Exhibit previews art in sale

Published: September 7, 2008

About three dozen of the 150 works in the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition's 12x12 benefit show are on view in the lobby gallery at Leadership Square. The preview exhibit runs through Sept. 14, followed by the one-night 12x12 Art Show and Sale, which begins at 7 p.m. Sept. 20 at the Fred Jones Industries Building, 900 W Main.

Work in both shows must be no larger than 12 inches square, or 12 inches cubed in the case of three-dimensional creations. Subjects in the preview range from a lithograph of multiple tornadoes lifting houses aloft by Katherine Liontas-Warren to an oil of a serendipitous "Flying Frog” by Bryan Dahlvang.

Tiffany English's acrylic of "Maude on a Mat” depicts a bulldog with woeful but soulful eyes. A St. Bernard, dressed in a military uniform as "General Well Being,” is the subject of a delightful mixed media portrait by Sue Clancy. Marsha Mahan directs our attention to the elegant curving leaves of a sunlit desert plant in an acrylic, and George Oswalt captures the cool, classic beauty of a woman's head and shoulders in an oil.

O. Gail Poole pokes fun at Western art in an exaggerated, almost comic strip-like oil of Crazy Horse, wearing a fancy cavalry uniform and big hat. Much more restrained is Dixie Erickson, who incorporates a seated frontier woman into a quilt-like, mixed media collage composition, done in muted shades of blue and gray.

Colorful but lighthearted is the approach found in a mixed media painting by Michi Susan of a geisha wearing a crimson, calligraphy-covered kimono, holding a fan with an image of a handsome man on it. White, childlike faces and busts "Emerge” from the rhythmically striated picture plane, giving a strong sculptural dimension to Frank Moran's mixed media composition of that title.

Playing artfully with the separation between painting and sculpture as well as that between art and reality, Paul Medina adheres strips to the surface of an abstract, mixed media work he calls "Knot Undone.” A dramatic, illusionistic crack in the pastel-hued, gridded, carefully controlled surface of an acrylic canvas by Jennifer Barron becomes symbolic of how "The Best Laid Plans” can go awry.

Even more abstract are paintings by Suzanne King Randall and Steve Tomlin. Randall creates an elegant interplay of translucent planes of color in her mixed media work, while gold dots and deep blue passages suggest a "Winter Interlude” in Tomlin's acrylic.

— John Brandenburg

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