Honolulu Weekly

If this were any other exhibition, one could more easily judge it solely on the basis of the works: a very well-bred, healthily diverse selection of works that combine a formal maturity with varying degrees of conceptual engagement. But the fact that this is an exhibition of teaching faculty adds another layer of significance. After all, these are artists who will be shaping, one way or another, new cohorts of working artists–ones who may, in turn, go on to teach others.

This particular Faculty Exhibition should probably also be seen in the context of the dramatic recalibrations of support for public higher education, and the ways in which the connections between education and the working world are being reconsidered.

What the exhibition of teaching faculty in the University of Hawaii–Manoa’s Department of Art and Art History conveys is a dual sense of validity and enticement–a sense that the path of creative visual inquiry and communication is both a good and a pleasurable way to explore some of the questions that contemporary life raises. Perhaps all faculty teach, in part, by doing, but this exhibition illustrates and emphasizes that dynamic. Beyond formal pedagogy, art faculty may teach by exemplifying (or not) the best practices of their profession, whether it is the scholarly work of the historian, or the sustained praxis of the studio artist.

A few general themes emerge from the works in the exhibition. The elemental process of mark-making continues to inform several fields–from the gestural energy of Debra Drexler’s oil painting to the probing contour lines of Rebecca Horne’s large-scale charcoal and graphite drawings, or the delicately modeled skeins of pebble-like forms in Wendy Kawabata’s pencil studies that speak, across the gallery space, to Madeleine Soder’s silk organza circles, into which small holes have been burned.

Mark-making is also powerfully evident in Charles Cohan’s collagraph prints that look liked tangled black velvet ropes and even, one might imagine, in the loopy trajectory of the airborne camera in Jason Willome’s video. Marks might follow cultural conventions, as in the passages of landscape in Yida Wang’s array of ink drawings, each partially subverted with a veil of viscous fluid. Marks might also conform to other symbolic conventions, evident in the embossed signs floating in Don Dugal’s charcoal and pastel drawing as well as Richard Bigus’ new typeface. Text-marks also figure prominently in the digital works of both Scott Groeniger and Chae Ho Lee.

A second thematic strand provides insight into how artists engage both the physical and the metaphorical potential of their materials. Peter Chamberlain’s “Hammerhead Loons,” for example, suggests a totemic presence with its tall basketwork casing. Chamberlain’s use of technology to create neo-archaic artifacts is a hallmark of his creative signature. Another kind of hybrid sensibility is visible in the work of Mamoru Sato, whose use of metal often captures both an organic and an industrial feel. The dramatically different uses of clay by Suzanne Wolfe and new faculty member Brad Taylor speak to the broad range of this wonderfully malleable material. Wolfe’s series of decal-adorned forms speaks to both the vessel tradition and cultures of consumption, while Taylor’s massive sculpture of porcelain subverts any presumption of delicacy or fragility. Rick Mills’ shallow vessel form of cast glass shares much the same robust sensibility.

Materials may also possess associations that lead to more socio-political inquiries such as are evident in the works of Mary Babcock. A metal shopping cart sits outside the gallery, converted into a mobile garden complete with a small worm-composting unit–a multivalent work that invokes several themes including homelessness, sustainability and the repurposing of material culture. Inside, Babcock’s installation of discarded botanical labels, which use the language of scientific classification, becomes a metaphor for the ideas of indigenous and introduced cultures, a theme echoed in the collaborative work of Stan Tomita and Karen Kosasa, who have long explored the complexities of “settler” identities.

This year’s faculty exhibition reaffirms–as have recent graduate exhibitions–the values of an interdisciplinary approach, the crossing or merging of media boundaries. The proprietary identification with materials–she is a fiber artist, he is a painter–often gives way to deciding how best to shape and convey ideas, giving them visible and tangible form. That is the work of art, and its enduring magic.