NEWS/ARTS ARTS/VISUAL
Go on a journey with artist Christine Raymond.
OPENINGS AND THROWDOWNS Journey might have done it any way you wanted it in the early ’80s, but local artist Christine Raymond did things just the way she wanted with her latest exhibit, The Journey, which opened April 19 at Enso Artspace, located at 120 E. 38th St., Unit 105, in Garden City. Raymond’s large and small compositions utilize Lascaux acrylic and gold leaf, and feature soothing, evening summer sky palettes of red and purple. The pieces evoke a certain calmness, with titles like “Sanctuary,” “Stillness” and “Quiet Vitality.” The Journey will remain on display until May 31, with a special Soup-Talk-Art event, featuring Raymond and Boise Art Museum Executive Director Melanie Fales on Wednesday, May 8, from 6-8 p.m. Tickets cost $12.50, including soup and bread. Enso Artspace is open every Thursday from 3-8 p.m., or by appointment. For more info, visit ensoartspace.com. Speaking of recently opened exhibits, Boise State alum Goran Fazil was commissioned to create a permanent site-specific piece, “Hegelian Constructs,” for the Bay Window Project, located in the corridor west of the Simplot Ballroom in the Boise State Student Union Building. According to Boise State, the piece was developed from a series of paintings representing pyramid-esque constructions, and “aims to portray the development of our society through a continuous construction upwards.” Fazil’s piece is the last of four works commissioned for the project. The first was installed in the spring of 2010, and features two large canvasses by Matt Bodett, while the second was installed in the spring of 2011 and features work by Sue Latta. For more info, call 208-426-1242. And moving from art openings to art throwdowns, Visual Arts Collective and the Woman of Steel are hosting a fundraiser for the Garden City Library Foundation Sunday, May 5, from 2-5 p.m. The second annual An Artistic Taste of Garden City will feature local artists, live art-making, breweries, wineries, food, a silent auction and a musical performance from StoneSeed. Artists include Cate Brigden, Michael Cordell, Irene Deely, Liz Hilton, Sue Latta and Amy Westover, among many others. Food and drinks will be provided by City Peanut Shop, Coiled Wines, Crooked Fence, Kanack Attack Katering, Kilted Dragon, Sofia’s Greek Bistro, Syringa, Vale Winery and more. Attendees must be 21 or older to attend, and tickets are $25 in advance or $30 at the door and can be purchased at notaquietlibrary.org/artistictaste.
THE CURIOUS CORINNA BUTTON Artist debuts solo show at Brumfield’s Gallery JOSH GROSS As anyone who has traveled the world will tell you, everything is bigger in America—the food, the houses, even the country itself sprawls across an entire continent like it just finished its third trip through a buffet line. For artist Corinna Button—whose new solo exhibit opens at Brumfield’s Gallery Saturday, May 4—even the size of her paintings grew Unbutton the layered complexity of Corinna Button’s work at Brumfield’s Gallery. when she moved to America from the United Kingdom in 2010. “Since I’ve been in Chicago, I’ve been workthat sense of history. That’s why I really like to expressionists like Max Beckmann, or even ing on these giant pieces,” Button said. “That layer my work, to give it that sense of history.” Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. was a new experience for me because I’ve In many cases, those layers are an effect Button said that at the time she created the never had such a large studio. Being in Chicago Button achieves not by adding paint, but by Idols series, she was looking at a great deal of and getting this large studio in a warehouse taking it away—a process she demonstrates in sculpture heads in museums and found that building really allowed me to explore.” several videos on YouTube. they were generally displayed behind glass Before she snagged her studio, Button’s “The way I work is very much about excacases on pedestals. work had focused more on printmaking, spevating, even my process, scraping away at the “I liked the idea that they were isolated, cifically a technique called collagraphy, used to surface to reveal what’s beneath,” she said. that you couldn’t touch them,” she said. create complexly layered prints with textures Some of the Idols were created out of the The Idols series certainly seems untouchlike weathered stone. scraps left from Button’s printmaking process. able, as if they exist behind a fog of memory. But while showing her work at Chicago’s “The thing about collagraph is that it really Zhou B. Art Center in March 2012, Button re- Though Button said she found inspiration in embosses the paper and leaves some interestimages from pop culture, her execution feels alized the cavernous space dwarfed her prints. ing texture,” she said. “I didn’t want to get rid “I brought my largest prints, but they didn’t much more decayed—like a series of female of all these proofs, so I started to print over look very large in that space,” Button said. “So Dorian Grays. Button took inspiration for the project, and them.” I knew to make the show look good in that The Idols that Button printed over the her work as a whole, from the T.S. Eliot poem space, I had to make the show much bigger.” proofs brought a whole new dimension to “The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The gallery owner suggested physically her work, something that caught the eye of “There will be time, there will be time / larger work and Button ran with it, producing Jane Brumfield, owner of Brumfield’s Gallery, To prepare a face to meet the faces that you her Idols series of haunting female portraits, formerly the Basement Gallery. meet,” the poem reads. some of which reach eight feet in height. “The subject matter appeals to me,” said “I feel like every day you think of a way “The whole idea of the Idol came about Brumfield. “But above that, I just think the you want to present yourself, so you ‘prepare when I saw an image on the front of a fashquality of her surface and the combination of ion magazine in the UK during London Fash- a face to meet the faces that you meet,’ to me the techniques actually creates something that that seems a very real thing,” Button said. ion Week,” Button said. “She presented an is quite unique and very, very beautiful.” “There’s often stuff idea of a superhuman, Brumfield first met the artist when they going on beneath the enchanted figure that Opening Saturday, May 4, 6-9 p.m. with a were both living in England. She has been exsurface.” seems to appear in the no-host bar provided by 13th Street Pub and hibiting Button’s printmaking work for years. But one of the media a lot. I wanted Grill. Show continues through Sunday, June 2. “This will be the first time I’ve had the features that best to do something with BRUMFIELD’S GALLERY opportunity to show her larger works, which imparts the emotional that.” 1513 N. 13th St. includes her original paintings,” said Brumundercurrents of the The piece “Idol,” 208-333-0309 field. “And the only reason I’m able to do that series are the textural a tentpole of the brumfieldllc.com. is because she’s moved here over the pond for printmaking elements. collection, depicts a The pieces maintain the a little while.” gracefully long-necked Brumfield said she hasn’t had much of an same weathered stone woman wearing a opportunity to show large works by anyone or water-damaged texture, making the Idols wing-like crownpiece with a cracked texture due to space constraints. But since Brumfield appear ghostly—another inspiration Button like a water-damaged wall. Several pieces in relocated her gallery to Hyde Park from its took from her Chicago studio. the series examine different angles of a figure former space in the basement of the Idanha “It’s this stony building and there’s loads named Grace, portrayed in grays and blues like Building, there is more room to grow. of residue and brick and worn out paint, and an animated nightmare sequence. There are How very American. I started to see faces in it,” said Button. “I like clear influences in Button’s work of German
—Tara Morgan
30 | MAY 1–7, 2013 | BOISEweekly
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