Art Review
Artist changes approach, yet work retains femininity

By Virginia Wageman
Advertiser Art Critic

Katherine Love's "Play Nice/Look Nice," is a collage of oil, wax, thread, and fabric mounted on wood. Dana Forsberg

Linda Fong Linda Fong's "Veiled Mountain" is among 14 paintings on display in her show at The Contemporary Museum Cafe. Linda Fong

Chuck Davis Chuck Davis' "Makai" reflects his love of nature and distills the very essence of Hawai'i in its use of green and blue. Chuck Davis

In her show of new work at the Hawai'i Pacific University Art Gallery she demonstrates a firm grasp of her chosen medium and style, as the printed fabrics assume a visibly less-pronounced aspect of the works.

Love's process is to sew together pieces of printed and textured fabrics, then apply photocopy transfers of images to the fabrics before mounting them on masonite board. She then applies a layer of wax over all, and the panel is ready for painting.

In earlier works, Love allowed the patterns of the fabrics to dominate the compositions, with minimal overpainting. They were rather sweet collages of '50s-style fabrics and curtains, reminiscent of ruffled "cafÚ" curtains that used to be prominent features of kitchens.

In the current work, on the other hand, most of the fabric patterns disappear under layers of paint and wax. The patterns are subsumed by paint and images, emerging only in a few scraped away areas or in small sections that are left unpainted.

Thus, the printed fabrics become more the idea behind the artwork and less the actual image itself. The paintings are imbued with the spirit of the fabrics, however — suggestive of femininity, care-taking, even isolationism.

As if to pull these fabrics back to the surface of the pictures, Love occasionally outlines in paint selected areas of the preprinted floral patterns, creating a dynamic interaction between painting matrix and surface. See, for example, the stylized painted-on flowers that emerge from a darkly painted ground in several areas of "Play Nice/Look Nice."

This work embodies much of Love's concerns, with its collaged-on dolls' faces and patterns for dolls' clothing at the lower left. A piece of fringe at the right is so painted and waxed over that it becomes an abstract pattern, with open squares serving as windows into the composition. The back of a woman's fancy coiffure looms large over the center of the picture, becoming an abstraction.

There is no underlying ominous meaning to these works. Rather, they are simply statements on being female.

Indeed, Love seems to celebrate femininity, especially in works that incorporate old photographs of the matriarchal side of her family. In "Dual" (about the duality of women's roles) we see her grandmother as a young woman, wearing pants, and in "Peck" (about caretaking) there is a snapshot of her mother as a young child standing with an older woman wearing a housedress.

Love's little girl doesn't shriek at the sight of bugs or recoil at textbook diagrams of body parts. These kinds of images appear alongside the hairdos and paper dolls, as in "Guests," where a large beetle dominates one side of the composition, the other main image being a dining table with people gathered around it.

So in the end, all this femininity and domesticity encompasses the "puppy dogs' tails" of little boys along with the "sugar and spice," which is what is most appealing about Love's work.

Paintings of place

The Gallery at Ward Centre is showing new work by gallery artist Chuck Davis and raku vessels by invited artist Ken Kang, the latter characterized by unique covers and handles, and by their white crackle surfaces.

Davis' paintings reflect his love of nature and landscape, with a strong commitment to a sense of place. Works such as "Makai" and "Upcountry" (the Wai'anae Mountains) distill the very essence of Hawai'i in their broad expanses of greens and blues.

Other works, such as "La Bella Figura," are abstractions inspired by a recent visit to Italy, in particular by olive trees. And others, also related to place, are about time and exploration as well, with layer built upon layer, their scratched and wiped surfaces creating complex suggestions of history.

Ethereal landscapes

Linda Fong also is concerned with landscape as abstraction in her show of new work at The Contemporary Museum CafÚ (a fine reason to head up to Makiki Heights for lunch).

The cafÚ walls are lined with 14 small paintings, all 16 by 19 inches. Each is a lilting, lyrical abstraction, some exuberant and others serene. All have lush layerings of paint, with rich colors and evocative brush textures.

The titles — "Veiled Mountain," "Wandering Islands," "Black Cliff," for example — give the theme away as does the consistent horizontal format. These, however, are not landscapes inspired by specific place. Rather, as the artist tells us in her exhibition statement, they serve to evoke "ethereal places of mystery."

Though the landscapes of Davis are grounded in a specific place and those of Fong derive from places in the artist's mind, the results for both are remarkable as distillations of form, color and space creating landscapes that are mindscapes as well.

Virginia Wageman can be reached at VWageman@aol.com.

Art Gallery, Hawai'i Pacific University

Through Sept. 28

544-0287

Chuck Davis

Gallery at Ward Centre

Through Aug. 24

597-8034

Linda Fong

The Contemporary Museum Café

Through Oct. 14

526-1322