Joseph Gierek Fine Art Moves to Larger Location
By TATYANA NYBORG
Contributing Writer
PHOTO ART: Come Back-Lone Chimney Lake by featured artist Shane Brown.
Photo courtesy of Joseph Gierek Fine Art
Joseph Gierek Fine Art recently relocated to 1512 E. 15th Street, two blocks east of their old location, a larger 4,500 square foot space with lots of parking.
Works of 35 local and national artists are better represented in the new, spacious, gallery. I was riveted by a magnificent landscape, Morning Aspens, by the Tulsa painter, Ross Myers. The elegant birches; the play of light and shadow in the depth of Colorado forest, create a lyrical, joyful mood. Also the different nuances of green make the landscape appear very natural.
Local artist Kim Fonder reveals another mysterious side of green in her work, Ellipse Series I. Fonder, a minimalist artist, used an unusual technique of oxidizing on copper with organic pigments to get her effects. Kim also bends the sheet of copper for bolder impression.
In contrast to Fonder and Myers, who work mostly with cool colors, Jacob Liedet explores warm red. His paintings are white-yellowish curved or circled lines on massive red backgrounds. Jacob writes: “…the color red is a symbol of blood and life, the circle is integral to the most basic biologic and atomic concepts.” The painter expects us to have a great emotional response to red, and he achieves his goal.
Good art is like travel in foreign countries, a person can discover new details similar to sightseeing. The picture, Down Among the Sheltering Palms–Woman with Leopard, of the nationally known artist, John Dawson, is exactly like that. Your eye catches a shadowy face of the Asian woman in the center and your sight travels from her décolleté to the hem of her silk dress to…oops, I did not notice the coffee table before with cups in the lower right corner. Then you can see a figure of the leopard on the left next to the woman, and luxurious palms in the background.
An exhibition of the young Oklahoma photographer Shane Brown recently finished, but some pictures are still on display. Brown traveled many miles from state to state and the result is about 150 images of beautiful landscapes or humorous objects. The Center for American Places, a nonprofit organization, is interested in doing a book with Brown’s photographs.
“We also represent the estate of Allan Houser, an internationally known sculptor, who was born in Apache, Okla. but lived most of his life in Santa Fe, N.M. All of the bronzes in the gallery are his,” says gallery owner Joseph Gierek “Allan Houser is an icon of 20th century American art. In 1992, he was the recipient of the National Medal of Art, our nation’s highest honor in the arts. Allen received the medal in a White House ceremony from the first President Bush. Currently there are 69 of his works on display at the Smithsonian’s newly opened National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. The exhibition runs through September 2005 and museum officials estimate that 3 to 4 million visitors will be able to see his work.”
In the gallery, one can see tasteful art of Tulsa painters such as the realist still-life painters James Andrew Smith and Cathy Deuschle, surrealist Darren Dirksen, abstract artist Renee Reed, and plain-air painter Alan Frakes. Artists from other states such as woodblock printer Henrik Haaland, landscape painter Martha Kennedy, and abstract artist James Leonard are represented as well.
The gallery’s hours are 11 a.m.–6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. For more information, call 592-5432 or visit the gallery’s web site: www.gierek.com.
Updated 12-17-2004
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