A work of art, framed and hung just so on a gallery wall can seem perfect and untouchable. But for the artist, it’s the product of a never-ending search and struggle. The creative process is a path of exploration, questioning, and honing of skills. With Midstream, on view through February 24, Massoni Art offers a glimpse into that journey.
This gallery is well known for its flawless presentation of beautifully crafted art, so it’s curious to find photographs by Alessandra Manzotti and Kelly Parisi Castro pushpinned directly onto the wall, side-by-side with framed works. In explaining this casual presentation, Carla Massoni noted that matting and framing finished work is one of an artist’s most time-consuming and expensive tasks, a chore that takes away from her creative energy. One benefit of this approach is that there’s more work on view. Another is that somehow the pushpins make the work more accessible. It feels almost like seeing the work in the artist’s studio where it’s easy pick up on her impulses and her thinking.
Manzotti describes herself as restless, and there’s a sense of uneasy searching in her stark photographs of snowy landscapes and solitary figures. The images are beautiful but lonely. Skies are cloudy or white with snow; windows are obscured with shadows and reflections. But there’s always a feeling of a crystalline moment caught to hover in memory. It’s the still point, that private instant of solitude when you see yourself in a distant lone tree or an anonymous nude woman folded in on herself in an armchair. It’s the moment when the mind is so quiet that you are able to view your own relationship with the world without being caught up in its busyness and confusion.
Manzotti blends heart-piercing beauty with quiet, affectionate humor. “Tree Study III” shows a tree with two bites taken out of it, one from the loss of a large section of branches (presumably in a storm), the other by the sun, low in the sky, obscuring the foliage as it shines through. In “Love Story,” a print so tactile you almost feel its grainy texture, a small stone is wedged between two halves of a split boulder. Manzotti turns this bit of nature into a narrative and a metaphor for all love stories.
Both artists clearly enjoy the range of possibilities digital photography offers, chief among them the ease of experimentation. For Castro, photography is a kind of treasure hunt into the chaos of activity hidden in plain view. This show presents selections from three series of photographs she is currently working on.
“Catholic Girls,” represented by three large prints and a book of several others, is a series of photos of 1950s Avon thimbles molded and painted to look like well-dressed young women. Arranged in twos and threes and shot close-up with a macro lens, they become characters in wordless narratives, the nuances of their clothing and hand-painted faces suggesting a remarkable range of interactions from confidences to cattiness.
Water always looks seductively beautiful in photographs, a quality Castro explores in her other two series, “Ocean” and “Pool.” The “Ocean” prints, both on paper and on aluminum panels, are striking but problematic. The ocean is a familiar icon of vastness, timelessness and possibility, but Castro is haunted by the knowledge that it’s being polluted, overfished and sullied with floating plastic waste. Searching for a way to convey the dichotomy between its majestic beauty and its vulnerability, she splices sea foam into unnatural patterns and mirror images, turns waves sideways, and generally interrupts the flow. Unfortunately, the conceptual meat of her efforts is overshadowed by the pure elegance of these kaleidoscopic images. There’s also an annoying feeling that she’s treading too close to Photoshopped gimmickry. It will be interesting to see how she sorts out ways to convey a stronger sense of artificiality or wounding as the series develops.
The “Pool” series is more successful. Capturing the shimmering patterns on the pool’s curving steps or in the inviting view looking down its ladder, Castro presents a world of light and beauty contained in the mundanity of a barely used Florida
pool. In several photos of deck chairs surrounding the pool, she discovers a fascinating web of activity. A close-up of a rhythmic tangle of hollow aluminum tubing and turquoise plastic webbing is simultaneously orderly and chaotic, humming with energy. It’s a secret world that we’d normally not even notice. Like Manzotti, Castro is capturing a precious moment of awareness.
As a bonus, serendipitously reinforcing this look into the creative process, several of Vicco Von Voss’s newest pieces of sculptural furniture are interspersed throughout the gallery. Freed for a time from commission-based work to prepare for his upcoming show at the Academy Art Museum in 2014, von Voss is focusing specifically on developing his personal creative process. “Finding Water,” a functional shelf featuring a root sprouting from a hidden acorn, is one of the inventive and finely crafted works Massoni Art is presenting to announce The Seed Project, an effort by collectors and friends to assist von Voss during the time he is without income from commissions. (See www.massoniart.com for details.)
In von Voss’s work, just as in Manzotti’s and Castro’s, it’s clear that art doesn’t just appear, finished and ready to hang on the wall. It arises from an artist’s urge to understand the world and develops in an exciting but painstaking process as the artist follows that compulsion. Sharing in this knowledge, you automatically become part of the process and the art comes alive.
mary wood says
Unable to visit this show, I am grateful to the Spy and Mary Mccoy for these insights into the works on display at the Massoni gallery.
Melinda Bookwalter says
An incredible review! Thank you, Mary.