and return of Africans trying to enter Europe illegally and sometimes leads to the rescue of people in danger of dying in the boats. In the context of the exhibit, the hoop skirts become vessels, ribbed boats covered over with a skin of fabric that tells a story of a modern quest for freedom. Yet, they are reminders, too, of long-ago ships that carried Africans into slavery.
With “Paris is Burning”, through layers of line, color, texture, and text, Lisa Qualls captures layers of complexity found in the enmeshed histories of Africans and Europeans. From her work I gratefully draw new inspiration for my historical fiction, a deeper sense of the ways cultures exploit and engage each other, and a greater appreciation for the interplay between the visual and literary arts.
Rosemary Poole-Carter, author of Women of Magdalene
For more about artist Lisa Qualls:
www.lisaqualls.com
http://lisaqualls.blogspot.com/
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