Artomatic Energymatic Daggermatic

Written by Lenny Campello
Published December 02, 2004
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Put together the Stephen Kingesque feel of the room, the moist sound effects, the outdated chrome and dirty tile bath stations, and the human parts, and you have an installation that would give Hannibal Lechter a nightmare. It's brilliant and somebody better put police ankle trackers on Tattelman now. sculpture by Senegal

A couple more artists who deserve to be mentioned in the Hannibal Lechter art list are the very good and macabre sculptures by Stephon Senegal: this is a young artist to keep an eye on; in my opinion possibly the best sculpture in the entire show. Some other pieces by very good artists in this new trend of Lechterism are "Joroko" and also the installation "Sun Ray" by retro-recycling master Ray Jacobs.

M. Rion Hoffman really impressed me with her photography negative boxes installed along one of the main hallways. Hoffman's boxes are delicate and have that ability to bring the viewer in for an intimate, close-up exploration of whatever story this talented artist wants to deliver. However, her large photo-collages, displayed next to her boxes, appear brutish and heavy handed by comparison, although part of me kept being re-directed from them to her brilliant boxes.

photo by Matt DunnMatt Dunn is a mother load of photographic talent with a built-in magnet to attract, discover, capture on silver gelatin film, and then show us, the really interesting, throat-clearing substrata of human society that makes Diane Arbus' photographs look like Sears portraits. This is a master portraitist in his element.

In the glass room, Washington Glass School directors Tim Tate and Erwin Timmers have created the most professional looking set of rooms in the entire building and provided the means to discover a couple of new talents in that beautiful genre. Another fact that surfaces very quickly is that the Washington Glass School is certainly stamping its own imprimatur, its own "school brand" in a sense, upon many of our area's young glass artists. I particularly liked the figurative "man" vessels of Michael Janis, where Janis takes Tate's seminal idea of narrative biographical wall panels and marries it with Tate's apothecaries (nine of which were acquired by the Renwick Alliance) to deliver a fresh, new set of ideas in glass.

boat by Syl MathisIn these rooms I also liked Syl Mathis, who reminds us that the true beauty of glass lies mainly in its simplicity. Mathis delivers a series of pieces exploring the "boat" theme in glass. I preferred the simpler, more elegant forms by Mathis over some of the more elaborate pieces, perhaps made a bit distracting by their complex support stands and crafty materials.

Allison B. Miner is a very talented painter, and at the last Art-O-Matic, where I first discovered her small, in-your-face paintings, I singled her out as one of the best painters in that show. Miner is still one of the best painters in this show, and her talent with the brush and composition is clearly evident to the most casual observer. I do however, think that it is time for Miner to move on and push her enviable painting skills beyond the tight, close-up routine that she has come dangerously close to boxing herself in. This is a very good painter at the beginning of her career and I am sure that we are but seeing but a tiny bit of what Miner can and will deliver.crayon portrait by Barbaccia

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F. Lennox Campello is a widely published Washington, DC and Philadelphia based art critic, as well as an award winning artist and curator. He is also often heard on NPR and the Voice of America discussing visual art issues. Campello also reports on Mid Atlantic area art news for the TV show ArtsMedia News.
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Artomatic Energymatic Daggermatic
Published: December 02, 2004
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Section: Culture
Writer: Lenny Campello
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