In recent months we’ve featured Central School Project as the beating heart of the Bisbee art scene. As we mentioned, to have the culture you need laboratory space to make it happen. CSP does indeed have the space, but as we said, many local artists do have labs of their own.
But CSP isn’t just a lab, its also an exhibition hall where artists can offer up their their work for the enjoyment of the community. Bisbee is positively bursting with talent across so many areas. We would be blessed to have one, or two or even three artists with enough material to fill out an exhibition.
Tonight we’ve got six.
Central School’s Material Conversations opening reception was just held on April 25th this past weekend, and your humble blogger beat the crowds to get an early, close look. On display are works by six local artists: Ash Dahlke, Chloe Foster, Char Green, Mel Malone, Dale Miller, and Fernando Serrano. The work cuts through medium as well as expectations. Canvas. Acrylic and oil. Found objects repurposed. Charcoal. Locks of hair and woven tapestries. And ceramics: beautiful ceramic sculpture brimming with texture, detail and personality.
And, lest a tree fall in the forest with none to mourn it: witnesses aplenty. The opening reception for Material Conversations brought a huge turnout from the Bisbee community of fellow artists, connoisseurs and the curious. The show of community support was itself a work of art, if you’ll pardon the hyperbole.
Your humble blogger is wholly unqualified as a photographer, much less a proper art critic. The exhibition lasts until May 10, and you’re invited to have a look for yourself. Still, I can’t help but single out a piece or two, if only to strengthen the invitation.
Dale Miller’s It’s Still Pretty Dark is a brooding skyscape, inviting the viewer to take wing and soar through the night, straight to the moon and back. And it’s painted on a canvas large enough to allow just that.
Fernando Serrano’s unique work continues to inspire. He has several pieces in this show, including Migrations, a tapestry woven from found fabrics left behind by migrants headed north from the Mexican border.
Speaking of found objects, Ash Dahlke’s charcoal compositions capture desert detritus in situ. Specific Arrangement is a portrait of a mound of discarded bottles and cans—a still life of what must have been one heck of a party!
But the ceramics on offer were truly moving. One cannot help but gawk at the textures, the liminal shapes at once abstract and formal, the colors—and the expert lighting revealing their forms.
Mel Malone’s assembled coils are delightful displays of liminality, coming to the edge of assuming recognizable forms before melting back into the abstract. These sculptures are kinetic—some seem ready to climb down from their pedestals and join the crowd.
But these works, comfortable straddling the line between amorphic and anthropomorphic, are in sharp contrast to the delicately detailed works of Char Green. Her Garden Figures, a pair of serene, rotund figures inspired by Hopi Kachina, are simply adorable.
Another pair of sculptures, which double as functional planters bearing cacti for hair, feature “Jack Sprat and Wife.” You know, the ones from the Mother Goose nursery rhyme. Mr. and Mrs. Sprat, seated on metal chairs, are a feast for the eyes complete with living plants crowning their heads. But giving them those names is a delightfully clever stroke, conjuring their eponymous nursery rhyme back out of obscurity and into the mind of the observer.
Again, these works will be on display at Central School Project’s treasure-house of culture and art until May 10. Check it out for yourself, and consider supporting these artists, and your own personal feng shui, by taking home a piece for yourself.
From those the artists are willing to part with, that is.
Keith Allen Dennis is a Bisbee writer, living the dream of becoming the songster he was meant to be. Find his music at keithallendennis.bandcamp.com.
