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unDO3.5
Sculpture Superb, the Shaped Addendum
Marla Ziegler - Traveling Show
glazed clay and graphite - 9 x 21 x 5.5 inches
Much later, I dropped in Craighead Green and Gerald Peters to see what we missed by going to Fort Worth that night. I was impressed — not that unusual — by CG's sculpture shows up front and distressed by GP's foyer cluttered with one nice big clunk of sculpture that badly needed vastly more space around it than it got in that jumble of magazines and brochures galleries never quite know what to do with. Theirs was one of the least aesthetic solutions I've encountered.
Marla Ziegler - Tuxedo
glazed clay - 24 x 7 x 6 inches
First thing up front at CG were Marla Ziegler's shapes and colors. Though they mostly hang on walls, they were beautiful and intellectually stimulating on several levels and into more dimensions than most sculptors navigate. Fun, funny, lyrical, elegant, deep in all the best ways. Impressive. Squared.
Marla Ziegler - Rain
glazed clay and graphite - 18.5 x 27 x 5 inches
I explored the rest of Craighead Green's space, including as many nooks and crannies I could find doors open or openable to, but after being thoroughly Zieglered, I only took one more photograph. I have been impressed by little bits of her work often over the last decade — including a new one (for me) at Hall Office Park on the TSA Picnic and Sculpture Tour last month, but this many, this good, in this one place was a joy I hope to experience again some day, some way. I discovered a Picasso jar I'd never seen in somebody's office while wandering the halls at Gerald Peters, but that was nothing compared with my excitement for Marla Ziegler's work next door.
Marla Ziegler - Babbles
clay, glaze, ink and transfers - 23 x 64.5 x 4 inches
Guess you could say I was blown away by Ziegler's work. Repeatedly. She shows sophisticated use of pure color — and nearly pure shape, a deep understanding of shadows and subtlety, of texture and markings. She extrapolates a sculptor's dimensional understandings into and beyond rhythm and on to shape puns and spatial poetry. The diversity of her work is startling.
Isaac Smith - Woodpecker
Another artist whose work I often appreciate but have rarely reviewed in pixels. My last photo at Craighead Green was of Isaac Smith's Woodpecker. I couldn't find the species in any of my bird books, but I know the shape and color set deep in memory. I probably should have spent more time lining it up on that amber landscape in the background. But. Nice!
Harry Geffert - Generations 1, 2001
bronze - 12.5 x 19 x 16 inches
Every time I've heard Harry Geffert's name mentioned by area sculptors and art professionals, it was said with quiet awe. Harry Geffert is the master. I've long heard that he could cast anything, and I've been seeing wondrous examples for years. Gerald Peters had a major exhibition of his work in the extensive back rooms of their mansion on Fairmount not that long ago. The many filigreed and otherwise impossible-to-cast materials and his pieces using them pops front in my mind sometimes when I see a detailess clunk in the guise of sculpture sometimes.
James Surls - Standing Black Rose Palm, 2007
burned poplar, painted steel - 40.5 x 29.5 x 27 inches
Even dark, Surls is amazing, and this piece was particularly well presented, although it seemed jumbled, and did I mention, dark. Not just tonally. But inescapably gloomy. He mentioned during his talk at the TSA Symposium that he wasn't able to sell his work in the last few years. This could be part of why.
Which finally concludes my coverage of That Week in Dallas Art.
See also Deja Vus, Skewed Views, 3-D Oohs & the Muse — Another Week in Dallas Art, for which this is an addendum.
And The Texas Sculpture Association's Silver Anniversary show at the Plano ArtCentre
