Figure drawings: Margarette Dawit returns to basics
By Melanie Harris de Maycotte, March 9, 2007

Works by Margarette Dawit Sat, Mar 10, 5–8pm Galeria/Atelier Fábrica la Aurora

The human figure has been an important subject for artists for over 12,000 years—since primitive man drew in caves and created stone fertility goddesses and the ancient Greek’s carved beautiful marble statues. The peak of figure drawing popularity was made by the European artists of the 1400s when paper became generally available. In the 19th century, when the Impressionists began to depict the figure in a modern way—no longer idealized or wearing the clothes of 19th century Europe—the figure remained an important subject of art. Modern art in the 20th century continued to question the centuries-old artistic traditions and depicted the figure in ways that were sometimes hard to even recognize—but still the figure was depicted. Now, in the early 21st century, artists continue to use the human form, for the human figure is exactly what it says it is—human. We, the spectators, as humans, are so connected with ourselves and our voyeuristic tendencies, that we innately understand in figurative art what we often st
ruggle to understand in the abstract.

It is this connection with the human figure, combined with her careful study and appreciation of anatomy, that make Margarette Dawit’s recent figure drawings so seductive and powerful. Dawit, as most art enthusiasts know, is an extraordinary painter. A graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she is classically trained in anatomy and has drawn countless figures during her career. Although Dawit’s paintings of landscapes, horses and still-lifes have graced the walls of numerous gallery shows and museums for the past few years, she has taken a moment to go back in time to her carbon and Conté sticks, expressing with the most basic tools, black and white, the story of the human body in its many telling postures. Hyper-sensuality to solitude to strength, the human figure is a tell-all story of one’s inner emotional state. Every part of the body is a clue—from the tilt of a head to crunched up toes to the twisting of the back—are all non-verbal communications that we understand from our own human ex
perience. With utmost certainty, figure drawing is a universally understood language with little room for misinterpretation. Perhaps, the most beautiful parts of Dawit’s drawings are her fluid but strong and decisive chiaroscuro lines, which in one’s mind conjure up parallel images of the great masters.

Galeria/Atelier celebrates the return to figure drawing in the work of Margarette Dawit.

To be young in San Miguel
By Margaret Failoni

Bill Perlmutter Thurs, March 15, 7pm LeNoir Gallery Jesús 2a

Bill Perlmutter has been documenting life around him for over fifty years. Born in New York City, Perlmutter was barely out of boyhood when drafted and engaged in World War II, his first of many trips to Europe. This was the artist’s first foray into the world of travel that would become a constant throughout his life. This alert and charming octogenarian thinks of himself as a photo reporter, but acclaimed critics refer to him as an art photographer whose works can be found in the permanent collections of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of the City of New York, as well as Washington DC’s Smithsonian and Corcoran Galleries.

Perlmutter’s fascination with photography started as a very young man, using his trusted Rolliecord camera, a poor man’s Rollieflex. The artist was immediately drawn to street scenes with people. He learned and mastered the developing and printing process and was soon filling a photo diary of his travels. They were always in black and white: images of a small dark figure walking in the glistening snow along the banks of the Maine River, or a charming photo from Spain of two young women chatting as a small child by their side is mooning the photographer, or the New York City skyline seen through the trees in Central Park in the middle of a snow storm. Perhaps his most dramatic and touching series contains the photos taken right after 9/11: women weeping, gnarled hands running down a list of victims, firemen running and the flag forever waving.

Being somewhat of a purist all his life—in the photo sense—Perlmutter had dour thoughts on the use of digital cameras, a common attitude of his generation towards innovation. However, being an intelligent man, young at heart and curious, the photographer bowed to progress and started experimenting with digital. His latest ‘toy’ is a Cannon D20. He enjoys the process of using this technology; the prints appear somehow clearer, the black’s blacker without technically altering or enhancing light and shadow. He tells us he is looking forward to delving into the world of color photography with this new instrument. We shall see.

Meanwhile, Perlmutter presents us with new pages from his travel diary. Spending February and March in San Miguel de Allende, the artist takes photographs every single day. The series of carefully edited photographs presented in the LeNoir Gallery exhibition is printed on Epson extra fine paper and is signed and numbered in editions of ten. What they lack in the drama of the Frankfurt, Madrid or New York photos, they more than make up with a somehow gentler nostalgia of a world gone by which we are all still privileged to live in our unique town: the innocence of its children; the languid beauty of its young girls just coming into womanhood; a boy-baker delivering bread early in the morning; the chattering, laughing masked children ready for the Locos parade; near-deserted, quiet streets laid to rest in the setting sun. What magic! It is obvious in these very tender photos that Perlmutter loves his subject matter and we are privileged to have him document them for us.

