Trio of exhibits focus on mixed media

By Victoria Gail-White
Advertiser Art Critic

•	'Emergent Records': Recent Works by Jianjie Ji 'Matter and Material': A Group Sculpture Exhibition of Hawai'i Artists 'Constant Color': New Work by Donna Broder and George Woollard Contemporary Museum at First Hawaiian Center 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fridays; closed on weekends and banking holidays Through April 13 999 Bishop St. 526-0232

The heart of the exhibit, in the downstairs lobby, focuses on mixed-media works related to prayer and culture. The playful, pure joy of color and pattern and the potency of sculptural forms fill the upstairs gallery areas.

'Emergent Records': Recent Work by Jianjie Ji

Ji's Asian cultural identity is explored from two different perspectives in this series of mixed-media paintings that focus on what connects humankind.

Born in 1957 in Shanghai, Ji has lived and worked in Hawai'i since 1986. He received a master's of fine arts degree from the University of Hawai'i along with numerous awards for his work.

In his Ash Series of 10 "Baishan" mixed-media works, Ji incorporates what remains of the offerings of temple prayers: ash, candles, incense sticks and paper money. During the controlled burning process of making this art, he enclosed the pieces in elaborately constructed Chinese silk-lined boxes.

"I used 30,000 sticks of incense for this part of the series," Ji says. "The boxes were originally made to be put on the floor." But that wasn't an option for the exhibition space.

Ji uses ash as a metaphor for life and death (ashes to ashes), suffering, happiness, pain, success and love, and (in the act of praying and offering incense to the spirit world) as a way to remember the existence of what is not seen — our hopes and wishes. In this way, he hooks the viewer into a meditation right there in the middle of the bank lobby. How do our past and our futures connect? What connects us all? "We are all joined together in prayer," says Ji.

The lovely aroma from the 100,000 sticks of incense neatly stuffed into the three wooden vessels in front of the large ash painting "Record 12" gives Ji's work a sense of immediacy. You can actually smell the allegory. It's lovely.

Using temple ash as a medium for painting produces surprising results. The gray and white palette punctuated by the placement of red incense sticks gives it an ethereal and mysterious quality. For some, all that visibly remains of the cycle of life is ash, but the presence of being and the collective consciousness of prayers (regardless of religious preferences) lingers.

In his "Review and Revaluation Culture Series" Ji examines the past (through the insertion of fragments of traditional Chinese paintings and carved wooden folk art) and searches for a new, more global cultural experience through his abstract application of oil paint.

The beautiful red lacquer intensity of "Enculturation P.P." incorporates insets of a 19th-century wood carving and a Chinese silk painting along with oil paint, beeswax and pigment. Ji acknowledges the significance of his culture and clearly includes it in his process of transformation.

'Matter and Material': A Group Sculpture Exhibition of Hawai'i Artists

In the second-floor gallery, 28 sculptural works in a variety of media, display the efforts of 14 artists from the Big Island, Kaua'i, Maui and O'ahu.

Lonny Tomono of Hawai'i writes in his statement that he is interested in the common thread running through different cultures. His assorted wood and beeswax "Blind Bird Mask" evokes both a simpler era when man revered the avian world and our present inability to see the destruction we have caused that world.

A. Kimberlin Blackburn of Kaua'i's glass beads and acrylic on wood sculptures have been evolving steadily over the years. Her shrines, titled "Homeland Meandering" and "Solarea Draws in Her Green," are individual islands complete with beaded water, trees and flora. The reflective quality of the beads as well as her choice of colors and patterns tell a visual story of a joyous, idyllic life.

Maui artist Ditmar Hoerl's "Eclipse" is a laminated polyester white cone with a black interior mounted on wood with molded black metal rods. It is minimal but striking. The circular interior shape changes as you move around it. "Stepping out of the boundaries of convention to reveal hidden meaning is part of my goal," he writes in his statement.

Ron Smith's wood sculptures are constructed with wood rockets, boats, ladders, branches, lightning bolts, house shapes and aluminum clouds. "For me, a work is much more revealing when ambiguity is the essential quality," he writes in his statement.

It is important to walk around and peek into Christy Vail's delightful ceramic obelisks "Guardian of the Ordinary I" and "Guardian of the Ordinary II." The outside is embossed with fragments of printed words and the irregular windows and platforms reveal clay scissors, thread, pincushions, buttons, shoes, lipstick, pins, teapots, keys and a statue of the Virgin Mary.

O'ahu ceramicist Yoko Haar, who began experimenting with clay seed forms a year ago, continues in that genre. Her black seed forms are becoming even more realistic.

