La Wilson: Witness
John Davis began showing the work of La Wilson in 1983 in Akron, Ohio and continued with Ms. Wilson when his gallery moved to New York City. Including the 2004 retrospective that Mr. Davis curated, La Wilson Altered Objects (at the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art, Ursinus College), this upcoming show will be the 12th exhibition of Ms. Wilson's work that the artist and dealer have presented together. It will also mark Ms. Wilson’s fifth exhibition in Hudson, New York, (the first, having been recognized and reviewed in The New York Times). She visits Hudson, New York from Hudson, Ohio where she lives and works and she has shown extensively in the mid-west and New York City.
Ms. Wilson was given a retrospective of her work at The Akron Art Museum in 1986/1987 titled La Wilson Metaphorical Objects. Kathleen Monaghan (Director) initiated and selected work and Barbara Tannenbaum (Chief Curator and Head of Public Programs) facilitated the installation and supervised the production of the brochure with the late Ellen H. Johnson's contribution of an Interview with La and Ms. Monaghan contributing the introduction. In 1992 Tom Hinson, curator of Contemporary Art at the Cleveland Museum, chose a group of La’s works to exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art. In 1993, the artist received the top award for sculpture in the Cleveland Museum of Art May Show. It was in this same year that La was awarded the prestigious “Cleveland Arts Prize in Visual Arts” for sculpture. In 2004 the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College (Collegeville, Pennsylvania) mounted a retrospective of her work, titled La Wilson Altered Objects with catalogue essay by Edward M. Gomez, curated by John Davis.
In the current body of work, La Wilson continues to confound those who have watched her development as an artist over the years with her ability to defy the material and transform everyday objects into visual delights that convey profound meaning and sustenance. In her words, "I try to steer clear of objects that are too loaded with meaning; but then, when I think about it, everything I use is loaded - snakes, pencils, firecrackers, matches, hair pins. What I try to do is free myself from the conscious associations so that the unconscious ones can take over. I am much more interested in what I don't know than what I do know."
Sculpture Garden:
Sculptors Choose Sculptors
The Sculpture Garden will host an exhibition of sculptors from the John Davis Gallery choosing other sculptors whose work they admire.
John Ruppert has chosen Ledelle Moe. Ruppert states, “I picked Ledelle because she is a good sculptor and I felt that having a sculptor that works directly with the figure would bring a different perspective to the group. Her work while referencing the past, transcends the present and eludes to the future."
Ledelle Moe was born in Durban, South Africa in 1971. She studied sculpture there at Technikon Natal and graduated in 1993. Active in the local art community, Moe was one of the founding members of the FLAT Gallery, an artist initiative and alternative space in Durban. A travel grant in 1994 brought her to the United States where she embarked on a period of study at the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Sculpture Department Master’s program. She completed her Master’s Degree there in 1996 and soon after accepted an adjunct position in the Sculpture Department at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, Maryland. Later she taught at the Corcoran College of Art in Washington, DC, Virginia Commonwealth University and St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Moe has exhibited in a number of venues including the Kulturhuset (Stockholm, Sweden) the NSA Gallery (Durban, South Africa), the International Sculpture Center (Washington, DC), The Washington Project for the Arts (Washington, DC) and Maryland Art Place (Baltimore). Though Moe remains strongly connected to South Africa, returning to visit annually, she has continued to live and work in the United States. Based presently far from home, the perspective particular to her roots as a South African artist remains central to her work. Recent projects include large-scale concrete installations at Socrates Park and Pratt Institute in New York City, and Decatur Blue in Washington, DC. In 2002 Moe was the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Award which has allowed her time to work on new sculptures and travel back to South Africa where she has made and exhibited work, Recent projects include two installations shown in Salzburg, Austria and Brooklyn, New York this year. Presently based in Baltimore, Maryland, she continues to work on large-scale pieces and travels home annually to work and visit in South Africa.
Victoria Palermo has chosen John McQueen.
"Looking at John McQueen’s work makes me laugh. As efficiently as a haiku poet, John presents, in each piece, a wry observation about life (his, ours) and he nails it with humor.
The work is constructed from the simplest of materials - sticks. It nudges the boundaries of category. Roberta Smith has described the works as hovering “in the gap between craft, sculpture and Conceptual Art.” If Jenny Holzer took up basket-making, perhaps it would look like this."
Victoria Palermo
John McQueen was born in 1943 in Oakland, Illinois. He received his B.A. from the University of South Florida, Tampa in 1971 and his M.F.A. from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia in 1975.
McQueen's career has been marked by many awards and residencies including a 2001 Artist's Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a 1992 Visual Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a 1991 Tiffany Award, and a 1980 United States/Japan Friendship Commission Fellowship.
"Gimme a minute here. Gimme a chance. Gimme a good reason to arrive at a stance. Among the scads of synapses coursing across my vision, from highfalutin to peevishness, I can't decipher, arrange or even abide. It is only silly folly this keeping company with my own washed up mutterings; no pleasure to treasure. What makes me make? Not beauty, maybe repetition, but more likely a reach to plunder another as of yet ununderstood ride down a path of some hopeful but endless tomfoolery."
