Great galleries both fascinate and educate, and none does it better than the Gallery of Wisconsin Art (GOWA) in West Bend. Soon to celebrate its first anniversary, the venue is making a big impact.
Over the decades, while studying abstracted art at various galleries, I often heard nearby viewers snipe, “OK, anyone can paint that! My kid could do it!” Nowadays, we have chimps and elephants making art, albeit for zoo fundraisers. Anyway, the results would never rub shoulders with GOWA’s current exhibitions, “Abstraction x 3,” “Abstract Sculpture” and “Contemporary Abstract Artists: The Female Perspective,” up through April 28. This is a knockout with historic and contemporary punches.
Quality always aces quantity; for instance, check out the quality in the swoozy marks made by artist Claudette Lee-Roseland in Swing Theory, consider the fun jazzy canvases of Melissa Dorn Richards and the sensational, clunky assemblages of Aristotle Georgiades. UW-Madison is heavily represented.
So, what is abstraction? For Melissa Dorn Richards, a MIAD graduate and West Bend native, whose mop paintings are nothing short of sensational, it begins with an idea, an idea that becomes an abstraction. In explaining her mop paintings, specifically Mop XVI, she has this memory of it: that the red slits on the white canvas echo the red threads from the industrial mop that inspired this particular work.
To those who would say, “Oh my kid could do that,” I say, “If you think abstraction is a simplistic way to create art, think again.”
