Spotlight Reviews

Cassie Jones, Figure 22c, enamel on acrylite, 18 x 24", 2004.
Courtesy of Icon Contemporary Art.

MAINE

Icon Contemporary Art/Brunswick
MARK WETHLI AND CASSIE JONES: NEW PAINTINGS

Mark Wethli’s new work represents a great argument for the sabbatical system. Living in New York City during his year off from teaching at Bowdoin College, Wethli has been busy creating paintings that further his fixation on geometric inventions. In his search for ways to make his art purer and more immediate, the artist has chosen an abstract mode that Mondrian, for one, would have applauded.
Wethli’s shift a few years ago from meticulous realist renderings of interiors to optical grid compositions was as startling and exciting as any midstream esthetic change in memory. What he maintained in the transition is an admirable obsessive-compulsive approach to his artwork. This time around, he has loosened up a bit, exchanging the rulers and straight-edge taping of previous work for freehand (which nonetheless displays masterful control). He has also moved from acrylic on panel to gouache on paper. The latter medium, a favorite of medieval manuscript illuminators, gives the fifteen or so small works in this show a special brilliance.
Checkerboards and stripes are Wethli’s preferred patterns. In the checkered pieces, the color squares form slightly irregular rows. They might be sample swatches for a tablecloth design. Likewise, the striped pieces sometimes resemble textile designs. They are offered in horizontal and vertical formats, varying from wide bands (ten across) to thin ones (forty). The color choices

Mark Wethli, Bandit, gouache on paper, 13 1/2 x 10", 2004.
Courtesy of Icon Contemporary Art.

shift from piece to piece, offering what appear to be random arrangements each time. This is not op-art, per se, but more along the lines of Jasper Johns or Kenneth Noland.
     Cassie Jones, a former student of Wethli’s at Bowdoin College, offers her own concept of compositional simplicity in a series of enamel-on-acrylite paintings, each measuring 18 inches by 24 inches. Jones, who showed last year in the Maine Biennial at the Portland Museum of Art, displays a beguiling and winning wit in her work. Using a variety of shapes, from gear links in Figure 11B to antenna-ed bubbles in Figure 12D, she creates the illusion of motion and process. Objects float through the air; circles move through narrow tubes; a stomachlike shape appears to fill up with small disks.
     The paintings are based on freeform marker drawings Jones created during a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in the fall of 2003. In enlarging them, she manages to maintain the sense of spontaneity of the originals. At the same time, what are essentially doodles become more meaningful and engaging when transferred to a more permanent surface. Jones’s spare black enamel lines on milky translucent plastic provide a striking contrast to Wethli’s allover color patterns. Perhaps where the two esthetics meet is in their consistent devotion to what one observer calls “conscious artistic intent.”
     Jones and Wethli, along with several other Bowdoin artists, have collaborated on several large-scale projects in Maine, including Passage, a suite of thirty-two murals completed last summer for the Maine Department of Transportation office building in Augusta. One hopes that they continue to work and show together.

Carl Little

Also reviewed in this issue:

Night Journeys at the Hay Gallery
Art Works for Peace at The Grand Theater
Momentum II at the George Marshall Store Gallery
Marguerite Robichaux: Over Yonder at the University of Maine Museum of Art