Susan Plum, a delicate dichotomy
By Margaret Failoni

Works by Susan Plum Sat, Mar 10, 5–8pm Generator Gallery Fábrica la Aurora

Susan Plum fascinates me. Born in Mexico of North American parents, Plum spent her formative years between Mexico and the United States, equally in both cultures. This dichotomy is also present in her life as an artist. Long considered one among a few truly gifted creators who use glass as their chosen medium, Plum’s work appears in major museum collections in the United States, including the prestigious Corning Museum of Glass.

Attaining this distinction has not stopped the artist from successfully delving into other art forms. Her installation art exhibited in the Querétaro City Museum was inspiring and moving: work using photography and votive candles to commemorate the Ciudad Juárez desaparecidas, the disappearing young women victims of brutality in that city. And what can one say of the tongue-in-cheek installation of giant brooms hanging from the ceiling in the center of the exhibition halls?

The exhibition prepared for the Generator Gallery is, like Plum’s life, a dichotomy. One part consists of a series of beautifully executed paintings on a smooth gesso surface. The artist has used the gossamer patterns of her glass flowers series, delicately floating over the picture plane in a mist of clear, soft yet brilliant color. Somehow, they bring to life Venice—at least for me—and the city’s magnificent colors seen through the ever present sea mist. The delicate, yet somehow exotic patterns echoing the Orient, are so reminiscent of Venice. Mariano Fortuny, the great Spanish painter and designer, was captured by this same aura and never again left Venice, going on to marvel us with his creations.

The other half of the exhibition consists of carefully crafted glass panels forming geometric designs in jewel-colored glass, minimal forms, yet somehow very exotic. They could be panels in the Doge’s Palace. They bring something to mind which I can not quite define: something smooth and sweet like honey and very, very sultry.

Like the artist herself, these two so different works call across to each other and blend into one compelling exhibition.

Demons and human beings: A tribute

“Tributes”
Works by Matthieu Kuhn
Thurs, Mar 15, 7–9pm
Le Petit Bar
El Market Bistro
Hernández Macías 95.

Matthieu Kuhn’s recent paintings are an evolution within his creative development and a tribute to the history of art. The demons that inhabit the cosmos in Kuhn’s paintings are extreme beings, full of physical force and lacking gravity.

In the series “Tributes,” the demons are monarchs of history or heroes of towns which, under the brush of Kuhn, are always folded before the nakedness of their bodies, their personalities never truly portrayed. They are beings who tear off the disguises of what society expects them to be. These new paintings of weightless and foreshortened worlds recreate the characters without hierarchies. 

For Kuhn, humans are only real in private. In this series there is a mutual understanding and an evaluation between painter and painting, a questioning of the time, and its personal history.

“Tributes” is finally a tribute to the job of painting and to the artist himself, Kuhn, who is photographed in a transit of roads where he flees and appears again accompanied by a woman. He walks and returns to his own light, only to meet himself again.

This exhibition remains open until April 15.

The splendor of stallions, a vortex of movement
By Margaret Failoni

Works by Lynne Gleason
Sat, Mar 10, 5–8pm
Generator Gallery
Fábrica la Aurora

Being familiar with Lynne Gleason’s fabulous horses, we were surprised to see the artist’s latest output for her up-coming exhibition at the Generator Gallery. However, knowing well her extraordinary artistic ability, it was to be expected.

A hint of what was to come was seen a little over a year ago; first Gleason painted what she termed her classic horse series: horses of green patina bronze rearing high into the air. Between the horses one could catch a glimpse of historically classic riders, obviously inspired by the fetes of Alexander the Great, related to that same period in books and film.

The paintings that followed were of horsemen expressively drawn and barely distinguished through a maze of painting in sultry reds and black. Perhaps the rising stallions and the color—along with the thick encrustation on the canvas—gave an impression of the splendor of Spanish or Arabic riders. The work went to Atlanta for a successful exhibition and hasn’t been seen since.

In this new series, Gleason used the “thick painting with encrustations” experience to convey motion and passion, juxtaposing movement of color and matter over boldly drawn classical heads. The appearance is that of marble or bronze Greek/Roman statuary suddenly coming alive and communicating in a vortex of movement. The color used is subtle yet dramatic, indefinite, difficult to pinpoint, flowing one into another with one stunning painting of a torso—a male figure looking upwards towards an invisible sky, arms stretched up towards the infinite.

