Artists Collaborate for Show at Woods Gallery

Friday evening’s opening reception of , a joint exhibit of works by Tim Gralewski and Carl Oxley III, had all the elements of a typical art opening – wine, cheese, desserts and murmured discussions about the art. But the event, held at the in Huntington Woods, had one surprise that even many of the artists’ closest friends and relatives hadn’t counted on: Many pieces were not created by one artist or the other, but by both in collaboration.

“I didn’t know they had collaborated until (Gralewski's wife) Paula told me,” said Joe Mette, Gralewski’s father-in-law. “And now I see each piece in a whole different light.”

Gralewski’s brother-in-law, Dan Mette, said he started to suspect something as soon as he looked around the room: “I thought, ‘Well, that looks like Tim’s work, but there’s something different about it.’ ”

Dead-ends become masterpieces

The "something different" was the fact that the collaborative pieces did feature each artist's solo work, if that makes any sense. Each artist took a few of his own works – digital compositions screen-printed on canvas or paper for Gralewski, oil on canvas for Oxley – and simply handed them over to the other to modify as he pleased. There was no discussion about how the final works would turn out. The process had the effect of reinvigorating each artist’s work and inspiring them anew.

“I had several things I had worked on where I just thought, ‘I don’t know what to do with this anymore,’ ” Gralewski said. “I would try to walk away and come back, but I just hit a dead-end with that particular piece.”

It was Oxley’s idea to take each of their “dead-ends” and simply give them to the other to finish.

“I’d gotten bored with what I was doing,” Oxley said. “So, I just did a lot of abstract stuff with no main character. And when Tim asked me to do this show, I suggested that he take some of them. Then we just went to town. It was nice to have someone else who wants to play.”

Art as recess

It should be evident to anyone who looks at Oxley’s work that painting is a sort of playtime for him.

“A lot of artists just seem really depressed,” he said. “And I’m sick of people being depressed. There’s enough sad images out there.”

Oxley’s work is anything but sad: smiling robots, dancing shapes in bright, exuberant colors.

“For the most part, I don’t know what I’m going to do until I start painting," he said. "I usually just put some colors down and just go off from there. If it wasn’t fun, I wouldn’t be doing it.”

Graphic explorations

Gralewski’s process is different, as his canvases don’t see a drop of ink until the work has been composed, tweaked and finalized using digital tools on his computer.

“Sometimes I start with an idea I want to express,” he said. “But other times, I’m inspired by the aesthetics in old history books or magazines.”

He often scans vintage photographs, which he said are old enough to be conveniently free of copyright restrictions, and begins a new work with one of the images as his jumping-off point.

“I work in my head a lot,” Gralewski says. “And maybe I take longer to finish stuff than I probably should, but I work until I get it exactly the way I want it (usually a couple of weeks), and then I print it.”

“Tim is on the edge,” said Christopher Watson, who drove from Flint to attend the opening. “He’s got some really edgy, conceptual stuff going on, and I just knew I had to come down and see this.”

Watson, a fellow artist, even purchased his friend’s work – the ink-on-paper print Deconstructing Man – almost as soon as he walked into the show.

That work just happened to be Woods Gallery coordinator Lisa Grix’s favorite piece in the show. But judging by the amount of opening night sales – eight out of 30 pieces – the joint and collaborative show could be one of the gallery’s most successful to date.

“Pop Art and Prints” will be on display in the Woods Gallery (on the lower level of the Huntington Woods Library) until March 24. Gallery hours are 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Thursday and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday. The gallery is closed Friday and Sunday.