|
|
|
Photos Sue Harrison
Berta Walker uses her special sense of artistry to create an unusual show. |
|
Nancy Whorf’s painted dining table demands to be looked at and even touched. |
|
‘Cape Folk’ features unique people and their art
By Sue Harrison
Banner Staff
When gallery owner Berta Walker decided to put up a show called “Cape Folk” as her first exhibition of the season she says her aim was to highlight some of the original and fascinating artists that live on the Cape. The folk, she says, was more about the people than any classification of their art.
“They are originals, as in personality as well as their art forms,” she says of the artists in the show, which opens on Friday from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Berta Walker Gallery, 208 Bradford St., Provincetown.
She says the group of artists she selected share the same qualities of experimentation, mold-breaking and always formidable execution.
This isn’t folk art so much as an attitude about art, Walker says, describing artists like Danielle Mailer who paints life-sized cutouts of people decorated in intense color combinations or the Kacergis father-and-son team who have been making art with their welding tools for two generations.
“Clarence and Michael Kacergis, everybody knows who they are,” she says pointing to a metal humming bird approaching a brilliantly hued metal daisy. “These are the kind of people and works I wanted to highlight, really Cape originals.”
She brings out some fanciful birdhouses by furniture maker Jim Manning and a collection of four large wooden blocks that spell out “HOPE.” “He’s a genuine folk guy,” she says.
The point of the show, she explains, is not about defining pieces of art as better or worse, it’s about taking pieces that don’t necessarily fit neatly into categories and just seeing them as different and letting them bring their own informed sensibility to the viewer.
And maybe, she says, it’s about people who have a folksy sense of being. People like Phyllis Sklar who makes jewelry and whimsical paintings. Or Janice Frishkopf who is legally blind, or, more accurately, living with extremely low vision, who manages to paint exquisite patterned canvases.
Other artists in the show include Nancy Whorf (showing an amazing folk-art style trompe l’oeil dining table), Polly Burnell, Peter Hunt, Nancy Nicol, Hyman Shrand, Izzy Sklar, Gertrude Graham Smith, Agnes Weinrich and a few others.
“These are people going along in their own lives,” Walker says. “I want to get them out of their art closets and into people’s consciousness. It’s an opportunity for me to show some truly hidden treasures.”
artseditor@provincetownbanner.com
|
Tingle talks the talk — and puts the ‘fun’ in political function
Outer Cape Gallery Listings
|
|
|
|
|
May 22nd, 2008