“Art is long, and Time is fleeting” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
See down a country road in the dark. Car eyes head light through fog. Shooting stars silhouette a house on a hill. Outside a tent, deer in the woods are quiet. A flashlight from within glows the tent like a paper lantern. Nicole Parker’s paintings and prints are heartfelt, poised, and dreamy. Her show, Folklore, was up this past month at Gross Mccleaf Gallery.
Also at the gallery was Morgan Hobbs’ show titled Chronolith. While Parker’s pieces inhabit your aura, and float in something like memory or hypnagwww.grossmccleaf.comogia, Hobbs’ pieces are in your torso. They curve with your shoulders, and add heft to your elemental posture. Her paintings and sculptures feel of hard, hand hewn patterns. Pictures of glyphs. A column, wells and dug ponds, an oracle, heavy stone buildings, a cup, a cat.
These are two outstanding shows. Well thought and well formed. They compliment each other, and it's nice to see them together.
Nicole Parker's work is precise, and sincere. Often nocturnes, her pictures glimpse recognizable scenery with dashes of light struck against fields of dark. Vivid and economical heartfelt evocations, they hover by the edge of your consciousness.
Old Blues, 16 x 16, is a wonderful little painting. A canine in dark silhouette atop a hillside of flowering grass. Over the ridge you can see an a-frame house with a window lit yellow.
You sense something out there in the dark. You don't see it in full, or you don't see it for long. A twig snap. Your imagination must finish the scene. Parker achieves this leitmotif with an adeptly broad range of pictorial stylings. How best to lay your toys on the table for this game at hand. Some pieces ring with traditional American realism. Some with movie scene drama. Some are figments in meticulous illustration. As an artist, you have an idea for piece. Then you must hone in on the mode of image that picture wants. It can be sensitive work. It takes a keen artist to do it well.
See down a country road in the dark. Car eyes head light through fog. Shooting stars silhouette a house on a hill. Outside a tent, deer in the woods are quiet. A flashlight from within glows the tent like a paper lantern. Nicole Parker’s paintings and prints are heartfelt, poised, and dreamy. Her show, Folklore, was up this past month at Gross Mccleaf Gallery.
Also at the gallery was Morgan Hobbs’ show titled Chronolith. While Parker’s pieces inhabit your aura, and float in something like memory or hypnagwww.grossmccleaf.comogia, Hobbs’ pieces are in your torso. They curve with your shoulders, and add heft to your elemental posture. Her paintings and sculptures feel of hard, hand hewn patterns. Pictures of glyphs. A column, wells and dug ponds, an oracle, heavy stone buildings, a cup, a cat.
These are two outstanding shows. Well thought and well formed. They compliment each other, and it's nice to see them together.
Nicole Parker's work is precise, and sincere. Often nocturnes, her pictures glimpse recognizable scenery with dashes of light struck against fields of dark. Vivid and economical heartfelt evocations, they hover by the edge of your consciousness.
Old Blues, 16 x 16, is a wonderful little painting. A canine in dark silhouette atop a hillside of flowering grass. Over the ridge you can see an a-frame house with a window lit yellow.
You sense something out there in the dark. You don't see it in full, or you don't see it for long. A twig snap. Your imagination must finish the scene. Parker achieves this leitmotif with an adeptly broad range of pictorial stylings. How best to lay your toys on the table for this game at hand. Some pieces ring with traditional American realism. Some with movie scene drama. Some are figments in meticulous illustration. As an artist, you have an idea for piece. Then you must hone in on the mode of image that picture wants. It can be sensitive work. It takes a keen artist to do it well.
Bedtime, 24 x 18, is a picture of light glowing frame-ways around a closed door. Dickens’ Christmas Carol comes to mind. Scrooge sees the ghost’s torchlight shining from an adjoining room:
“All this time, he lay upon his bed, the very core and centre of a blaze of ruddy light, which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the hour; and which, being only light, was more alarming than a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it meant, or would be at; and was sometimes apprehensive that he might be at that very moment an interesting case of spontaneous combustion, without having the consolation of knowing it.”
“All this time, he lay upon his bed, the very core and centre of a blaze of ruddy light, which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the hour; and which, being only light, was more alarming than a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it meant, or would be at; and was sometimes apprehensive that he might be at that very moment an interesting case of spontaneous combustion, without having the consolation of knowing it.”
Then, Breakfast, 24 x 18, has the warm gold mystery of an old fashioned noir scene. Silent shadows of a cat and a banister descend stairs. A morning moment with weight of unspoken meaning. You can imagine the wistfully glamorous Fay Dunaway of Chinatown, or one of the ensemble from LA Confidential descending next with cocktail, fists, or gun in hand.
This impressive range in picture making continues with Parker’s etchings. They are a bit lighter than the paintings. A vibe of storybook patterns, but patterns felt not designed. Leaves, screens of tree trunks, rail fence like shoestrings disappearing over a hill.