John McQueen
2008
Harry Gordon is Caroline Ramersdorfer's pick.
Harry started his sculpture career with a very classical, figurative beginning, and although his materials and forms have changed a great deal over the years, it is still possible to find remnants of the figure in his work. Most of the large outdoor wood pieces from the 1980s stand on two points (legs) and incorporate a separate element on top (body or arms). The granite work, started in the 1990s, also tends toward figurative or post and lintel forms.
When he incorporates several elements together to construct a sculpture, he is looking at the way they relate to each other, and ultimately how they work together as a whole. A tilt here and a cut there can change the attitude of the piece and gives each one its own distinct personality. When the piece has just one element, he tends to do more carving and editing of the material to achieve the same effect.
Gordon’s work and the ideas behind it are tied very closely with the material from which it is constructed. He states, "I have chosen traditional, ancient mediums with which to express myself. I try not to manipulate my materials beyond their natural state, but imbue them with an expression of dignity and grandeur to release their spirit."
Ben Butler is represented by Rena Leinberger
Rena Leinberger was born in Ludington, Michigan and currently lives and works in Tillson, New York. She received her M.F.A. from the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002 where she was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant.
"In my installations and sculptures, I intervene into quirky spaces with residues of human history and architecture in states of decay. I also draw hapless cartographies demarcating the passing of time.
I always use the familiar as a source – whether urban spaces, furniture, transit systems or interiors – they all traverse the gap between function and obsolescence; time and memory. In that subtle mental space, materials mutate in unusual ways and possibilities expand, tensions form, erasure is implicit. I can alter the commonplace through a shift in materials or extend the site into the form of the work. Sometimes a further removal into photo or video skews the sense of familiarity and permanence. The work becomes awkward and suggestive of the weight of things outside of our reach. Something has inexplicably gone awry.
The resulting works engage notions of escape, futility and collapse. These spaces and objects reflect the precarious physical, emotional, and socio-political climate we both inhabit and create."
-Rena Leinberger
Jon Isherwood chose sculptor John Umphlett.
"Instinct is to register something significant in that ‘first encounter’. Subconscious antidotes become consciousness. Mr. Umphlett’s sculptures ask us to consider an alternative explanation to all that seems common place. He forces us to reconsider all that we know, and now observe what we hadn’t noticed about the very thing that seemed familiar."Talking about his work, John Umphlett states, “As an artist, I would describe myself as an innovative and inquisitive thinker. Keeping open about experimentation through material relationships, both as physical and conceptual are essential to discovery. Through the practice of trial and error, I often express parallel relationships between material and color, idea and images, and concepts and objects. This process further challenges my creativity and novel approach in developing a body of work. I am finding that I have a heightened awareness of social communication. Small gestures and cues of one’s emotional paths lead to large rich personalities. Personalities exist, as a catalyst in extending the important revisited elements. The work can be a representation of an action or a snapshot of a moment that takes hours to fully view. Time exists as an inevitable and ever-changing constant that can be the most powerful detail of the piece. I have found that my artistic process uncovers a broad range of many diverse paths all holding important directions to discover."
Carriage House:
There are five artists within the carriage house: Dionisio & Leticia Cortes, Mac Chambers, Colin Cochran, and Constance Jacobson in addition to a group show of gallery sculptors on the first floor.
Dionisio Cortes + Leticia Ortega
Summer Cutouts, 2008
Site-specific installation for John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY
72”Wx 89”Dx330”H
Kraft paper
Leticia Ortega and Dionisio Cortes join labors to construct a playful collaborative installation this summer. Their two dimensional artwork, dense layering addressing formal issues such as pattern, order, and space, is clearly evoked in this piece.
Ms. Ortega and Mr. Cortes created a three-story high, tower-like, rectangular volume by accumulating tens of layers of 30-feet long paper panels. The paper panels hang vertical and freely, each, one inch apart. Each paper panel has been cut out with the artists’ trait motifs. The cutouts, being a slightly smaller/bigger, create a three-dimensional vertical topography.
A visual dialogue is intended to occur between the Carriage space and the piece, and between the piece and the visitor. Visitors will be free to interact with the installation at ground level, as it’ll be penetrable.
Dionisio Cortes and Leticia Ortega live and work in New York City. Their work has been shown in Mexico, Italy, and the U.S. Ms. Ortega’s work was included in the I Olga Costa Biennial and Mr. Cortes’ in the Monterrey Biennial. Both are recipients of numerous prestigious awards including the Vitro Art Center and the Monterrey Biennial in Mexico. They have taught at several institutions including American School and El Nix in Mexico, and Wet Paint! Art Studio in NYC. Their work can be found in numerous private and public collections.
McWillie Chambers 
Mr. Chambers was born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where he attended the Louisiana Polytechnic Institute from 1969 - 71. From 1971 - 73 he studied at the Kansas City Art Institute where he received his BFA. He then went to New York City where he attended the New York Studio School (1973-74). In 1981 he studied at the Universidad de Salamanca in Salamanca, Spain. Currently he lives in New York City and Hudson, New York. His paintings are now shown in dozens of galleries around the country including, among others, Fischbach Gallery and Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation in New York City.
