Now in the last weeks of his two-month exhibition at Tampa Museum of Art, glass artist Therman Statom's site-specific River Myths: A Multimedia Gallery Installation
transforms the Special Exhibition gallery into a shimmering, theatrical extravaganza. The smaller Focus Gallery features individual wall-hung and floor-bound sculptural works that incorporate paint, found objects and symbols such as houses and ladders.
River Myths is a crowd-pleasing dynamic environment; the smaller works could decorate your living room. The entire exhibition can be read as a visual smorgasbord appealing to the senses, especially through reflective surfaces — prefabricated boxes built of sheet glass are sealed one to another like display cases in a natural history museum. Also included are mirrors, glass adorned with painted birds, palm trees and color splotches. Media ranges from glass shards to playing cards. Statom, a Florida native residing in California — and a product of prestigious art schools and study with glass artist Dale Chihuly — also integrates his African-American and Seminole Indian heritage, though it won't necessarily be obvious to the viewer. His large calligraphic wall script, for example, documents his imagined narrative of the Seminole relationship to the river. In this context, language becomes another visual device.
Also relating to ethnicity (according to the artist) is the large glass "shelter" in the center of the gallery. A variety of metaphorical interpretations come to mind: Is it commentary on "people who live in glass houses" or the tenuous fragility of modern life? Or perhaps it expresses the artist's admission, "I love glass — period."
I enjoyed River Myths on four separate visits, despite all its glitzy aura, or maybe because of its absolute honesty in pursuing perceptual aesthetics without posturing as another cerebral spin-off. Indeed, in some respects the installation's free-spiritedness is a refreshing antidote to conceptual installation.
Thought the exhibit entices with many seductive charms, it is far from perfect.
At issue is an obvious lack of cohesion. A 28-foot mirrored snake, despite a peculiar allure, doesn't link well to the other media; neither does the view-disrupting brushed-aluminum sphere near the entrance. Similarly, six huge, painted circles are a claustrophobic anomaly in a glass-based exhibition, obstructing the eye where transparency and reflection are the norm. Only when reflected in the mirrored wall segments across the room do these shapes work. Encasing the painted circles in glass would have helped enormously; alone they look like the artist was short on a sheet-glass delivery (not so). The main critical issue is the problematic nature of the site-specific process, whereby artists' proposals are accepted with creative flexibility built into the project. Elaine Gustafson, the museum's curator of contemporary art, says that "some of Statom's broad idea" actually "turned out to be very different when completed." Given last-minute decisions, outcomes are never a sure bet. In this particular case I support the museum's willingness to take a risk. Aside from well-attended opening night receptions, exhibitions deserve to be seen. So get thyself to TMA and judge for yourself.
This article appears in Mar 27 – Apr 2, 2002.