Following Lynne Gleason’s trajectory over the years—from her “New Orleans Carnival” series and the “Gigantic Still Life’s,” to the “Acclaimed Queen’s Horses,” to the magnificent “Bayou” and “Swamp” paintings—it is not surprising this artist has the ability to constantly move on once she has mastered and fulfilled her urgent need to experiment and dig deeply into a subject matter that first excites and then challenges her into seeking out its essence. It will be fascinating to watch what she does with this latest creative birth.

Down on the floor with Edina Sagert
By Edward Swift

When Berlin-born artist Edina Sagert teaches her watercolor workshop on location at the Botanical Gardens, the students often complain because she makes them hike up and down the trails along the upper part of the canyon. Like a drill sergeant she marches them to the most scenic places in the shortest period of time.

“Edina, not so fast,” they always say. “We cannot keep up.” She will invariably speak up in her straightforward manner: “You need the exercise! Walk faster!” After a day of painting in plein aire, they have to walk out of the park. “And then,” Sagert says, “they really complain. They want to be comfortable, but when you paint outside you cannot be comfortable. I tell them, ‘This is good for you. Art isn’t always so easy’.” For these excursions into the open air (and for her indoor workshops as well) she only allows five colors, one brush and a bottle of water, not to drink but to activate the pigment. She furnishes everything except the paper and the water bottle.

Her North American husband says that Sagert has mellowed over the years. “When I first met her,” he says, “it was amazing what came out of her mouth. She had a child-like forthrightness that was sometimes embarrassing. She would say anything. Her shins were always bruised because I’d be kicking her under the table.” Her students will testify, however, that she is the most amazing teacher, and her husband is the first to agree, having once been her student. 

Sagert teaches all levels of watercolor, beginner, intermediate and advanced in the same workshop, and in three languages, her native German, English, and Spanish. Perhaps her husband describes her workshops better than anyone: “She teaches individually, and she gets down on the floor with her students. She’s never mean. Her dedication to teaching isn’t just the paycheck. In class she’s the most nurturing person. I used to tell her she needed to bring some of that quality home.”

She has a love of teaching that’s supported by her remarkable technique as an artist. She teaches her students how to mix colors on wet paper rather than on a palate and to allow the colors to flow together with the water. This is a transparent, glazing technique and black and white pigments are strictly forbidden. The mere mention of black and white pigments will set her teeth on edge. “Black and white makes the colors become opaque,” she explains. "”We use the darkest color on our palate as if it were black.” The five colors she allows her students to work with are the three primary colors plus an extra green and burnt sienna. “It’s ridiculous for beginners to use six shades of one color,” she says. “With the three primary colors you can do anything.”

Always in demand as a teacher, she not only holds workshops here in her studio at Fábrica la Aurora but also in Oaxaca, La Peñita, Nayarit, and in May she will teach two five-day workshops in Maison Blanche, a 17th-century country manor in Perigord-Limousin, France. So if you have a desire to be marched through the French countryside with your water bottle, one brush and five colors, you better sign up fast and, for the teacher’s peace of mind, please remember to leave the black and white pigments at home. Former students keep an eye on the website postings (edinasagert.com) and follow their teacher from workshop to workshop. 

“We do not complain in my workshops. We paint.” 

México/Michigan: Reflecting the subconscious
Works by David Mikesell

Tues, Mar 13, 6–8pm
RaLuz, Sala de Arte
Plaza Principal 2

Visual abstraction is born of the keen, but rare, ability of an artist to reach introspectively into his subconscious, pulling out the unassuming, virginal qualities thereof, and subsequently extending them onto canvas, wood or whatever his chosen medium, as an extension of self.

To the non-artist, this task may seem daunting, or perhaps even impossible; to painter David Mikesell, however, it is not only an exhilarating challenge, but a means of expression—a visual voice, the end results of which bear a magical quality, being both wholly innocent as well as informed.

David produces his artwork with a style unique to himself, but one that is referential to 20th Century movements, with particular homage to Modernism and Abstract Expressionism.

The intuitive, reflection upon the subconscious—the ability to see within oneself without disturbing the innocence of the mind—is beautifully evident in these works, nondependent upon whatever artistic style he has chosen to create it, or whatever part of the world he is living in.

David Mikesell presents his work at RaLuz, Sala de Arte, from March 13–25.