The artist, Bill Sullivan, has written an excellent description of McWillie's work: "McWillie Chambers' painting is not in any way confrontational, and yet he confronts a great dilemma and lets his own inherent graciousness resolve it. The dilemma is that most, but not all, of Chambers' subject matter is the male nude. Photographs and memory are the key to this work. He doesn't paint apples and flowers, or the destitute and desperate, the hopeless. He paints what he needs to paint, and is totally committed to a positive, affirmative view of life. An apple doesn't turn him on, and his paintings are a respite from the suffering in the world we know all too well. If this is gay art, it must be most successful because that seems irrelevant. The sources of this work are actually beside the point. After all, this is not exploitation. Rather it is a celebration of desire, the memory of desire. This work flirts with you, engaging in an erotic dialog rather than being voyeuristic. Never were men and places so desirable. And place is why, as much as the men.
Chambers grew up in Louisiana, the home of deep south graciousness and sophistication. Chambers was raised with the rare attitude toward life, difficult for us New Yorkers to actually believe, and so we look for the falsity. Bigots will find it in gender preference, but even they will be seduced by the paint. The paint flows and moves across the surface, and in the space. Not for a moment does its sensuousness relent. The paint is hot, the color dazzling, the light subtropical. In this place he remembers and desires, he puts men he remembers and desires, and every one of them is a portrait that transcends likeness and makes instead an erotically spiritual connection with the soul. Even when the sexuality is frank to the point of being blunt, an innocence is retained, and this innocence is the true content of this work: With great honesty, we are given an innocence that many of us have forgotten or never knew. Chambers' memory stimulates our own desire.
In a catalogue essay by Bill Arning, this work is put in the tradition of Cadmus, French and Tchelitchew. These paintings seem very different in attitude, style, sense of time and message. The only similarity is subject matter. And even that's different. If he painted apples would he be in the tradition of Cezanne? Charles Demuth and Duncan Grant are mentioned as sharing a personal, private point of view. This work is so out of the closet that the comparison is hard to understand. And finally, even poor latent Tom Eakins is brought up. Better to have considered the case of David Hockney or Janet Fish if she were a gay man. Hockney and Fish are artists who indulge in joy, who epitomize the uniquely American constitutional right to pursuing happiness. The self absorbed narcissism of gay culture and its clichés keep us from Chambers' paintings. If we can get beyond this and accept the true nature of these paintings we will be embraced by innocence."
- Bill Sullivan
Colin Cochran
Colin Cochran is an American artist who grew up on Cape Cod and is based in New York and Santa Fe; for many years, he has made mixed- medium paintings that are characterized by rich surface textures and an experimental use of pigments. Cochran's signature style combines flatly painted passages of color (as opposed to fully modeled details) and watery brushstrokes in basic object-and-ground images that gently abstract their subjects. Among them are plain, boxy houses, animals--especially crows, hens, sheep and fish--and cacti, reduced to simple, recognizable shapes. Cochran likes to evoke the varied textures that appear in nature, even as he cooks up new visual and physical surface effects of his own. He often starts with sheets of rough sandpaper, which he covers with gesso before brushing on coats of oil glaze, then colored, water-based paints. Those watery washes can never be fully absorbed by the support or by intermediary oily layers, but in time, they do dry. Sometimes he rubs raw pigment or charcoal scrapings into the surfaces while they are still wet, so that later, when dry, they are crusty but nonetheless lustrous. (Occasionally he uses an electric hair dryer to speed up the drying process, which creates cracks in the surface.)
Cochran also works on wood, metal and ceramic tile. Normally, his paintings are small and intimate-feeling. It may not be an accident that, in spirit and technique, they recall the strongly massed, broodingly romantic canvases of Albert Pinkham Ryder, who also painted faster-drying atop slower-drying layers so that an underlying application would pull an overlying one apart.
Edward M. Gomez
Art in America
Constance Jacobson 
The paintings and prints in this exhibition of the work of Constance Jacobson are a continuation of a series she started six years ago called Almost Biology. This term refers to fabricated scientific imagery, an imagined parallel universe. The fantasy images are not concerned with biological verisimilitude, but they do make reference to cellular communities. During the time she worked on them, her family’s experience with dementia also led her to consider the brain and confront a fear of loss of self. The large watercolors (from the Tome series) that suggest axial brain slices were created by painting only within a brain-shaped stencil that lay on top of the support paper. For many of them, india ink and watercolors were flowed onto the wet paper. For the artist, this seemed to be the right metaphorical strategy to express variations in mood and thought: ideas remaining fluid until they settle into a pattern. There are about thirty pieces in this repeated-motif series, although only a few are shown here.
The small Greymatter monotypes continue the cerebral theme. "Again, I chose materials for their simplicity and ease of use, in this case powdered graphite and oil. I think of these prints as idiosyncratic electroencephalographic recordings — thoughts as fluid virtual matter and as fading memories, thoughts reappearing and connecting with others."
Constance Jacobson
Photograph of La Wilson's Homage to Paul Klee by Michael Frederick.
