I drive past Grover’s Table a lot, like almost every day, and every single time I say to myself, in my best Tina Fey voice, I want to go to there! Carthage native and Westhill High School art teacher Jamie Ashlaw is exhibiting his vintage sign-infused paintings in the Fayetteville, New York restaurant until the end of the month. Last night I attended his artist’s reception. So, that happened.
I met Jamie once before at the Art on Porches event last summer. I bought a note card print of his Palace Theater painting. I really admire his work! It has the ability to transport its viewer into the past evoking a sense of nostalgia for both local culture and national advertising. He uses Golden Artist acrylic glazes, which allow him the ability to create precise lines within the lettering. The canvases become veritable photographic replicas of their resource counterparts. Exquisite!
Grover’s Table is a gorgeous place and I would REALLY love the opportunity to exhibit there, but I have to say that Jamie’s artwork looks like it belongs on the walls of this beautifully renovated exposed-brick-ey space. They should consider buying the collection – at least to put up periodically in between other artist rotations. Meanwhile, he has agreed to display them in the Chittenango Middle School library as my final artist for the year! We will install his show around spring break.
Jamie donated this piece in the above photo. It hangs at the host stand by the front door. A vintage-like sign depicting Grover Cleveland, who actually once lived in the neighborhood, only a few blocks east. So cool!
According to their web-site Grover’s Table is open as follows:
Tues.-Thurs. 4:30-9:00pm
Fri.-Sat. 4:30-930pm
They do not serve lunch but luncheons are available for groups of 35 or more
Closed on Sunday & Monday
Grover’s Table is located at 104 Limestone Plaza Fayetteville, NY 13066. For reservations call (315) 632-4907.
I’m not going to lie – Land of the Lost was my favorite TV show of the 1970s. I watched it on Saturday mornings at around 10 or 11 am. There were not that many episodes, so I am sure I watched re-runs of re-runs dozens of times until the shows were ingrained into my skull, which is not a bad thing, lol…right? Loved the whole concept – it was the first time I had heard/learned the word paradox. The show might have bad special effects by today’s standards, but I think it still resonates for me (of course, I have the series on DVD, duh). Each episode was written by the premiere Sci-Fi script writers of the day. I mean, it was a great show.
I also loved/still love Planet of the Apes! OMG, again, the idea of a paradox. In Land of the Lost, the only way they could escape the matrix was to have another them pop into it, thus continuing the cycle (paradox). And if you watch all five POTA films, you discover that time travel causes the paradox and sets the whole ape takeover in motion (whoops, spoiler alert!). Love that stuff.
Lori Nix likes it too. She’s a few years younger than me and she’s from the mid-west (Kansas), and so her formative years created for her a fascination with destruction of civilization as we know it. Pair those two TV/film phenomena with Towering Inferno, Logan’s Run and life in tornado alley and you will come to understand this artist’s obsession with the comedy of demise.
Once in 1993, I borrowed my mom’s car and spent the night at a friend’s house. It was about a month before the Blizzard of ’93 so it was a brutal winter. In my defense, my car’s door was frozen open, so the only way I could drive it is if I drove with my left hand and held the door shut with my right. Anyhow, I got blamed for my father’s car accident because he had to drive Mom to work the next day because I had her car. (It was a minor fender bender).
Nix has a similar story only hers is really more the stuff of legend. Her mom dropped her off at a movie theater the night of a horrendous tornado that just missed her mother whose car had just pulled into their driveway. She rolled down the windows and ducked for her life, like a character in a horror film, just as the tornado passed over her. That storm managed to take out every other house on their street. Lori Nix’s father blamed her for nearly killing her mother. It’s like we lived in a parallel universe!
And yet, that’s where the similarities end. I am happy go-lucky me who never watches the news, crime shows or that lot, and steers clear of negative circumstances. Nix dwells on the eery, macabre damage and destruction of standing at the peripheries of doom, but takes it all in stride with her immensely dark humor.
NIx and her partner work in tandem, both creating these especially detailed little vignettes – of cars plunging in the drink, of apocalyptic subway cars and laundrymats, of beautiful places turned yucky-yucky.
This work is painstakingly slow, intimate and fun, similar to creating little puppet theaters. Apparently, their home in Brooklyn is a bit of a construction site with two cats finding their way into the “environments”. These were my favorite pictures in her slide show and I have to say, they made me enjoy her talk all the more.
The work is whimsical and silly and yet there is a seriousness to the dedication with which they create the art. I love that commitment! She is doing a two-week residency at Golden Artist Colors, Inc. in New Berlin, NY, and that’s where I met her.
Nix photographs her vignettes using an 8″ x 10″ camera and these photos take days – to get the lighting just right and to remove any excess cat hair caught in the crossfire.
The photographs are quite large – 30″ x 40″ and bigger, and have been exhibited all over the nation and the world – Italy, Germany, Australia, and Canada!
There’s really nothing I like better than a solo exhibition. It’s a chance to see an artist’s body of work and learn their point of view. It’s an opportunity to understand the visual and maybe connect with it and the artist in an emotional way.
Susan Roth is exhibiting abstract work in three of the four main galleries at the Everson Museum of Art. She works with Golden Artist acrylics and has a personal relationship with the company. She’s suggested products based on her needs, as written in one of the artist statements on the walls of the show.
I think these blurbs help the average Joe non-artist/non-patron understand how important her work is. That she spent a lifetime experimenting with materials to the point that she designed some as well. It’s just beyond cool.
There are paintings and sculptures and combinations of these. Unusually shaped canvases that make you want to reach out and touch them.
Are they hard and crumbly like pumice stone or smushy plastic a la Silly Putty? They really draw you into Roth’s universe and the more you look, the more you want to remain transfixed. Each piece dedicates itself to the next and you witness a visual life. Not sure if I would get the same response if I only viewed one of her pieces, but they are just incredible all together in this space.
I was at the member’s art reception on Friday night. The show, sponsored by Pathfinder Bank is titled Handmade: The Art of Susan Roth, and runs through August 30, 2015. The Everson Museum of Art is located at 401 Harrison Street, Syracuse, NY. Go to http://www.everson.org for more information.
On Saturday, I attended an art reception at Wine 105 – Art & Wine Pairing: the Not So Still Lifes. I was there before for the Diana Godfrey show. This time Mark Raush is exhibiting his large scale flower still-lifes.
They are also acrylic paintings, filled with gestural lines of vibrant color and texture! I think Raush’s work is the kind people want in their homes – a statement piece the average Joe can understand.
They are artsy-familiar, if that makes sense. I wish I could do a trade with him. art for art, but these pieces command thousands. They are in the $7,000-$8,000 range (they take Visa and Mastercard), while I am currently selling paintings at around $200-ish.
Anne Novado curated the exhibit. She also coordinates shows for Gallery 4040 (4040 New Court Ave, Syracuse, NY), which has another opening this Friday night. Mark Raush has more to show us there, as well as Arlene Abend, Katya Bratslavsky, and Walter Melnikow. Wine 105 is at the corner of Hawley and Green Street (and Catherine Street) in Syracuse.
