Hobart and William Smith Colleges

7 February 2014 Pollack '55, Gallery Featured

A five-person art show curated by Edward T. Pollack 55 was the subject of an art review in the Portland Press Herald. Owner of A Fine Thing: Edward T. Pollack Fine Arts in Portland, Maine, Pollack has an extensive collection that includes etchings, lithographs, woodcuts, drawings, and photographs and other print media. He also has a collection of rare books and antiques, and is a member of the International Fine Print Dealers Association of America, the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America and the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers.

The current five-person show at A Fine Thing: Edward T. Pollack Fine Arts is a great reminder that gallery directors are some of Maines art assets, wrote Daniel Kany in the Press Herald. Pollack has assembled a show of artists whose work reflects back on each other in such a way that elevates all of the work.

Pollack earned his B.A. in philosophy from Hobart College. While on campus, he was a deans list student, was active in the Herald and the Board of Control. He was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. A longtime supporter of the Colleges, last year Pollack made the generous donation of five sketches as an emblematic gesture toward a legacy gift to HWS, in which he intends to donate other pieces from his collection.

The full review from the Portland Press Herald follows.

Portland Press Herald
Art Review: Five Artists at A Fine Thing: Edward T. Pollack Fine Arts in Portland
Daniel Kany December 22, 2013

The current five-person show at A Fine Thing: Edward T. Pollack Fine Arts is a great reminder that gallery directors are some of Maines art assets. Pollack has assembled a show of artists whose work reflects back on each other in such a way that elevates all of the work.

Walking into the gallery, you first see drawings by Mario Rivoli a Denver artist whose beaded flowers have long been an ambient accessory in Portlands most comfortable gallery. Rivolis show component comprises a suite of portrait drawings from around 1971 when he and Pollack were friends living in New York City. While your first impression might be that the works are dated, it only takes a moment to notice Rivolis extraordinary draftsmanship. His H.M. Koutoukas, for example, looks like Ozs Cowardly Lion recast as a questionable detective in Dirty Harry.

Rivolis pencil flies over his subjects wild mane and flutters deftly amongst the folds of his then-chic turtleneck sweater. Koutoukass penetrating gaze is accessorized by a cigarette jutting out from under his fabulously manly moustache.
Its an extraordinary drawing. Koutouskas clearly wanted to be a character and Rivoli was happy to indulge him. Yet, while the style and aesthetic of both the drawing and the model reach back to a very specific moment of American culture, Rivolis energized and masterful pencil work lift this drawing to something much more dynamically vital than an ephemeral snapshot. Pollack has made available paragraphs Rivoli wrote about each of his subjects, and the bit about Koutoukas resembling Rodins Balzac rings true: He is an essentially timeless type.

Bookending the show is Wyatt Barrs set of six portraits recognizable as six homeless men from the streets of Portland. The images look like Chuck Close-style portraits created by clicking the artistic/paint daubs effect in Photoshop. However, a closer look reveals these are technically extraordinary ink-wash drawings. The constricted value of the images that dovetails with their flatly matte texture is the result of a rare (unique?) technique in which Barr lays down about 30 layers of liquid masque, each washed very thinly with sumi. The aggregate layers, he explains in a statement posted with the work, build up into a thick coating of rubberized masque, which I peel off and discard in the trash bin like the molted skin of some alien creature.

While I am no fan of work that requires content explanation, this transparency is welcome: This is a technique that we could not possibly fathom unless the artist explains it.

Barrs work binds itself to Rivolis with unexpected force. Rivolis only color work is a portrait of Danny Morales. While his afro and sensuous lower lip could help him pass for some kind of star, Rivolis tender quip about him reveals Morales was just out of prison and really interested in something to eat.

While Rollin Leonard and Clint Fulkerson are more about numerical logic and steps in drawings, their work also ties in with unexpected elegance. Leonard is represented by three works. Two are digital drawings using dozens of images of a single models arm. The other is a video portrait in which a models head is divided into 17 bands rotating at various speeds and lining up every 36 seconds. Its the math of musical harmonics or highly composite numbers, but it first reminded me of the solar system, with the top Mercury-quick and the bottom Pluto-slow.

While the Lilia/360 video is entrancing, its companion works are surprising subtle. One looks like an anemone or a ball of twine created out of several hundred different photographs of one persons arms. Its a work that gets more fascinating the longer you consider it: rather than a pastiche of different parts, it feels like a unified, single organism. On one hand, its repeated units align it directly with the traditional post-impressionist style of Barrs drawings, but on the other hand, it reaches towards the fractal math of Fulkersons abstractions.
Fulkersons elegantly presented drawings are self-consciously geometrical, but they are made one line at a time (either black ink on white paper or white on black paper) and so develop with the natural/biological fractal logic underlying both modes of Leonards work.

Fulkerson is one of Maines most promising emerging contemporary artists; and seeing his work in this context-rich show is particularly revealing.
Fulkersons work also interacts with Kimberly Converys scribbly-wit drawings. While Fulkersons systems are geometrical and only seem to ironically gambol into art history jokes (Vasarely, Escher, etc.), Converys scenes have a New Yorker cartoon feel via their lighthandedness and diminutive scale. They appear to find sense and then fall apart. A few, however, seem to be straightforward landscapes, but even in this mode, Converys spatial quirks cant help but wink and twinkle.

Pollack has curated a show in which the artists work all shines back on the others bringing out the best in each. Its one of Maines best drawing shows of 2013.

Freelance writer Daniel Kany is an art historian who lives in Cumberland. He can be contacted at:
dankany@gmail.com

ART REVIEW

FIVE ARTISTS: THEIR WORK WYATT BARR, KIMBERLY CONVERY, CLINT FULKERSON, ROLLIN LEONARD, MARIO RIVOLI
WHERE: A Fine Thing: Edward T. Pollack Fine Arts, 29 Forest Ave., Portland
WHEN: Through Jan. 24. Closing reception, 5 to 7 p.m. Jan. 24
HOURS: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday. Closed Christmas and New Years.
INFO: 699-2919; edpollackfinearts.com