The Declaration
scene - April 13, 2006

Migration Sophistication by Caitlin Harpin

Eavesdrop on any conversation about the Charlottesville art scene, and you're bound to overhear a multitude of differing opinions. From one pair of lips, the scene is staid, comprised of the still-life, the landscape, the canvas to hang over the sofa. Another voice adamantly proclaims that Charlottesville art is growing, attracting artists from beyond the bounds of Central Virginia. The dichotomy is difficult to reconcile-on the same block, you may see crayon cartoons with titles like "Jurassic Park" as well as conservative oil paintings of the Rotunda. A new commercial gallery called Migration encapsulates a sense of optimism for Charlottesville as a growing art venue.
Located just off the Downtown Mall (between 4th and 5th Street), Migration gallery mediates between the vast, chilly acres of easily likable art and the cramped, bustling niches of edgier material (such as Better Than Television's new exhibit "Boobs Not Bombs," also worth visiting.) Migration has drawn together work from twenty contemporary artists in the gallery's first exhibit, "Journey Home," which runs through June 1.

The show impresses not only for the appeal of the individuals' work but also for the eclectic assembling. While many galleries group pieces according to their makers, Migration displays them without any categorization by artist or medium. Canvases, photographs, prints, and sculptures coexist so harmoniously that you find yourself judging the merits of each individual work instead of comparing artists.

Brian Mallman's canvases of birds, however, are particularly memorable because they integrate both drawing and painting mediums. They have the experimental, delicate sensibility and texture of drawing but the large scale of painting. As for analyzing content, I have no idea what they're about. People like birds. A lot. (Once you start looking for birds in posters for indie shows and poetry readings, they're suddenly everywhere.) The sketchy, experimental quality of the mark-making would be beautiful on paper, but the decision to translate the graphite to painted canvas is an audacious move.

Although nature serves as a tentative theme running through much of the work in "Journey Home," I was pleased with the variety of subject matter. While some artists, such as Arturo Mallmann and Betty MacDonald engage natural sublimity as subject, they present no didactic message about nature. Mallmann's lonely, miniscule subjects almost disappear into the vast earth-toned atmospheres, polished to a glassy finish. These works seemed popular for both their evocative desolation and also for the technical beauty of the colorfields. In contrast, Betty MacDonald's silhouetted figures-some carrying books and birthday cakes- run exuberantly through landscapes. Other etchings of hers resemble a twee Edward Gorey, but the quirkiness of the silhouettes is more successful in fusing natural beauty with human material culture.

Even within one medium, such as photography, the pieces in "Journey Home" vary widely. Alan Dehmer's large-scale photographs, resembling nineteenth-century daguerrotypes also depict relationships between humans and their environments. While some of the pieces look like old family vacation photos, the scale emphasizes the importance of the physicality and the medium. Dehmer incorporates natural pigments into the developing process, a clever way to elude photography's usual reliance on mechanical process. One of the other photographers in this exhibit, Peter Filene, uses this mechanical process to his advantage by creating double-exposure shots which often overlay people and works of art. The technique is simple, but the effects in Filene's work are sensitive-in one photograph, a child draws outside the Met, while a Gothic sculpture leans in to observe his progress.

The pieces in "Journey Home" lack a unified theme or style, ranging from cold abstraction to unabashed sentimentality. It seems like the selection process was based on nothing more than personal inclination-and it works. "Journey Home" is a refreshing stop on the regular itinerary of gallery-hopping at the Downtown Mall. In many ways, it meets expectations for a contemporary gallery, with stark white walls, plastic cups of cheap wine, and the First Friday's crowds more interested in looking at the people than the art. The informal display and variety of artists in "Journey Home," however, indicate a sincere enthusiasm for art in Charlottesville.
Caitlin Harpin is a second-year English major who flies south for the winter.