reviews Allison, Steve Cluck, screenprint, 2004
Steve Cluck and Enise Carr at the IAO By Stephen Kovash According to Steve, his approach to art is to let the muse take over. “I allow inspiration to run free within my soul, commanding the choices I make in the creation of my art. Much of this inspiration is rooted in the inner: philosophies, experiences felt, and musings. Inspiration, however, also comes from the outer.” Cluck’s exhibit focuses on the female form, often combined with the mundane and the sensual. According to Cluck, “My art is guided by my adoration and fascination with women, my muses. My muses can be divided into categories: women I know well, women I wish to know better, women I hardly know, women I no longer know (sadly), women I no longer know (gladly).” Hmmm.
November provided a show of interestingly disparate artists at the Individual Artists of Oklahoma Gallery, one artist elusive (Enise Carr) and one artist (Steve Cluck) presenting more literal, immediately accessible work. Steve Cluck is a printmaker, painter, and art instructor living in Tulsa. The recurring themes of his work are the issues of sexuality, personal style, consumerism, advertising, and community. Much of his work consists of screenprinting, lithography, intaglio, relief printing, oil painting, and installation (watch for the word “installation” later). Highly active in the local art world, Steve is the founder and editor of the Enewsletter Upcoming Tulsa Art Events, a nonprofit publication that informs over 500 readers monthly about happenings in the Tulsa art world. Steve is also the co-chair of the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s Momentum Tulsa committee.
10
The Vending Machine 1-6 screenprint series and one Vending Machine oil on canvas all depict an attractive woman making rather commonplace purchases from a…vending machine. What make these pieces really stand out is the artist’s use of vibrant reds, yellows, blues and even some mauve, green gray and black. The oil paintings, also including Isabella with a Camera, are very graphic arts oriented, vaguely reminiscent of Andy Warhol. Cluck’s exhibit also includes a number of black and white images consisting of screenprinting, etching, intaglio and relief prints. One of the more accessible images is the screenprint Allison that portrays a female who seems to be a cross between Carmen Miranda and Rosie the Riveter, draped in an American flag. More primitive work can be seen in the intaglio series Megan I and Megan II that depicts a rather haggard woman smoking a cigarette. We met Enise Carr and found out a lot about him recently in the November/ December edition of Art Focus. Outside of making art, Carr works as a professor in the Humanities department at the University of Oklahoma and as a facilitator for the Oklahoma Healthcare Project.
The IAO press information referred to Enise’s show as an installation, but the artist insists that it is not an installation. “Nothing was installed and there is no architecture to it,” the artist states. “It is about breaking lines and borders, leaving many things to the unknown.” Carr hopes the viewer will be challenged into a new way of thinking and a new way to see the work. You can’t view the piece as if it were a static painting or sculpture, you have to move around and see it from different angles. According to the Carr, “the placement of work and how people see pieces and walk as spectators around my work are important to me. Colors are important as well as light. I know that certain people see things in different ways.” In reviewing Carr’s show, I certainly was challenged by what I thought was an art installation (emplacement?). I looked around the gallery for the handy cards or labels indicating Carr’s work and couldn’t find any. In the back of the gallery were some stacked cardboard boxes with some painting on them, some rectangles outlined with tape on the floor and wall, a display case with a mirror and a strobe light and some boards leaning on the wall. Art Philistine that I am, I just assumed that the artist never showed up and that IAO neglected to clean up after the last party. My wife, who is an artist and can be enigmatic, inscrutable and profound, thought the same thing. I spoke with the artist and he chided me for not asking him if the stacked boxes were a sculpture or painting so I knew that there was more to the exhibit. I planned to revisit the show and “move around and see it from different angles.” The different angle I took turned out to be from Broadway Avenue at 5:00 a.m. the next day. I travel down Broadway each morning on my way to work each day and glanced through the front window of the IAO gallery as I was zipping by. The gallery lights were turned down low, but the lighting embedded in Carr’s exhibit was still on. What I saw from the street was fundamentally different from what could be viewed with the gallery lights on full. In