Anna Salmeron's A Day of Orange


This is a photographic assemblage by Anna Salmeron consisting of digital prints affixed to mat board. The board is scored between the 1st and 2nd and 3rd and 4th columns so that it stands on the table much like a portable altar. This presentation is a fitting tribute to Anna's apparent affection for the color orange in its rich variety of everyday manifestations.

A Day of Orange is an orchestration of 16 "trophies" from an artist's self-imposed day long photographic scavenger hunt. Visually, it is composed much in the way that an abstract painting is. Shapes and colors are arranged so that there is an overall sense of visual drama and "balance." The work operates much like an organism in which individual cells can be seen...

The simultaneous presentation of a variety of subjects suggests a narrative work. Evidently, A Day of Orange documents the visual and compositional appetites of an artist under self-imposed parameters (orange in every photo) at specific (yet undefined) times and locations. There is a seductive openness to the variety of images which may urge many a viewer to construct his or her own story...

After the conceptualization of this work, its completion was swift and straightforward. Digital photos were taken and printed by the artist on her home computer. A selection of same-sized prints was then fit into the compositional skeleton of the Modernist grid. The final arrangement was glued...

I mention this not to detract from the aesthetic value of the work, but to point out the urgency and direct method employed by the artist to reach her goal. A Day of Orange has all of the best qualities of a powerful sketch. It is decisive, quickly realized and economical in its enumeration of an idea. It suggests the potential creation of a large scale work but is extremely potent on its own terms...
Reviewed by Michael St.Germain

Note: Anna Salmeron is a photographer and active member of the Atlantic Works Collaborative Art Gallery in East Boston, MA. She can be reached by email at:

Kasia Bytnerowicz's Tablecloth

The general virtues of this work are that the artist successfully employs an "all-or-nothing" working method to bring a complex work into existence solely through the addition of paint and that the resulting complexity is presented in an unassuming way.

The pared down elegance of this work initially deflects the viewers attention from the wealth of abstract, formal and self-referential elements within.

Ostensibly a representational work, this work clearly offers an abstract sensibilty. Note how the shape of the unpainted (canvas) linen in the top half of the work imitates the shape of the white draped cloth.

The triangular expanse of raw canvas at the bottom of the work suggests individual shapes within the folds of the draped cloth.

This work is part of a series titled "threadbare". Interestingly, the artist has manipulated the raw (linen) canvas by removing and bunching individual threads so that it suggests material which is threadbare.

Literally being able to see through the work calls the viewer's attention to the wall, hanging wire and wooden stretcher bars.

The opened up linen drawn tightly over wooden bars loosely suggests a portable loom and the discernible presence of a hard flat wall behind the work amplifies the lightness of the hanging cloth.

Maureen O'Connor's Compote of Lemons with Ducks

What I like about this painting is its potential accessibility to a varied spectrum of viewers and its understated presentation of painterly ability.

This is a work by an artist who projects her love of art history through the depiction of a very idiosyncratic cast of still life characters with the utmost attention and affection. Colors are specific and intentional with no evidence of muddy mixtures.

Figures are positioned so that they engage in a dialogue with the colors and shapes on the printed fabric. Simultaneously, a dynamic composition (that is symmetric and geometric) carries the viewer's attention to specific locations in the work.

There is much in this work for many a contemporary viewer to enjoy. While I sense a genuine engagement between the artist and the objects she paints, others may respond differently.

Some may delight in the over-the-top simultaneity of pattern and decoration in this work. Others may enjoy the presence of irony and kitsch. Still others may detect in the works unabashed happiness, a foil to much of contemporary visual culture.

Bo Petran's Untitled

An endearing quality of this work is that it "opens up" over repeated viewings and rewards the observer with a rich variety of visual associations.

The first time I viewed this work, it appeared to depict lotus leaves floating on a pond. At a subsequent viewing, it reminded me of air bubbles rising to the surface of the ocean...

As I write, the pearlescent blues and whites remind me of the interiors of dessicated mussel shells.

Each disk-like shape in this work is a little patch of wax and pigment which has been blasted and dispersed by a hot air gun. These shapes are "stacked" and orchestrated in an "all over" manner.

This "all over" compositional strategy, loosely based on a grid (imagine a square around each disk), suggests that this work is indebted to the most significant art movement of the 20th century, Abstract Expressionism.

I've always thought that Bo uses Abstract Expressionism as a point of departure rather than as a destination. His works are far more personal in scale, more idiosyncratic in their mark making and more suggestive of natural phenomena.

