by Cory Dugan
erri Jones is
perhaps the only artist in Memphis who understands (and exhibits) subtlety
in all its various definitions -- elusive, abstruse, ingenious, devious,
insidious. Her work is air with weight, atmospheric concrete, mist that
settles in the corner of your eye -- or drops on your toe like a chunk of
lead.
In describing Jones' current exhibit at Ledbetter Lusk Gallery, one struggles to find a convenient niche, a label. But the available cubbyholes are too narrow, and the gum on the labels won't adhere to ether. Conceptual expressionism. Minimal realism. The terms are almost oxymoronic. One feels justifiably foolish even coining them. Yet they are almost -- yet hardly -- accurate.
The
centerpiece of the exhibit, Cravings and Occurrences, consists of
two steel-framed, glass-topped structures which evoke the light tables found
in photography and graphic-arts studios. Placed back-to-back, with the angled
tops forming a peak, the structure itself suggests a skeletal architecture.
Positioned upon the glass tops are graphite drawings on translucent vellum;
the drawings are small and simple, assuming only a miserly portion of the
paper's surface. The images are also simple, and repetitive -- a horseshoe,
a wishbone, a spoon, a knotted rope, a pine tree. They float as delicate
graphite lines on the paper and -- since the viewer is welcome to arrange
and rearrange the translucent drawings -- can form layers of imagery independent
of the artist's own intentions.
Transparency suggests an accessible view, and Jones employs media which are by nature transparent -- glass, light, water, vellum. Yet, divorced from physics and attached to more subjective criteria, her work dances gracefully between translucence and opacity. Transparent connotes obvious, and Jones' art is anything but. Positive becomes negative, spaces become lines, shadow becomes foreground, reflection becomes object. Oxymoron becomes poetic paradox.
A small, rounded glass vase, turned on its side and suspended from the wall, is etched with the word remember. The word is repeated in shadow-text on the wall, surrounded by a ready-made abstract pattern of reflected and shadowed glass. A large glass water-cooler jug lies on its side on the floor, a shallow pool left inside it, the word loss etched and cursive on its surface, reflected and refracted. A chair faces the wall; the word move floats on the wall next to it, reflected from an etched mirror on its seat. The words are common. The images are not.
Terri Jones' art accomplishes something rare and important. Her images and her words are obviously highly personal; yet their simplicity and their presentation render them universal. How does a common, everyday word like remember or move become a visceral experience? How does an almost-scientific pencil drawing of a wishbone evoke an emotional memory and response? It takes the hand and eye of an uncommon artist.
It takes an artist in touch with something more than labels and niches. An artist who can make a paradox from an oxymoron. An artist who can make a metaphor from little more than light and air.
Terri Jones is that artist.
Kathleen Holder's pastel drawings, on exhibit in the gallery's rear space, are a less challenging but graceful complement to Jones' work. Whereas Jones uses light as a medium, Holder uses it as a subject, building up intense dry color into luminous fields of color.
Holder's previous work has been dominated by an atmospheric square form, a sort of "light at the end of the tunnel" image arising from darker and more saturated surroundings. In the best work in this exhibit, the form has nearly vanished, replaced by tender, shapeless gradations of color, and enhanced by delicate textures and marks. This is skillful and visually appealing -- if less than engaging -- artwork.