Given the prompt “Anything Goes,” Pine Shores Art Association members really let it all hang out. For the first show of its kind, on display now at the Stafford Gallery Thursdays 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. through the end of October, artists submitted more than 70 of their best, weirdest, old, new or unexpected works.
“There weren’t a lot of rules,” gallery installer Carlo Gaboardi noted, “and people came out for that.”
The exhibition was judged by Collingswood-based artist Carol Taylor-Kearney, who spent a reported 2½ hours at the gallery, walking and looking around with an assistant, carefully considering her decisions.
Taylor-Kearney is a graduate of Rowan University and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; her work is exhibited nationally as part of several corporate public and private collections.
“I collect throwaways to paint at home, or transform, because they have a history, a story of their own to tell,.” she said. “I may see meaning or may connect connections that others might not. My hope for folks experiencing my artwork is that they take the time to peel away the layers of information, find those parts that they have in common, and recall a feeling, a story, a secret they might have forgotten or did not know they had.”
In the end, Lisa Melillo’s oil painting “Bedroom Eyes” won the first-place ribbon. The subject of the painting is a cocker spaniel whose huge brown eyes, peeking out from beneath a blanket, ooze playful charm.
Taylor-Kearney said she was “drawn in by the soft warmth of the eyes, just as the subject matter invites. But the entire composition is grounded by circular, gentle brushstrokes that bring you back and nestle you with the dog in its cozy blanket. Even the cool blue, through the taupe-y pink, creates a nice glow between warm and cool.”
The excitement of the win was tempered by bittersweet closure for the artist: On the label beneath the painting, a red dot indicated “sold.”
The buyer was fellow Pine Shores artist Rosina Van Strien, who attends “Do Your Own Thing” sessions at Pine Shores on Thursdays and had been admiring it on the wall. She connected with “the eyes, the medium, everything,” she said. “And (Melillo) is a specialist with dogs, and I love dogs.”
“I’m a sucker for a dog,” Melillo admitted.
“You look at (the painting), and it draws you right in,” Van Strien said. She already knew where she would put it: over the head of her bed.
As an established pet portrait artist, Melillo said she often starts with the eyes. “It’s hard to get them right,” she said.
“Bedroom Eyes” resulted from a spontaneous connection with a reference photo and an impulse that said, “I just want to paint this,” Melillo explained. The grid method helped her get the proportions right.
After a long time hanging on her studio wall, Melillo said, the painting was due for its moment in the spotlight. “It’s a little hard to say goodbye, but I’m so happy it’s going to be appreciated,” she said.
The second-place ribbon went to “Ceramic Bust” by Olga Korytko.
“This bust has a number of impressive techniques that coalesce successfully, which is a difficult feat,” the judge wrote. “Matte plays against gloss, neutrals against brights, and maximalist flower appliques against minute, intricately detailed, carved and painted patterns.”
Worth noting, Pine Shores’ gallery functions chair Irene Bausmith added the judge was so smitten with the bust that she purchased it for herself.
“The judge and her assistant kept going back to the piece, back to the piece, back to the piece. And then the judge came up to me and said, ‘I hope it’s OK, but I’d like to buy that one,’” Bausmith told the reception guests. “I’ve been doing these shows for many years, and that’s the first time, that I know of, that a judge has actually bought a piece.”
Third place went to Donna Ransome’s still life work of remarkable realism, “Crystal, Fruit and Wine.” Just about everyone who strolled around the room took an extra moment to stare at the high-contrast piece.
“It appears out of nowhere, like a fairy-tale story,” Taylor-Kearney said. “The immediacy of the linen as it drapes off the rich brown table. For a piece on black (background), this has remarkable color and light. The range of texture, from the fig, to the smooth, hard cuts of the crystal, takes you on a fantastical journey.”
Allan Aldridge earned an honorable mention for his oil on canvas titled “Blue Berrries.”
“I fell in love with the color,” the judge said. “It pops” by mixing together two approaches to color for heightened intensity, she explained.
Taylor-Kearney invoked Italian High Renaissance painter Raphael Santi’s Unione color mode, for comparison.
“The low-saturation contrast of the background, the looseness of the grounding sets off every edge, detail, leaf and berry of the fruit in the foreground,” she praised.
The second honorable mention was given to Veronica Astrom for her collage self-portrait, “Hey, It’s Me.” Taylor-Kearney found the piece interesting, she said, “because the artist had to both produce and find the material. The ambition of the hair, the direct stare of the self-portrait, the fixed mouth, and the humor of the Neutrogena are all terrific.”
The first honorable mention went to Rima Himelstein’s watercolor painting “Manhattan Bridge” – described by the judge as “clean, delineated and stable, like the beautiful bridge itself.”
“The subtlety of the gray-blue, almost-white sky, with the golden tones of the structures, make the blue sing. The contrast of darks and lights, and the objects that form amongst the shadows, makes this a strong statement,” she said.
Apart from the winners, though, dozens more 2-D and 3-D artworks leap off the gallery walls and call out from display easels for closer inspection.
For the “Anything Goes” show, the usual rule about submitting work created within the last three years was suspended, so some artists pulled work out of storage. Pat Seeber’s monoprint, “Snow Day,” for example, had won an award in her art school days at Camden County College. Figures in overcoats seem to brace against the cold flakes falling and swirling around them. Meanwhile her oil painting, a portrait of her oldest grandchild, captures the sweetness of youth.
“Nana’s Doiley” shows the deep impression of an antique textile in a hand-built ceramic dish, made by Linda Saladino.
Meanwhile, Pine Shores’ star of abstraction, Jim McShea, anchored one corner of the room with two of his larger, recent pieces – one framed graphite drawing (executed with “a cheap mechanical pencil,” he said) and one painting on canvas, titled “Levitating.”
The variety includes many mediums – photography, alcohol ink, prints, mosaic, even assemblages, such as Joe Harness’s “Coca-Cola Doll” mixed media diorama, which “explores the layered spaces of memory, migration and cultural hybridity through the visual landscape of the Filipino diaspora.” By adorning the Coke bottle as “the ultimate symbol of American corporate imperialism,” Harness “transforms commercial debris into a sacred, complex narrative about neo-colonial history, spiritual resilience and the enduring construction of identity,” according to the artist himself.
The miniature sari-sari store “serves as an intimate monument to the intersections of global capitalism, indigenous identity and everyday survival,” he explained.
Harness wasn’t the only one to employ cardboard in their creation. Lois Mullen’s acrylic portrait of her cat, “The Great Houdini,” is cleverly painted on a piece of brown corrugated box that has been bitten and clawed by the painting’s very subject – a fun human-feline collaboration.
