From Homer to Hopper at The Currier Museum

Just went to see the Homer to Hopper show at the Currier Museum in Manchester, NH. Full disclosure here - when I thought I was going to be an artist my medium was watercolor. I love it and all of its possibilities.

Watercolor is often treated as the ugly, younger sister to oil painting and sculpture. Because of the necessity of moving quickly with the medium many think that it requires little thought - and all action. Those who have become proficient at watercolor know that it is a medium that requires more than fast action, you must think quickly too. As a painting emerges the painter must be willing to chance it all with each new layer or incorporate the mistakes. From Homer to Hopper displays a beautiful and broad range of paintings in which to closely study the medium.

This show follows the arc of skill in American watercolor mastery from the early 1800's to the present day. For the early painters it was a medium that was easily transportable and lent itself to the quick portraits an itinerant painter needed to produce. I deduce from the early American examples presented that it was mainly used to color and didn't really take advantage of the natural tendencies of the medium- to pool, puddle, bleed and glow. These paintings are coarsely done but charming and serve to highlight the leaps that watercolorists made less than two generations later.

In the later 1800's we see the ascendancy of painting over imagery. Homer's "Fishwives", shown above, is a stunning tour de force of layers built up to create the moody, atmospheric scene. The artist has not shied away from scraping at the surface to expose a the paper through the pigment. The rich colors and heavy contrast negate the myth of the light, airy watercolor.

Prendergast's The Stony Pasture shows a lighter touch with watercolor. It is the antithesis of Homer's heavy hand with pigment. All the colors are fresh and sit on the surface of the paper. He has allowed the pigment to pool naturally creating a graded line at the edge of each shape, curving it around to create volume. He has let go of the fussy detail seen in the earliest watercolors in this show and allowed the strokes to seen. It is a seemingly spontaneous approach.

I was unable to find images from the most contemporary works (you can see many here) but there were some real beauties to be seen. A Burchfield studio scene is stunning. There was also a beautiful Arthur Dove from his Flour Mill Series. I saw another at the Phillips Collection that still sticks in my head- clearly it held a fascination for Dove. There was also an early Georgia O'Keeffe that is quite strong. These more abstracted pieces pave the way for what it to come later in the show.

The contemporary pieces are what really got my attention. The beautiful abstraction Visitors by Mark Toby with its use of opaque white drawing on the surface brought to mind some of the lovely ink and gouache drawings of our own Bert Yarborough. I was not aware that there was a history of using this opaque calligraphic line. This is very appealing to see this thread of aesthetic discovery over time. Another contemporary piece worth spending time with is a large abstract of lines by Sol Lewitt. While simple in concept it is quite mesmerizing. The lines flow across the surface creating a subtle movement. This is a piece I could live with.

I highly recommend seeing this show before it closes on June 7th. While it lures you in with the big guns of Homer & Hopper, it is the lesser known pieces which delight.

Moving Day!

People don't get to see the process of how Gary Haven Smith moves his sculptures into the gallery. It is frequently done on weekends when there are fewer people to inconvenience. This time it happened on Sunday, April 11.

Gary brought along his son, Devon, to help this time. As Gary and I both get older it takes more time to complete the process and we are thankful for a younger set of muscles.

Gary has a flat bed truck with a crane attached to one corner. After putting on the emergency brake and putting blocks under the tires Devon and I put jacks under each corner to keep the truck from tilting too much as the heavy loads moved from the flat bed to our front step.

Large straps are attached to the pieces for hoisting them up. A hand held control is used to guide the crane around all the obstacles- street signs and the large McGowan Fine Art sign above the door. While Gary operates the controls I helped to guide the pieces away from the brick wall. Devon lined them up on the waiting dolly on the top step.

This bench is the only item that gave us a scare. As it was lowered to the top step the weight was enough to lift a back wheel off the ground and moot the effect of the emergency brake. Despite all the safety precautions the truck started rolling forward. There was a bit of screaming and a bit of running as Gary jumped into the truck to apply the brakes. I had visions of the bench going through our front window and the crane taking out the front columns of the building. Who said art was boring!?

After the dolly is pulled into the gallery an engine winch (the large orange bit of equipment on the back of Gary's truck) is used to remove the sculpture from it and place it on the floor. Some of the sculptures are light enough (a relative term) to be moved by hand. Many need to be placed in the perfect place with the winch- with slight adjustments made by muscling the piece into place.

The tops of some of the sculptures are literally placed by hand. Here is a picture of Devon lowering the top of "On the Way Up." Gary guided it on to the pins on the pedestal. I would guess that the top weighs about 60 pounds- which is harder to lift than you might think!

After 6 hours of doing this the guys went home. I spent another hour or so doing some clean up and hanging the painting in the front window. I hate to leave the front window empty over night. I went home, ate supper and sat down. I was too tired to read. My weekend chores will have to wait until tomorrow.

Gary Haven Smith

McGowan Fine Art announces the opening of “Focal Point” featuring recent paintings and sculptures by Gary Haven Smith. The show will run from April 13 to May 14, with an opening reception on April 16 from 5 to 7 PM. It is free and open to the public.

Gary Haven Smith has long been recognized as one of New Hampshire’s premier sculptors – completing such public works as The Source, a large sculpture at the Thorne-Sagendorf Gallery at Keene State College and the fountain in the entry of Concord Hospital. Many of his paintings and sculptures are in private and public collections throughout the state including the Currier Gallery of Art and the New Britain Museum of Art.

Color takes a back seat in Gary Haven Smith’s most recent paintings as an outcome of his landscape photographs. Leaves, trees and grasses are a jumping off point for the broad patterns etched into the surface of his paintings. He heightens the contrast by using silver leaf on the dark natural surface of slate. In “Soffice” the reference to a forest scene is still apparent on the surface of the slate. Vertical lines of tree trunks are broken up by the silver silhouettes of leaves. Rich red paint on a textured lead surface hint at the soil beneath- creating an overall play of pattern. The influence of photography has distorted the images in this case so that there are both seen and unseen images. “We don’t see things as clearly as we want to,” says Smith.

His large-scale granite sculptures continue in the same vein as his previous work, exploring curved lines and textured surfaces. Smith says “I see it as deconstructing the boulder.” This is a reference to his cutting into the oversized granite boulders and, in many cases, piecing them back together. In the bench he created for this show he has inserted a smooth, highly-colored piece of red granite into the rough undersurface of a boulder. The geometric perfection of this base fits in like a puzzle piece. The found shape of the sitting surface provides another counterpoint to the seemingly random exterior of the raw stone- the perfect marriage of beauty and function.

There will be a studio tour at Mr. Smith’s home on May 8 at 10:30 AM. People interested in attending should RSVP to the gallery at 603-225-2515. The group will meet at McGowan Fine Art at 10 AM to carpool to his studio.