... a world-class art experience
| The
Alan Cottrill Sculpture Studio and Art
Gallery, 110 S. Sixth St.,
Zanesville, is an educational and interesting trip - enough to
draw me there twice. Likely, I'll keep returning; it's just that neat. The first time I went as a gallery visitor, the second as a photographer. This is what I wrote about it here at the Tea Party after my first trip: "The old building isn't gussied-up, but is stark and absent of keen gallery-type lighting. Admission is free, though a $2 donation is suggested. In pretense, it's just down-home Zanesville, which is to say no pretense at all. Yet this is the kind of gallery that should have people from all over the world lined up to get through the door. It's that good. "We met the artist, clean-cut and unaffected. He made us welcome and accepted our profound compliments graciously. I asked him 'why Zanesville?' and he said, in effect, 'because I was born here and I like it here.' ... You can read his story and see photos of his works on his web site ..." I was struck by the environment Alan had chosen for these magnificent bronze sculptural works so I decided to record not just the sculptures but also how they have been placed and arranged. The bronzes somehow emit a surreality because they are positioned in this soft light (sometimes making them more difficult to see) backed by harsh tiles and pipes and window shapes. The sidewalk exhibits are incredibly screwed by visual interference: signs, utility wires, passing traffic, and city junk. Or...? Or are they? Is this a ruse we have here? Is this man - this visual genius - playing his golden visions - his classical, museum-quality statuary - playing it against the harsh world that is today's downtown Zanesville for some psychological kick? I rather like the mystery of that. I first suspected he might be when I unloaded my images from his gallery to my computer. I had shot them as carefully as I could so as later to be able to crop out the crap - the wires, the car lot, the visual junk, yet I left the lens wide enough to keep some of it if I should so choose. I decided to present them here to you in the raw, as I shot them. Well, I made a few minor crops I couldn't resist. You decide about the importance of the environment. Whether the environment is a factor or not, I think it's a world-class art display. 5/12/06 by Bruce Humphrey
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