Paper may have become “more and more dismissible” in “the ever changing digital world,” but it provides a crucial connection and is used with great finesse in a show by Kate Rivers and Francene Levinson.
The “Paper, Trinkets, Baubles & Things” exhibit of collages and monotypes by Rivers, and Chinese style paper sculptures by Levinson is on view at Paseo Originals Art Gallery, 2920 Paseo.
An art faculty member for about the past 15 years at East Central University in Ada, Rivers uses pieces of “maps, notes, old books and other found materials” in her collages.
“My current work represents an investigation of memory, metaphor and spaces of home, and travel,” said the Ohio native who won an Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition fellowship in 2009.
Circular compositions, on stark white canvas or paper backgrounds, relate most directly to the next-like structure of Rivers’ earlier work, “woven as a bird weaves and constructs a home.”
Offering a good counterpoint are Rivers’ vertical works, in which numerous thin strips of paper suggest tall trees, and her horizontal collages referring to both plains and mountain landscape subjects.
A comic strip version of “Liberty” leads the people in Rivers’ circular collage of that title, which also contains postage stamps, map and music references, handwritten and printed texts, and part of a chocolate wrapper.
Even more elegant circular works by Rivers include “Magic Lantern,” which almost seems to be expanding, like a reverse vortex, and “Truth and Liberty,” which includes safety-pinned labels on old prize ribbons.
Rich colors are built up, using only thin horizontal strips of paper in such Rivers collages as “Oklahoma Sunrise” and “Oklahoma Sunset,” which contrast nicely with the more restrained blues and whites of a “Mountain Sunset.”
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