The 2007 Drawing and Sculpture Show

Every year my art club, the Palette and Chisel, shows the sculpture of its members - and as you might expect -- a few views of a few pieces are enjoyable -- and the rest is more like a multi-car pileup on the interstate.

But since sculpture shows don't cover gallery walls --- and there's not that many sculptors anyway --- about ten years ago we began putting drawings up on the walls -- and I'm afraid that's become the show's main attraction.

Well.. who wouldn't be attracted to the Marci Oleszkiewicz drawing shown above? Her volumes are so solid -- her articulation of details is so precise -- and it's such a sweet, dreamy little scene - I can understand why someone bought it as soon as it went up.






But here's a piece I find more compelling -- because it seems poised to enter a dramatic painting -- like this one from the Quattrocento:




You see, our era has lots of nice drawings/paintings of pretty young women stretched out on bed sheets -- it's a wonderful theme -- and I hope we get many more.

But dramatic painting tanked during the last century -- and Stuart Fullerton (who spends his working life immersed in the human drama of criminal litigation) has such a feeling for form, space, and that most delicious of all pictorial qualities: gravitas.

If this man were kidnapped by the Italian Secret Service -- flown by private jet to Florence -- and locked into a chapel of Santa Maria del Carmine until he produced a painting worthy of Masaccio -- I think he could do it ! (isn't there someone else who could be prosecuting the corrupt politicians of Chicago ?)




And what's especially nice about this exhibit -- is that the good drawing here doesn't begin and end with the cunning lines drawn by Phil Renaud -- our retired illustrator and drawing instructor. His work echoes a great,lost world of figurative art -- and if I had his ability -- this is the kind of drawing that I'd be making.




Yet another pretty girl stretching out on a bed (but can there ever be too many?)--this one in a more dramatic setting by Lenin Del Sol---a professional illustrator and occasional cartoonist. This figure would go nicely into a Titian painting -- with Jove, perhaps, erupting as a shower of gold coins from the upper left corner.







Peggy Sanders is a draw-a-holic who comes to my open workshop every Monday night - and here has shown a very strong head -- fit for some Baroque scene -- perhaps this is Marsyas ?



You can see the rest of the drawing and sculpture here,but the only sculptures I liked were the above piece by Leslie Dinelli





..and this wonderful little Roman head by Lois Raub.

Both of these women are about a generation older than myself -- but Leslie is especially interesting to me because she only began to sculpt after retirement from a career of teaching art in the public schools. (obviously her work ethic is much stronger than my own)





On our popular theme of women in bed -- I'd also like to mention this drawing by Rich Bloomfield -- because -- obviously -- it's very different -- lending itself not so much to male fantasy as to the dramatic reality of gravitas in the bedroom -- where it's not just the body that's naked.


Can you imagine the kind of story this might illustrate ? (I don't want to -- it's too close to reality)