Animal Instincts: VSU captures a fun art exhibit
Published 3:44 am Tuesday, December 6, 2005
VALDOSTA — Walking into the Valdosta State University Art Gallery, it looks like the White Rabbit has brought along a few friends, dressed to the nines, for the Mad Hatter’s tea party. From numerous individual canvases peer a deer in a tuxedo, a monkey in a tux, a fish head rising from the starched collar and bow tie of formal wear. From a ceramic bowl, a cat smiles a Cheshire grin as he sidles up beside the dreamy eyes of a woman’s lyrical face. Etched on ceramic plates are silhouette impressions of fossil-like fish.
These are just a few members of the wildly fun menagerie that is the “Animal Instincts” exhibit scheduled to open with a public reception this evening at VSU. The show features the works of three artists, Ken Hoffman’s paintings, and the ceramic pieces of artists Ron Meyers and Michael Simon. A majority of the works have an animal theme that is as manic as the Marx Brothers’ “Animal Crackers” and as gloriously nonsensical as the previously alluded to “Alice In Wonderland.”
Hoffman’s head-and-shoulder portraits of animals dressed mostly in tuxedos and suits are constructed in vivid, creamy colors that look as right in a gallery as they would if they were illustrations in a well-executed children’s book. Hoffman has been a teacher of painting with Bradley University, Peoria, Ill., since 1969. A one-time student of painter Richard Diebenkorn, Hoffman’s works play as well in Valdosta and numerous New York galleries as they do in his adopted home of Peoria and numerous other locales. “His playful, boldly colorful, anthropomorphic animal portrait paintings have been widely and internationally exhibited,” according to exhibit notes. Hoffman is also scheduled to visit Valdosta for the exhibit’s opening as well as present an artist’s lecture, 4 p.m. today, in the VSU Gallery.
Meyers and Simon are both ceramics artists from Athens.
Meyers’ work is a dichotomy of rough and smooth, a duality of human and animal themes. Julie Bowland, VSU Gallery director, aptly describes Meyers’ ceramic work, the actual modeling of the three-dimensional materials, as rugged, hefty, aggressive in their raw treatment of form. Yet, on these sturdy, primal ceramics, Meyers paints poetically cartoon-like animals such as frogs, cats and mice in the company of human faces in a dreamy style reminiscent of Marc Chagall. The animals have sly, leering human qualities; the human images have an animal magnetism.
Simon’s work is more subtle and in many ways far more primal in their exploration of interlocking fish shapes on elegant bowls and other ceramic forms. His fish imagery possesses a prehistoric allure as ancient as the berry-stained animal shapes on a cave wall or the fossilized leftovers of the first fish. Simon’s fish images are innately familiar in a way that one recognizes but cannot pinpoint, giving them an appealing mystique.
Yet, why drag down such a visual treat of a show as VSU Art’s “Animal Instincts” with all of this cryptic artsy mumbo jumbo. With the exception of a couple of somewhat erotic pieces that may be unsuitable for younger viewers, “Animal Instincts” is a show that is almost ready for all ages, as whimsically fun as following a White Rabbit down a hole into Wonderland.