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Charrière
Huebsch
Scary |
Immediately following Lynn
S. Mullins' welcoming remarks, the morning's Master of Ceremonies, Bill
Dane drew upon the riches of the Newark Public Library to demonstrate
the international scope of what he called "the artist's book movement." As
he has done for six of the seven years the NJBAS has been in existence,
Dane then introduced the New Jersey artists who formed the panel of
morning speakers. The first speaker was the Swiss born painter/artist
Gérard Charrière. Charrière
spoke of powerful moments in his life to which his art constitutes a
lyrical and deeply personal response, and emphasized the artistic
responsibility of perfecting one's technique. Charrière's whimsical and
delicate imagery (e.g., his use of hair, driftwood and other fragile
discarded/found objects) in combination with rich, saturated, color and
heavy, abrasive materials, such as sand and stone, imbue his unique work
with contradictory sensations of evanescence and obdurate
durability.
Rand
Huebsch echoed Charrière's valorization of technique by examining
methods of printmaking and the various effects achieved by different
papers and metals. He conspicuously walked around questions of content.
The strange beasts (Medieval beastiary, Blake, Sendak?), which look out
silently from his timeless prints and tunnel books were given to the
audience to decipher, without any authorial gloss or mediation. Rocco
Scary, a book artist/sculptor who constructs bookworks from metal and
handmade paper (primarily), related how destiny in the form of a
capricious college advisor at Montclair State College introduced him to
The Book. Aspiring to take a class in sculpture, Scary was encouraged to
take papermaking instead, and did. He clearly brings to paper a sculptoral
point of view. Privileged to have been taught by the late Suellen
Glashausser, Scary's books seem to be grounded in early twentieth century
urban avant garde--the work of the Ashcan School, for example. When they
are opened, his books resemble homemade models--of bridges, taverns,
apartment houses--pervaded by the bluesy ambience of life in a small city.
They convey a contradictory sense of safety in melancholy neglect and
plainness. But Scary's installations fold up and stack like the leaves of
a book; they open and close, and thus the objects that model a life are
self-conscious symbols, and, pointedly, there is a tension between the
indeterminacies of text and the solid physicality of things in the
world. |
Mullins
Montclair
Students
Ralph
Ocker |
