Ventura County Reporter
Art & Culture
May 18, 2007
http://www.vcreporter.com/article.php?id=3404&IssueNum=72
Copyright ©2007 Southland Publishing. All rights reserved.
One-way ticket to the void
Upfront Gallery offers up the Ommm of the modern world
by Stacey Wiebe
"Path Central" by Dawn Arrowsmith
18.5 x 18 inch mixed media
Copyright ©2007 Dawn Arrowsmith. All rights reserved.
Oh, the tangled webs we weave, as while weaving in and out of traffic, weaving responses to our bosses, our friends and the lady in line in front of us at Vons ‹ and weaving our delicate, frazzled nerves into fiery, frustrated knots.
But even dead-center in the madness, there are times when we're able to tap into the perfect silence of an interior destination where the incessant ringing of the phone, the drill of the daily news and the ceaseless demands on our time don't register. It's this place that Dawn Arrowsmith describes with succinct visual clarity in her solo exhibition, titled simply New Collages, Paintings and Drawings at Ventura's Upfront Gallery.
Many of the works include authentic maps of Los Angeles, complete with appropriate zip codes and streets, over which meditative and somewhat Zen-like Buddha-esque type silhouettes sit in contemplation. In one such collage, titled "Path/Central," the faceless figure sits in the center of a map over which a salmon-colored, transparent sheet of color with a circle cut out of its middle is placed.
The similarly transparent figure sits inside the circle in contemplation in the midst of circling arteries of highways ‹ like the 10, the 710 and the 110, for instance ‹ and through the figure even more bits of map can be seen. The highways that surround the figure have been doctored to create complete circles so that, were anyone to actually drive them, they'd be on the road to nowhere.
Thematically, the works embrace the concept of finding balance in the chaos of daily life without rejecting that chaos outright. It demonstrates that meditation is a means of embracing the frenetic details of a rapidly spinning globe while simultaneously retaining a spiritual essence. The figures in Arrowsmith's paintings find peace in the chaos by maintaining a vigilant balance with it. The static silhouettes effortlessly communicate that the peace is there, in coexistence with the bustling arteries of city life, if we but choose to shut up and see it.
"To me, it's like keeping your calm and keeping your sanity in a world that's out of control," said Carolyn Friend, co-owner of Upfront Gallery, which specializes in quality, contemporary art. "This is all about meditation and trying to find quietness in a noisy world so full of stimulation that it's overwhelming. It's about finding that center no matter what goes on around you."
In another piece, the meditative figure sits in a green circle near Sun Valley, North Hollywood and Van Nuys as various roads and highways run directly into its head. Pieces like this one, said Paul Benavidez, gallery co-owner, are nods to the increasingly important role that technology plays in the workings of the world. "I think these pieces are more about us connecting with the circuitry and an homage to circuitry in the way that we're right on the cusp of complete wireless technology," Benavidez said. "We're actually losing circuitry, and I think these works speak to that in an unconscious way."
In reference to Arrowsmith's exhibition, technical circuitry could also be analogous to the circuitry of communities, to dialogue and to communication. "If we don't connect, we cannot make changes in our environment and in all aspects of our lives," Benavidez said.
The exhibition also includes a few small works that represent the strain of finding the meditative void while thoughts of life's demands intrude. The pieces feature the meditative figure, over whom are written phrases such as, "ommm flu shot now ommm," "e-mail problem ommm," and "Lindsey's birthday in December ommm call Phil about recap ommm."
Also part of Arrowsmith's collection are a series of "circle paintings" that are just what they sound like: paintings of circles. The paintings, each of one circle, are large productions of pure color edged with fainter versions of the same color. For instance, one such salmon-colored circle is circled by a more transparent border of salmon.
Interestingly, staring at the circle paintings for any length of time tends to make a strikingly different color jump out at the viewer. Purple undertones, for example, tend to pop out of the green circle, while yellow filters through the salmon.
The circles could represent virtually anything, as they are repeated constantly in the landscapes of nature in the form of the sun, moon, rock formations and the like. Circles can also represent a continuum of life and existence, a ceaseless path that contains all. Benavidez notes that the edges of the circles appear to vibrate and "shimmer like the shells around atoms."
"It's a fundamental shape that represents so much about what existence is about," he said.
Arrowsmith's exhibit will be featured at the Upfront Gallery, 267 South Laurel St., Ventura, through June 11. The gallery is open Fridays and Saturdays from 12 p.m.-5 p.m. and Sundays from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, visit www.upfrontgallery.org, or call 340-1448 or 405-4954.
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