The Schick Gallery in Skidmore’s Art Department periodically mounts fabulous exhibitions around a specific material or technique: Graphite and ceramics were featured in years past. This spring, they present art made of various metals in “7 Metalsmiths at Work.” This show is filled with tactile, precious beauty, but also rare nuance and surprise.
You will surely be drawn to the glistening golden surfaces of Lynn Batchelder’s “Unearthed Ochre” series. These three small, jewel like tablets look like discovered relics, begging to be seen not under gallery Plexiglas but within a covert chamber where their anodized golden gleam will beckon, highlighting the irregularly faceted, almost tortured surface of each.
Don’t go thinking the objects in this show are simply precious and jewel-like — all seven artists push into unexpected zones, where objects and surfaces suggest one thing and then lead you somewhere else. The most obvious might be the deceptive little bowls by Myra Mimlitsch-Gray, which look like artfully handmade glazed clay, but are enamel coated copper. Nearby, her rough-hewn pewter bottomless vessels might not trick you, but they are equally remarkable for their irregular precision.
Art made out of metal can be rough, raw, massive, rusty, broken and primal. But not here. This is refined, rarefied stuff: every glint, edge and transparency is masterfully finessed. There are added layers beyond formal flourishes, too, as in the pair of wall mounted works by Jennifer Crupi called “Unguarded Gestures.” These each begin with a rust-colored wooden board on the wall, and in front of this a floating layer of clear acrylic with a dotted outline of torso and arms. Dangling farther out is an exquisitely wrought aluminum form made of wire and small, curving objects echoing the gesture shown.
“7 Metalsmiths at Work”
Where: Schick Art…
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