ENTERTAINMENT

The chosen: Few from a large field in local exhibition

Harriet Howard Heithaus
harriet.heithaus@naplesnews.com; 239-213-6091

514. 23. 7.

Those rapidly diminishing numbers start with the count of all the artists who entered the National Art Encounter exhibition at Naples Art Association.

The end point, a rewardingly high one, is the number of Southwest Florida artists whose works made the cut into the 23-work show, which opens Thursday, March 16.

Naples Art Association curator Jack O'Brien says he's happy to see how many Naples artists — five of the seven — are in the show. But he's even happier that this show  expresses one of  the purposes of the exhibition.
"I think what we've seen this year shows our viewers what is going around the country in new processes and techniques," he said. "You can see the techniques in the use of recycled and found items such as the Roth piece (by Thomas Roth of Santa Fe, New Mexico)."

Roth's 70½-by-40 inch wood panel is shrink-wrapped in white plastic, its surface made prickly by the tines of  white plastic forks glued to the panel. At points the sheet is gaping with holes like hungry spectral mouths,  created by what appears to be melting heat.

Detail from "TERMINAL" by Jim Granito

Richard Salinas, of, ironically, Mechanicsville, Virginia, created algorithms, "a sort of artificial intelligence," explained O'Brien, to allow the computer to create its own 3D-printed piece of sculpture. The biologically bent white, orange and blue piece is titled "Widget W01," because as Salinas' statement reasoned, "If a machine was to take the initiative to create, it would undoubtedly create a widget."

Computers also figured into Naples artist Jim Granito's "TERMINAL." Granito became fascinated with what he referred to as "strip painting," but saw its limitations: "I realized I had to make those lines DO something," he said.

"2 He and Sustaining" by Renee Rey, Naples

He has. The 40-by-71 inch digital painting, transferred to aluminum, is a veritable battle of jewel-tone lines with thickets of brighter scratch lines, largely in purples, corals, seafoam and yellow. Underneath, partly hidden, is what appears to a miniature creation of the same style.

Some of the exhibition's fascination is in its transparency of process. O'Brien  said he asked Joseph Halperin, a new Naples resident who has come from Baltimore, why he had left the penciled outlines on his mesmerizing canvas of circles that converge onto a central rectangle.

"I Need No Orders," by Jeff Whipple

"His answer was 'Honesty,'" O'Brien said.

Another artist, Marco Pinter of Santa Barbara, California, creates photographs from heat-sensitized fabric behind a dancer that changes color with the proximity of the dancer's body. A continuously playing monitor shows  the evolving intersections of  dancer and fabric, which allows Pinter to capture the "ephemeral' art of dance and make it, as his title says, "Less Ephemeral."

Some of the most arresting art is traditional. One that immediately captures the eye is "Say No More,"  a 28-by-17-by-11 inch ceramic torso created by Diane Lublinski of Pembroke Pines. Lublinski shingled the aged figure with sayings gleaned from her own family, tiny creatures that represent her fears, shells from the ocean she loves, and a winged soul gazing out with eyes a shade lighter than the gunmetal blue of its owner.

"Say No More," by Diane Lublinski

Its meditative, slightly apprehensive face is gripping, and slightly eerie, as if it knows the viewer's thoughts as well as its own mind. O'Brien laughed recalling Lublinski as she dropped off her sculpture:

"She patted it on the head and said, 'Be good.'"

IF YOU GO

National Art Encounter

Where: Naples Art Association,  585 Park St, Naples

When: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays; exhibition is through April 15

Admission: Free

Something else: Artists' reception, 5:30-7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 16