Tacoma News Tribune, WA
Jan 28 2005

TAM exhibit celebrates fellowship of `the Neddy’

JEN GRAVES; The News Tribune
Last updated: January 28th, 2005 08:50 AM

Every year, a nominating committee and a separate selection committee
choose two local artists to receive $10,000 each from the Behnke
Foundation. The artists must be devoted not only to their work, but
to the artistic community, and the award, the Neddy Artist
Fellowship, is named after the painter Robert E. `Ned’ Behnke, who
died of complications from AIDS in 1989. The award began 10 years
ago.
A gallery of art funded by the National Endowment for the Arts could
tell a tale, but assembling the recipients of a short-lived award is
not the most promising basis for an art museum exhibition. Luckily,
it turns out there is something about the Neddy.

Each of the 14 artists in the show opening Saturday at the Tacoma Art
Museum is forceful. Each communicates vigorous conviction, from Cris
Bruch’s staunchly reserved, handcrafted wall hives titled
`Strangeland’ to Donnabelle Casis’s noisy, messy splashes of
hyper-hues.

Most of these names are known to the contemporary Seattle
gallerygoing world, making the show something of a family snapshot:
Bruch, Casis, Michael Spafford, Claudia Fitch, Claire Cowie, Jeffry
Mitchell, Mark Takamichi Miller, Juan Alonso. That is not to say that
the choices have been insular or redundant. The Neddy respectably
represents emerging to mid-career to established artists. Though the
award was originally designated for painters alone, since 1998 awards
have also gone to photographers, printmakers and sculptors.

Turning the gallery walls red, orange and blue, TAM declared this a
party. Curator Rock Hushka organized it, culling works from
galleries, collectors, the artists and, in a few cases, TAM’s own
holdings. A few of the pieces are brand new or up to 20 years old,
but most date from the last five years.

The artists intermingle formal and conceptual concerns. Abstract
paintings by Lauri Chambers, layered photographs by Doug Keyes and
surrealistic scenes by Benjamin Wilkins differ wildly, but
individually their range seems limited by fussiness. Susan Dory
creates the shifty buzz of an electrical charge in her color fields
of airbrushed and swiped-on shapes. The playfulness of Bruch’s
sculptures belies their labor-intensive birth and tight structure.

Good thing the ceilings in the big fish-tank gallery soar – Fitch’s
three white, blue and gold upside-down Buddha chandeliers have
decided to drop in, dangling from strands of `milk drops,’ as the
title has it. Fitch’s classically shaped ceramic vessels are also
spotted and have nipples and rolls of fat, like wild, headless
Chinese Fu-dog cookie jars.

They guard a corner devoted to war, the only conscious theme (which
is jarringly segregated). Dionne Haroutunian’s prints bear lucid
witness to the genocide in her Armenian family’s history. Mary Ann
Peters presents the series `Poor Liberty,’ scratchy protest drawings
depicting the Statue of Liberty victimized.

Most convincing are Cowie’s characters, faintly rendered in expansive
white backgrounds that make them look as though they’ve been
dislocated from somewhere else. `Soldiers’ is a whispery crew of
absurd little figures huddled between a high wall and a
stiff-postured commander. Cowie’s globby white sculptures drip with
gesso, watercolor and anomie. `The Conversation’ is an enchanting
gathering of toy-sized storybook sad sacks and freaks engaging each
other.

Mitchell employs a similar light – ness of touch in `Peony, Peony,
Begonia, Peony,’ a suite of four drawings. Each watercolor flower
puckered its paper, forming delicate, scalloping curtains around the
image. Mitchell works in many moods and mediums; witness his
relentlessly twinkling, gilded ceramic baroquerie `Zum Goldenen Walde
(To the Golden Forest)!’

Brashness meets its makers in Alonso and Miller. Alonso captures a
vivid rococo symbol in paint so thick that the surface is icy. Miller
got liquid exuberance from pooling neon acrylic on the canvas. For a
later series of 24 paintings, Miller nabbed a set of doubles from
photographic prints awaiting their owners in a store. He painted
every one of them (12 are on display here) in thick, painstakingly
blended impasto, spending more time composing these images than their
owners and subjects did.

Spafford, the first to win the Neddy and a regional fixture, oversees
it all. For 40 years, he has distilled and abstracted the classicism
of Greek and Roman mythology, maintaining its heroic scale. At TAM is
his restrained hand-to-hand combat composition, `One Greek, One
Trojan II’ from 2004, and his brutal, terrifying 1986 triptych
`Europa and the Bull,’ which recently came into TAM’s collection.

Raise a glass – these artists got the funding they deserved.