The two colors in this work are used primarily as light and dark values. The contrast and tonal shifts between them define a shallow (essentially planar) topography closely allied with the picture's surface.

The Topographical Paintings of Stefanie St.Germain

Stefanie mixes acrylic colors and spreads them out to dry on plastic sheets. When the paint is dry, she peels the layers off and stacks them so that a striated-in-profile cake of paint is created.

Stefanie cuts this cake into little pieces which loosely resemble miniature planks of wood. Some of these pieces are set aside to be used as they are. Others are double stacked, broken open or peeled apart to reveal interior layers of distinct color. The pieces are then arranged and glued onto a plywood panel. Note: some pieces are glued on so that their profile faces the viewer...

The result of this working method is that portions of the edges, interior and exterior of the paint cake are presented simultaneously on the picture's surface.

There are many layers to these works, so to speak. In a very literal sense, these works are “deconstructive”. Their creation is contingent upon breaking apart the whole and recombining the results to create a new entity. In another sense, these works operate within the Modernist tradition by presenting a purely abstract subject matter that is intimately connected to the paint out of which each work is made.

It can be argued that each Topography Painting, by virtue of presenting a picture plane that is composed of interior and exterior views, expands the working concept of what Cubism is.

These works measure a mere 6"x6" each. Yet, as a result of their bas-relief presence and uniqueness of conception, they maintain a presence on the gallery wall which often eclipses that of larger paintings.

Kasia Bytnerowicz's Threadbare
by Michael St.Germain

In this intelligent and poetic work, the artist has effectively established connections and relationships between the subject of the painting, a delicately rendered shirt draped over a line, and the materials out of which it (the painting) is made...

The artist has intentionally "loosened up" the weave of the linen on which the image is painted by removing some of its threads and by arranging others into an undulating pattern. Even though Kasia has stated that she undertook these changes to exaggerate the texture of the fabric, it appears that her modifications have also had the effect of presenting the linen support as if it is in a threadbare state...

The unique nature of this linen support literally makes the painting transparent. The wooden stretcher bars "frame" the work from behind and echo the geometric composition of the shirt. The shirt, sensitively rendered in white paint, cannot conceal the wall behind. It is simply too threadbare: especially in its unpainted shadow areas ...

The raw earthiness of the unpainted linen canvas economically represents the shadow areas within the shirt and the atmosphere around the shirt. This simultaneous structural (it holds the paint) and illusive use of the support is reminiscent of the working methods employed by the old masters in making drapery studies.

Note: Kasia has a website www.kasiabytnerowicz.com and can be reached via email kbytnerowicz@rcn.com

Jeff Feld's "forgetting"
by Michael St.Germain

Here is a wood, plaster and vinyl object by New York City artist Jeff Feld.

As this work is (essentially) a cylinder, it can be rolled. The ability of the viewer to roll this work in thought or in deed is of the utmost importance in understanding it.

If you roll this cylinder and bring it to rest with "forgetting" out of sight, you will most certainly remember that the word no longer visible is "forgetting".

At least you will in the short term.

If you roll this cylinder continually, you will witness a cyclical appearance, disappearance and reappearance of the word "forgetting".

Which of the above two actions will ensure a longer lasting memory of the word for the viewer?

The second will.

Rolling the object gives the viewer more time in front of the text as well as a greater number of exposures to it. The cyclical appearance, disappearance and reappearance of the word casually conditions the viewer to, ironically, remember it.

Perhaps this work is a metaphor for "forgetting"...

Things that are forgotten are "far away" and "out of sight". Things that are remembered are "close by" and "in clear view".

Things that are in the act of being forgotten are "rolling away" and things that are in the act of being remembered are "coming into sight".

How long will you remember this work? Will the incorporation of the word "forgetting" into this work of art subliminally remind you not to forget it?

All of the above can be ascertained from looking at a photo of the work. Here are a few of the artist's thoughts (taken out of context)...

"...art is expansive over time and I have had many thoughts about that work since its creation...
What you don't get from the photo is that the work also has "forgetting" written in the same place on the other side, so as one rotates the work a type of forgetting and remembering occurs..."

"...the origin of the form is a water tank truck, the type used after 9/11 here (NYC) at Ground Zero. These trucks were constantly dumping water in the city in an attempt to wash away the dust, to make it go away."

"This "tank" got me thinking about memory and how the ability to forget is essential to human function, yet everything we experience is contained somewhere, stored somewhere..."

"...there is something pathological about a circular motion and the idea that we continue to return or behave in ways that perhaps are not good fits. We forget only to return..."


Note: forgetting (2004), plaster, wood, vinyl, 41"x96"x36"