Possibly the Stackhouse sculpture additionally guided jurors Olivia Kohler-Maga and Babette Pendleton’s collection of different items for the exhibition. Many echo the shape or subject matter of “Ghost Dance,” a partial arc — about 10 ft huge at its base and 5 ft prime — built of slats of recycled wooden. The sculpture’s name refers to a Local American ritual supposed to summon spirits of the useless, but additionally to its curved contour, which hints at whirling movement.
The place “Ghost Dance” is orientated horizontally, a number of participants ship wooden skyward. Mike Shaffer’s tapered tower is a triangular scaffold of reclaimed wood strips, implementing in peak however playfully painted pink. George Lorio remakes nature by way of cleanly splitting in two a simulated tree trunk fabricated from discovered bark affixed to a plywood armature. Much less vertical, but additionally made basically of secondhand wooden, is a colourful Keith Krueger assemblage that comprises portions of steel indicators. C.L. Bigelow’s intricate “Quiet Orb” resembles a nest, however on shut inspection unearths itself as made now not of twigs however of tubes, filaments and different bits of stray steel.
Lots of the items are wall fastened, despite the fact that they’re hardly ever content material to easily parallel the adjoining floor. Barbara Januszkiewicz contributes an abstractly painted canvas, in part reduce and draped within the approach of Sam Gilliam. Chee Keong Kung additionally ventures past portray, rendering his trademark hard-edge dynamic gestures in 3-d. Jennifer Noda’s ominous clocklike steel software comprises two jagged wood items as arms, whilst Lisa Rosenstein reclaims a extra insidious subject matter, hand-knotting a shroud of transparent plastic shreds to luminous impact.
Even if lots of the artistic endeavors command the gap they occupy, they don’t reply without delay to it. One compelling exception is Caroline MacKinnon’s “Pebbles Misplaced in Time,” an set up of glazed ceramic buttons at the flooring in a single nook of a gallery. Some other, smaller batch of buttons calls to the principle association from the opposite facet of the room. The 2 units aren’t interested in a dance, precisely, however the best way the 2 groupings are separated does spotlight house and movement.
Additionally on the GWU Corcoran’s Flagg Development is a separate display that fuses two artwork paperwork in response to motion, fashionable dance and video. “Legacy” is a Fiftieth-anniversary tribute to D.C. choreographer Maida Withers, who teaches on the college, and her troupe, the Dance Development Corporate. Native projection and video artist Robin Bell reworked Gallery 1, which adjoins the Brady Gallery, right into a Withers exhibit this is immersive and actually uplifting: The efficiency clips flit around the ceiling and the upper sections of the partitions, so the dancing our bodies flow above the viewer.
The emphasis is on sensation, now not documentation. One of the most video snippets are projected straightforwardly, however others are distorted or overlapped. This way would possibly not enchantment to bounce purists, however it kind of feels to fit the spirit of Withers’s experimental paintings. “Legacy” is much less a retrospective than a remix.
Renewal Thru Dec. 3 on the Luther W. Brady Artwork Gallery, Corcoran Flagg Development, 500 seventeenth St. NW.
Legacy Thru Dec. 10 at Gallery 1, Corcoran Flagg Development, 500 seventeenth St. NW.
Lithium is also the most-sought steel lately, however the name of Stephanie Garon’s Hamiltonian Artists display refers back to the best-known example of mining mania: “Gold Rush.” Within the native artist’s multimedia exhibition, drawings, images, sculptures and video contemplate the results of mineral extraction on Passamaquoddy tribal land in Maine. Lots of the artistic endeavors contain rock core samples, whether or not precise ones or representations such because the traced outlines of stone fragments in “Void,” a puzzle-like drawing.
The display’s name piece is a heap of rock spikes supported by way of steel crossbeams and piled underneath an digital stock-market ticker show. Different mineral chunks are clumped in a nook or fastened in a metal body. Guests are invited to make use of a metal-detection telephone app to discern lines of gold, silver and copper within the core samples.
Two summary art work are fabricated from soil and beaten rock from Maine, combined with D.C. faucet water. They’re accompanied by way of a chant (audible via headphones) by way of eclectic musician and composer Mali Obomsawin, who grew up on ancestral land in Maine and Quebec. A video hyperlinks audio statement in regards to the results of mining on Maine with photos of a basket bobbing in water; within reach, a small basket is on show. “Gold Rush” weaves connections amongst puts, other folks and the goods that maintain them, some extra disruptive than others.
Stephanie Garon: Gold Rush Thru Nov. 26 at Hamiltonian Artists, 1353 U St. NW.
The photographs in Susan Wooddell Campbell’s “All Over the Map” are connected now not by way of methodology, however by way of form, coloration and theme. Nature is the predominant inspiration for the D.C. artist’s Washington Printmakers Gallery display, which incorporates collages, prints produced by way of more than a few tactics and two drawings made on a pill laptop. Frequently the items are created from discrete portions, such because the mesh sewn into “Netted,” the color-infused oblong paperwork sliced into the most commonly black-and-white “Past the Gate,” or the vignettes — two line drawings and one portray — that go with the flow into the unified river view of “Kenilworth Trio.”
“I lately believe myself a painter first,” the artist notes in her remark. That explains her affinity for monotypes, which can be ceaselessly made by way of making use of pigment to a matrix this is then published to yield a unmarried, painterly impact. Her monotypes function cushy, fluid colours and natural shapes, such because the leaflike overlapping varieties of the yellow-dominated “Aspen.” Symbol and medium mix to conjure a imaginative and prescient of herbal items in great quantity, organized randomly but harmoniously.
Susan Wooddell Campbell: All Over the Map Thru Nov. 27 at Washington Printmakers Gallery, 1641 Wisconsin Ave. NW.