Art Review
Art puts new perspective on 'jet set'

Always energetically pushing the envelope of the avant-garde in Hawai‘i, Rich Richardson of Salon 5 has organized a tribute to travel inside his gallery walls.

Jet Set Salon 5 Through Feb. 4 550-2855

"Jet Set," the latest installation, features work of 30 invited artists from Honolulu, Maui, Kaua‘i, Los Angeles, New York and Seattle, along with SPECIAL PRESCRIPTION, an artists’ collective.

If mingling with the arts is on your New Year’s resolution list, plan to attend a free 8 p.m. Feb. 24 performance at the gallery. Cherie DeHaven will dance, Hitomi Miyazaki will sing opera in five languages from five countries, and John Brekke will direct a commissioned skit written by Prad Ramamirtham.

The art exhibit is lively, irreverent, humorous, thought-provoking, beautiful, frightening and turbulent. The work, techniques and varied talents are a jolting and engaging collection of paintings, drawings, photographs, sculpture, assemblages and ceramic.

"Jet Set," Rich Richardson, mixed-media painting.	Postcard art promoting "Jet Set" performances at Salon 5.

Randomly displayed, the better-known artists on board include Sally French, exposing a triptych of prints involving the experiences of Rocket Girl swinging with the jet set; Gaye Chan, a dreamy location diptych of chromogenic prints; Linny Morris-Cunningham, a photo series "HNL-MKK-LNY"; and New York’s Michael Dickas’ "Found Image," a retro print of ’60s luggage.

Lori Hassold, the Los Angeles artist of a "Rocks Don’t Fly" diptych, frames her painting of a flying rock with duct tape and rivets, and writes in her artist’s hypothesis, "Rocks have no will to fly; therefore, rocks don’t fly."

There are myriad interpretations (some not so obvious) of what "Jet Set" means: air sickness bags with fine pencil drawings of locations around the world in "Air Sick Series" by Katherine Love; St. Marko’s "AirRage," a series

of emergency flight card safety drawings overlaid with primarily violent accounts of in-flight situations; Buck Silva’s comical "Holding Pattern," featuring a silver airplane wing emerging from a cotton cloud covered with velcro hair rollers; and Rich Richardson's powerful mixed-media "Jet Set" painting, centering the underbelly of a jet plane against a blue abstract journal background.

Frank Sheriff’s "untitled" bronze sculpture perhaps gives the show its clearest interpretation: From a lightning-bolt pedestal, a strange creature, with a pair of human legs attached to bird wings with a locomotive on a track for a head, takes flight.

Editor’s note: Art critic Virginia Wageman is on a brief leave. Hale‘iwa artist, teacher and former gallery owner Victoria Gail-White is sitting in for a couple of weeks.

[back to top]