This impressive range in picture making continues with Parker’s etchings. They are a bit lighter than the paintings. A vibe of storybook patterns, but patterns felt not designed. Leaves, screens of tree trunks, rail fence like shoestrings disappearing over a hill.
Far From Home, 10 x 16, is a heartbreaking little print. Alone in a woods, a suitcase sits behind a tree. Over a hill in the distance is a tiny house. Ominous or sweet? Staying or leaving? Hiding or longing? The picture comes right at you, deeply emotional and honest. That's the thing about this show. Works this tight and crisp don't often leave room for so much heart. Parker’s artistry catches the fleeting magic spot on.
Morgan Hobbs’ sculptures and paintings look to the stony core foundations of picture making. Coarse-grained sculptures of painted paper mache, newspaper, and other found material. Expressive paintings laid thick in places, washy and transparent in others. Strongly felt pieces, but also heady. Packed with rumination that doesn't hit you all at once. The reward in Hobbs’ work comes as you let it open up.
See a rough picture in relief of an oracle, like ancient Wandjina. See a hash-marked tablet like primeval writing. See columns and fragments of stone sculptures harkening to antiquity. Then there’s a relief of Philadelphia City Hall, a sculpted Christmas tree topper, and a painted Light-Brite picture of a coffee cup.
Morgan Hobbs’ pieces stack like ancient architecture, and grow with a timeline of invention. Like cave paintings. Ancient runes that show the way. Pictures reduced to elemental patterns, block shapes, and flattened symbols. Put your feet on bedrock. Zoom in to the pixels, or zoom out to the very language of images.
Cave Felem, 14 x 11, is a super cool little painting. A black on white graphic in oil. An arched back cat. The great title, latin for beware of the cat, is painted into the picture. The painting is made of impasto squares of color laid in a grid. This mosaic style of painting is present throughout this body of work.
See a rough picture in relief of an oracle, like ancient Wandjina. See a hash-marked tablet like primeval writing. See columns and fragments of stone sculptures harkening to antiquity. Then there’s a relief of Philadelphia City Hall, a sculpted Christmas tree topper, and a painted Light-Brite picture of a coffee cup.
Morgan Hobbs’ pieces stack like ancient architecture, and grow with a timeline of invention. Like cave paintings. Ancient runes that show the way. Pictures reduced to elemental patterns, block shapes, and flattened symbols. Put your feet on bedrock. Zoom in to the pixels, or zoom out to the very language of images.
Cave Felem, 14 x 11, is a super cool little painting. A black on white graphic in oil. An arched back cat. The great title, latin for beware of the cat, is painted into the picture. The painting is made of impasto squares of color laid in a grid. This mosaic style of painting is present throughout this body of work.
Circumpoint, a larger painting, 60 x 40, is a composition split top and bottom. The top is a concentric pattern. In a field of blue, painterly rings of white and yellow encircle a red dot. Like a sun with a big red heart. The bottom is another tile-like painting. Black squares on white - another circle with a dot at its center.
There are two small studies of Circumpoint, each 12 x 12. It's nice to see the working pictures along with their larger piece. It shows the drive toward earnest creation in these works. Pieces with so much potential for high concept can sometimes suck the air from the room. You often see anthropology in artworks occurring as simplistic replicas, or trompe-l'oeil-ish copies of artifacts. Morgan Hobbs’ pieces feel refreshingly natural and original. Novel in both framework and image.
Pompeii Projection, 18 x 24, stands out. Another split composition. Left and right. On the left, pink and orange swirls and black dashes forming a vessel of flowers. An expressive picture with heat cleverly fitting to Pompeii. On the right another grid picture. Reduced to graphics. Locked in. Like one of those ancient mosaics. Image trapped forever. Those slides from art history class. You can only look so close, or study so hard before the picture just dissolves into so many tiny squares, and you ask yourself how much was ever really there at all.
The holidays are my favorite season in Philly. Ever night-bound on these short days of the year. We hang lights. We share. We put little houses on toy train tables. Inmost scenes of affection and joy flash like memories from the dark.
It's a season of ghosts. Ghosts to tell us about the history of our existence. Smart little hominins making things on this rock tilting to the solstice. We collect pictures, and tell stories.
So, come together and celebrate. Join, sing, and eat. Look at the light in the dark with awe. Somehow, somewhere deep down in your core you can find yourself at the end of a long history of dreams and depictions.
The holidays are my favorite season in Philly. Ever night-bound on these short days of the year. We hang lights. We share. We put little houses on toy train tables. Inmost scenes of affection and joy flash like memories from the dark.
It's a season of ghosts. Ghosts to tell us about the history of our existence. Smart little hominins making things on this rock tilting to the solstice. We collect pictures, and tell stories.
So, come together and celebrate. Join, sing, and eat. Look at the light in the dark with awe. Somehow, somewhere deep down in your core you can find yourself at the end of a long history of dreams and depictions.
