The Fall Church Arts Gallery is currently presenting part two of its All Member Show, this time with artists’ last names beginning M-Z. For an exhibition which is focused on presenting its members and not a particular topic, the show nonetheless has artworks which can be grouped into discernible interesting themes, including music, comics, and, in particular, nature.
With examples in nature such as birds chirping like flutes and the thunder of the sky pounding like drums, how can a pelican not feel inspired to conduct nature’s harmonious sounds? The nature photographer Ann Cameron Siegal in her photograph “The Conductor” captures a white pelican striking a musical pose on a rock, its conductor’s podium. The pelican waves its wings pridefully in the air as if preparing for the downbeat. Photographer Siegal notes while taking the picture of the pelican in a conductor’s pose that she “envisioned an orchestra playing Handel’s Water Music.”
If you relish seeing a pelican conduct nature’s orchestra, you are sure to marvel at and be charmed by an elephant swimming as it blows bubbles up as a large moon hovers above the still ocean water in Nancy M Patrick’s acrylic “Elephant Swimming.”
Travel is also a theme of the show, as in “The Old Granery,” a water-color by Diane Trent which takes place in the historic German town of Passau, “situated on the Blue Danube.” Visit a bazaar in Iran in Masoud Seivani’s lovingly detailed watercolor “The Heartbeat of Isfahan.” Sandi Parker’s colorful oil painting of “Flower Market, Southern France” continues our tour around the world. Closer to home, gallery visitors will find Tony Neville’s watercolor of “Mount Vernon” resonates with local experience and national history, whereas Bob Wentworth’s somewhat Impressionist watercolor “Spring Bloom, Van Gogh Bridge, Reston” juxtaposes European and Northern Virginia sensibilities.
Nature and solitude can be enjoyed in Judith Ortiz’ “Remembering,” a watercolor recalling “the summer sky above [evoking] the rushing water below,” as the exhibit card aptly describes the work. Nature is in great motion in Jennifer Tallarico’s oil painting “Breezy Day On The Coast.” The thick texture on the canvas gives the painting a sense of richness in the lush landscape and rushing seascape. The cool tones of the background’s sky and water create a sense of depth. The visible brushstrokes render the image somewhat Impressionist as well.
A very striking photographic artwork is “Superstition Mountain.” Here a small church hidden in the Arizona desert showcases the majesty of nature and God’s power as the church spire seems to reach up into the brooding sky where a storm threatens. The eye is drawn to the intricate woodwork along the eaves of the roof, these deeply detailed sections contrasting the otherwise simple vertical clapboard of the church. Another parallel of the image is the three layers in the stack that is the ground, the mountains, and the sky. The mountains, being particularly dark, make for a powerful visual separation between the sky and the ground, exerting something of an illusionary force pushing the church into the foreground. All of this, combined with the use of a very Western gritty touch of potent sepia, lends the work a magical touch of classic cowboy films.
“Stay near me—do not take thy flight!” writes William Wordsworth in his poem “To a Butterfly.” Butterfly-themed paintings which may recall the poet’s words include George McClennan’s photographic study “Butterflies & Flowers No. 1,” the “monarch milieu” of Dory Teipel’s mixed-media “Rose Bee,” and Suzanne Updike’s reduction linocut “Swallowtail.”
While artworks in the Western tradition often draw from classical mythology and classic literature, in the M-Z Member Show, the narrative references are often to comics. Watch Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder swing into action in Jennifer Murphy’s “Pieces of the Dynamic Duo!” She has assembled and left, at times, unassembled pieces of a jigsaw puzzle image of an early Batman comic book on a traditional canvas. On the more genteel side of comics, Todd Schvaneveldt offers us an eponymous acrylic based on the 1950’s French comic “Mireille,” presenting fashion stylistics from the era in which this comic book first appeared. Nine Wells Prystay also taps into an agreeable comic-art style in her acrylic/pen/mohair “Nina Beside Herself.”
These and other themes, running the gamut even to Shaun van Steyn’s social-commentary photography “Special Interests,” are on view through August 18, 2024. They can be enjoyed at Falls Church Arts Gallery, 700-B West Broad Street (Route 7), Falls Church, Virginia.
