Bunker Hill Show Makes the Real Look Surreal

Drawn to Conclusion, currently at the Art Gallery of Bunker Hill Community College, is a must-see event for anyone who loves good drawing.

Laura Montgomery, art gallery director, has gathered the work of four local Boston artists and on Thursday they were all on hand at the reception held at the gallery, where art lovers came to see beautiful work while being entertained by the Stan Johnson trio.

The show features Kyle Lindholm's hypnotic drawings of dwellings in Afghanistan. Lindholm spent several months in Afghanistan sketching and photographing that country's unique architecture. Kabul City, a rendition in conte and chalk of what appears to be a city built into a mountain, is reminiscent of  pueblo dwellings in the American Southwest. A professional illustrator and teacher of drawing at the New England Institute of Art in Brookline, Lindholm acknowledged how "incredibly fortunate" he was to spend time in a country whose borders are not necessarily open to westerners. Over the course of two visits to Afghanistan, Lindholm took photographs and sketched scenes he later developed into the several drawings on exhibit.

Maddhu Huacuja explores the core of Mexican tradition in her drawings, which include a large portrait of Fridha Kahlo, her childhood neighbor and Mexican art icon. "The history of Frida Kahlo's life and work is symbolically connected to the history of contemporary Mexico and its inextricable indigenous roots," said Huacuja. "I relate to it personally and specifically."

Kate Sullivan's drawings are in a class all by themselves. Sullivan, who works almost entirely from her own photography, has created amazing realistic graphite drawings of city architecture and modes of public transportation.

"I use graphite to make clear the qualities of light," Sullivan said. "I try to get to the authentic." 

She does. Drawings such as Buses of Truth, Streetcar in Marblehead, and Green Trolley, evoke such surprise when viewers realize they are looking not at photographs but drawings. "That's crazy," one young visitor said at the reception, shaking his head. "That can't be a drawing."

With his series of charcoal drawings of horses, William St. George, who has been a painter for 40 years and owns a gallery on Boylston Street in Boston, returned to drawing and to the "authentic" of black and white. 

St. George said he rode horses when he was a child and, like Sullivan, draws from his own photographs. "I like the immediacy of charcoal," St. George said, and "the power of black and white."

The exhibit continues through Jan. 7, 2011. Go to the college website for gallery hours: www.bhcc.mass.edu/art gallery.