Keiko Hatano's sensuous white wool sculptures "Untitled 6" and "Untitled 5" convey a soft erotic quality. It's a good thing they are under clear plastic because the urge to stroke them is undeniable.

In contrast, the large white wood "Device" by Jon Ikegami, with its three curved armatures with wooden pedals, is industrial-looking and reminiscent of the clutch, brake and gas pedals of a car.

May Izumi's three mixed-media sculptures were motivated by a combined literature and history class she took at the University of Hawai'i that examined freaks and how they are treated by society. "'Jenny and Elvira at the Circus' are twins joined at birth," says Izumi. "There is a bird under their caged skirt, so not only are they on display, they become the display for the bird. We tend to lump abnormal people together and in that process they loose their individuality. We outcast them and yet we continue to be fascinated by them. If you look really hard enough we are all actually freaks."

All of Izumi's sculptures begin with words, not sketches. "I write down phrases and words and then relate them together before I make the piece," she says. In this way, all her clay sculptures have a story and are built from the bottom up on metal armatures.

Whimsical yet poignant, the kinetic bronze sculptures of Corinne Kamiya, "Weight Against The Birds" and "Finding the Balance," have a liveliness that gives them the appearance of being larger than their actual size.

Wonderfully irreverent, John Koga's "The Great Equalizer," a sculpture of a gold-leafed toilet, sits on a tall, textured, stainless-steel pedestal. "The toilet is a symbol of equality and therefore should be worshipped," he writes in his statement.

Lynn Weiler Liverton incorporates found objects into her sculptures. In "Nesting II," bird nests, hair, a pair of dentures, wishbones, a lock with a key and a compass, and a purse with coins and shells connect in a paraffin house. History is rearranged.

"Whether it is casting, welding, forging or fusing, my artwork revolves around the process of transforming a solid material into a liquid state and back into a solid," writes Jason Minami. "Night and Day," a cast bronze, cast glass and steel sculpture is an exquisite example of the sense of movement he is able to achieve in his work.

Lori Uyehara's mixed-media wood "Rainforest Studies" (an ongoing theme for her) features 10 small, delicately carved wood sculptures of plants, bugs and birds mounted on top of a collaged rice-paper curtain attached to a chip-wood board. The white curtain has burnt concentric circles (suggestive of tree rings and the cycles of life) with a few red squares. In this theatrical setting the familiar becomes precious.

Uyehara uses recycled wood in all her sculptures. In "Roadrunner's Juggling Act" and "Roadrunner's Next Big Thing," layers of light and dark woods fit like a puzzle into two figures with clawed feet. "We try to do so many things all at once while we are running around," she says.

'Constant Color': New Work by Donna Broder and George Woollard

The combined works of Donna Broder and George Woollard are a welcome riot of color.

Broder's 36 intimate, abstract monotypes were made at the Vermont Studio Center where she did a six-week artist-in-residence program. Inspired by five small zinc plates that were left behind at the center, she made five monotype prints for each series. Her pure color values were achieved by using oil based etching inks without modifiers.

Many of the approximately 4-by-4-inch prints are color conversations. In the "Portal," "Cosmic," "Bleeding Hearts," "Piano Music" and "Violet on Blue Cityscape" series a palette of similar colors appear to shift and speak.

"Color is one of the most important things in my life," says Broder. "It is uplifting. It stands out and makes me feel good."

The six 12-by-9-inch prints are equally engaging. "View at Top of the Ladder" evokes a portal to another dimension through the transparency of the magenta semicircle.

Broder has been printmaking for eight years. In the fall, she will be one of 24 printmakers that will contribute to a Portfolio of Shangri La based on a visit to the site.

Woollard's large (mostly 48-by-48-inch) acrylic and collage on panel paintings are an outgrowth of monotype.

"I wanted to work in a large scale and couldn't do it with a print," he says. "I used the same materials for my plates but made it like a big plate. It looks like canvas but it is plywood."

The surfaces of the paint in the fiery orange red "Flash Point" are gouged with line drawings. The paint is rubbed with a rag to give it a transparent glow. Woollard also prints on the papers he collages onto his paintings with patterns made by using stamps and silkscreens. He has organized a portfolio of color-coordinated collage papers that he uses like a palette.

"Requisite Reasoning," a painting featuring large areas of yellow, orange and green, took Woollard more than two years to complete. "The artist's job is to make it look easy," he says.

Woollard will lead another workshop in Italy in May. Information: 737-5918. He enjoys collaborating with other artists, and also is featured in a ceramic collaboration with Steve Martin at the Gallery at Ward Center through Feb. 27.