This time last year, Studio Z on the South Side celebrated its 25th anniversary with a group show that included nearly every artist that has shown there.
This year, a smaller version of that idea is on display in "25 Plus 1," a group show limited to the work of 26 artists.
The "Plus 1" is Kathleen Zimbicki, artist and owner of Studio Z and the Grande Dame of the Pittsburgh art scene. For this show, she sent out a call to past exhibitors and friends and asked for small works. So it was a surprise when longtime friend Lillian Kefalos walked through the door with her painting, "Persian Dancer."
"I wanted a bunch of small things," Zimbicki says. "She didn't pay attention to the rules, but I'm glad she didn't because this is the star of the show."
Looking like an amoeba at a disco, Kefalos' large reverse painting on Plexiglas is a flash of reds, blues and oranges surrounded by a sea of blaring yellow. "It's such a happy, bright piece," Zimbicki says.
The painting is one of the jewels in a show that contains work by several local notables.
Adrienne Heinrich, the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts' Artist of the Year for 2002, has three abstract mixed-media works on display. Being heavily textured, triangular-shaped pieces of torn-edged tarpaper, they are quite different from the cast rubber pieces the artist has been exhibiting lately.
But, Zimbicki says, "These are a continuation of her earlier work, which she showed here a couple of years ago."
One artist whose style is instantly recognizable is Lila Hirsch Brody, who makes elaborate constructions out of canvas, papier mache and polyurethane. Influenced by a trip to Holland, almost all of her pieces are of groupings of flowers that burst from the edges as though they are real. "She wants to break out of the square," says Zimbicki about the three pieces included in this show.
Another artist who is known locally for her mixed-media works is Lori Hornell. Four pieces in this show combine unique and everyday objects into quirky sculptures that sometimes defy description. For example, the figural piece "Head Case" has an altered image of a woman's face on the front of a small glass box filled with colorful bits of paper, which is set atop stacked toy blocks that stand in for legs.
"Lori Hornell's work has always been good," Zimbicki says. "Of course, it's a bit funky, a bit humorous and outrageous."
Like Hornell, James Church combines disparate objects in interesting ways. In "Birthday of the Infanta," one of three pieces of his in the show, the artist has combined a silver serving tray, whiskey bottle and plywood cutout of a rabbit in a piece that is rife with allegory and emotional resonance.
Additional works by several artists fill out a fun exhibit that contains an odd mix of things: Gene Fenton's papier-mache dinosaurs and William Wessel's slowly whirling wire head sculptures in the window; tidy little abstractions such as Judy Musser's monoprints and Raksha Basuroy's paintings; and peculiar portraits by Mary Culbertson-Stark.
Of course, with all of the work included being of each artist's choosing, there is bound to be some dead wood. There are a number of bad still lifes and poorly executed figure drawings, not to mention two small abstractions that look as though they were made for a Marriott hotel.
Then, there is the work of Zimbicki. In addition to opening Studio Z 26 years ago, she is an established watercolorist who has taught several classes in that medium for the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Sweetwater Center for the Arts and the Carnegie Museum of Art.
Having painted thousands of watercolors over the years, she has landed on a special way of combining several of them into one piece via three paneled screens. Each panel of the screens has five framed watercolors, all of which are arranged around a theme.
Flowers are the subject of "A Splash of Spring," fish for "Aquarium." Zimbicki's signature houses, representing the architecture that dots Pittsburgh's hillsides, are in "From Our House to Yours." As unique as those houses, so is Zimbicki's quirky sense of humor, which is best summed up by the alligator on the roof of one of them.
And though she may consider Kefalos' "Persian Dancer" to be "the star of the show," the real stars of this exhibition are Zimbicki's screens.
| '25 Plus 1' |
