Lisa Leary’s new drawings and paintings inspired by poetry
The Grubbs Gallery, Reed Fine Arts Center, Williston Northampton School, Easthampton, MA
by John Selfridge* – April, 2007
Entering the Reed Fine Arts Center at the Williston Northampton School, visitors are quickly reminded of the process that is art. Student drawings and paintings claiming various degrees of completion line the walls of the open-ended corridors; examples of student sculpture, some among us, vulnerable, others aloof, enclosed in glass cases, stare back. But none of these can ignore the determined artists and lovers of art as they come and go, as they hurry to and from class, to draw, to dance, to play and, invariably, to take risks. The hum of youthful creativity is everywhere there.
The Grubbs Gallery, an oasis in this maelstrom, is a softly lit, quiet space particularly suited to an exhibit of Lisa Leary’s work, which, on display there from April 2-29, explores, among its many themes, the possibility of shape and texture in cohabitation with language, of vessel as both world and source and, similarly, of poetry as something that gives rise to the visual. Language is thus offered as having a relationship with the visual that is both generative and conspiratorial.
As the two, opening pieces, poem study #1 and poem study #2 announce, the present collection of recent works on canvas and paper have a common foundation in poetry in that Leary used her own poetry as the entry into each piece. In the artist’s own words, these works are “inspired by poetry,” a phrase that, like all art, cleverly tells only part of the story. In fact, the role of poetry in these works is not only inspirational but technical; this is accomplished literally in that the artist began each execution by writing her own poetic musings directly on the paper or canvas. She then applied line and color to the surface, sometimes but not always covering over the writing, and the work took on shape and meaning while the foundation itself partially died. But that foundation also partially survives as visual component of the final piece, just as the inspiration never leaves the work.
Other than the use of and reference to language and poetry, what joins these works is Leary’s striking use of vessels, literally, such as water glasses and bowls; abstract shapes, such as cones, circles, assorted parallelograms, and others without openings other than those that lead directly through their hearts; and enclosed patterns in nature, most predominantly stars, moons and leaf shapes, to explore this theme. In the universe delineated by these works, language, in particular the poem is recognized for and allowed its generative power as well as its tendency to set boundaries determined by its own limits. Likewise, enumeration, is presented in a playful display of numerical visuals incorporated into many of the pieces.
In bowls, vessels, pelvis, the association is carried further, to the human body, itself the enclosure or vessel of the human spirit. Here Leary points to the structural center of the equation: to the place from which one derives balance, stability, and movement, and of, course, it is the structural place that gives shape to both conception and birth. Leary imposes the image of the pelvis over that of a bowl (or that of the bowl over that of the pelvis) to conjure the union of both shape and connotation, of body and abstraction.
The contrast in Leary’s use of dense color in the oils and white, or the lack of color, in the works on paper, is also striking in that it enables her to sustain a thematic continuum through these in many ways contrasting works. She explores the lush, dark, and uncertain natural world, vividly in dark garden (with moons) for instance, as freely as she does the clean, bright, more predictable studio space as inner space as in white ache, winter vessels.
By the time I left the gallery, it was late afternoon, classes had let out, and I was the only remaining visitor at the Reed Center. The effect of this exhibit on me was the compelling suggestion that language is something that can give rise to, inform, and coexist with the visual to bring about a whole, the two literally sharing space and conspiring in the creation. As I walked by the student work in the corridor on the way out, sharing, as I was, their quiet, enclosed space, I was now the one staring back.
[*John Selfridge is a writer, editor, publisher and critic. He teaches English language and literature in Northampton, Massachusetts. His books include Pablo Picasso (Chelsea House) and John Coltrane: A Sound Supreme (Scholastic).