If you've ever thought that art is something easy to do — that artists work mainly during the commercial breaks of their favorite television shows or that your 3-year-old could do better — listening to Marie Yoho Dorsey describe the process she went through to make The Seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter will change your mind. At Tampa Heights print atelier Bleu Acier, Dorsey and master printer/owner Erika Greenberg Schneider worked together to create the series of four prints. Starting with an original painting by Dorsey using ink on frosted mylar (a super-smooth and translucent paper coated with a thin layer of gelatin), Schneider transferred the image to a copper plate and used a series of acid baths to etch it into the metal surface. Dorsey then painted another layer of detail directly onto the plate, which Schneider etched again. After the 16-step process, they coated the plate with a different shade of teal blue ink for each season and ran it through a press onto delicate Japanese rice paper.
The result is a haunting study of temporality, a majestic mountain landscape subtly shifting in color until it reaches the washed-out finality of winter — a metaphor for the seasons of life. "It looks almost exactly like her original painting," Schneider said. So why go to the trouble of making the print? There's something about the instant of impression, Dorsey explained. After the intense labor of production, that instant seems like a whisper or the presence of a ghost — the magic moment of bringing a print to life. "Sometimes I wish I made paintings," she joked at the exhibit opening, after a last-minute rush to get everything done. (In addition to her prints, Dorsey hung a giant spiral of wax-coated flowers from the gallery's 16-foot ceiling.)
Labors of love could be the theme of this year's underCURRENT/overVIEW, the Tampa Museum of Art's biennial exhibit of Florida artists, now in its eighth incarnation. Much of the work on view emphasizes meticulous process, an almost obsessive-compulsive devotion to mark and material, and a respectable willingness to take on the risk of touchier materials and high production values. Emotion is also a theme, with works that explore fear of isolation, frustration and the act of breathing feeling into the inanimate materials of art.
This is the first year that the exhibit includes artists from the entire state rather than just the greater Tampa Bay area, said Elaine Gustafson, the museum's director of exhibitions. The final selection of artists (30 from nearly 300 submissions) represents big cities and small towns from Tallahassee to Miami.
Along with blood, sweat and tears can come heartache, particularly in the case of an artwork that actually broke during the show's opening. Matthew Cox's mechanical drawing, powered by a motor and a bicycle chain, temporarily gave up the ghost early on, with the museum powerless to fix the contraption without the artist's permission, Gustafson said. It's up and running again following a simple repair — when I returned to the museum recently, schoolchildren on a tour clamored to see the tiny bird spin around in front of the rotating pencil-drawn landscape again and again.
Some artists put heart and soul into their work, others put … hair. Babs Reingold, whose solo show later this summer at the Studio@620 and the Arts Center sounds like a must-see, uses decomposing hair, tea, nails and other objects to stain the surface of thick paper. Treating the paper like a preserved skin, Reingold mounts it to wooden frame, creating a corporeal sort of personal narrative. Rust and earth tones evoke the cycle of human elements returning to nature. Latonya Hicks uses hair extensions to create a line drawing on the surface of a circular quilt. The drawing of a proverbial ugly duckling conveys Hicks' fear of never being seen or loved for her true self. (Who can't relate to that?)
Two other favorites were Rebecca Sittler's gently humorous photographs of food and Edgar Sanchez Cumbas' watercolor figures set adrift in a spiritual and psychological landscape. Sittler's donut tower and cluster of spuds huddled like puppies on a sofa play with scale to imbue the edible subject matter with human, animal or architectural characteristics. The seemingly childish play actually reflects a very adult wistfulness, I thought, for that fruitful period of life when imagination provided an endless supply of fantasy friends and powdered sugar edifices. Cumbas' work is often billed as inspired by Tibetan Buddhism; because my familiarity with the spiritual tradition begins and ends with Richard Gere, this description has never really helped me to understand the work. Once we spoke, however, I started to get it — and was glad. The figures, always an eerie white with tender splotches of red skin aflame, wander through a desolate landscape as if trying to reconstruct the human relationship with primitive technology after some apocalyptic event. Three different figures (in different paintings) here give the impression of being stranded on opposite sides of some tiny planet, unable to connect. Like several other artists on display, Cumbas has a series of smaller but no less powerful works for sale at affordable prices in the museum gift shop.
Speaking of local art and artists, Tampa may be perilously close to loosing one of its most forward-thinking venues for contemporary art. Last week Covivant Gallery owner Carrie Mackin announced that she's leaving Tampa, though her current hope is that the Seminole Heights gallery continues to exist. Ideally, Mackin says, the space will transition to nonprofit status under a new director — and she is looking for suggestions as to who that person might be. In the meantime, Covivant will host a final exhibition and sale of art by Bay area artists from May 19 to June 4. One of Mackin's most noted contributions to the community, the Family Values Portrait Project, will go on display again (following its debut at Covivant last fall) at the Tampa Museum of Art from June 9 to July 23 and the Arts Center from June 9 to July 8. The portraits celebrating unconventional families of all kinds were inspired by the Hillsborough County Commission's ban last year on demonstrations of gay pride in public places.
This article appears in May 17-23, 2006.