Black, White & Technicolor Star in Two Shows

Hurry! There is still time to see Studio Montclair, Inc.'s (SMI) two outstanding fall exhibits: “Black and White” is at the SMI Gallery @ Academy Square and “Full Spectrum” is upstairs in the same building’s smaller Virginia S. Block Gallery. Both shows run through December 18. That means there is time, too, to think about taking home for the holidays one of the works executed by about 50 largely area, exhibiting artists—or even giving one of their works as a gift. 

“Black & White” is on the ground floor of Montclair’s Academy Square building. SMI artists and curators Pamela Cooper and Elizabeth Smith Jacobs have masterly installed the approximately 50-piece group show of abstract and representational photographs, collages, ink drawings, and other mediums. Cooper and Jacobs’ pairings and juxtapositions of the individual pieces enhance the sense of mystery and essences at the core of black and white. 

Entering the Academy Square building by the lower level entrance plunges the viewer into a cinematic world of black, white and, sometimes, subtle grays. Raul Gil’s dramatically lit photograph, “The Boggle Players” evokes the chess game between the knight and death in Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal." Hanging next to it is Peter O. Ligner’s film noir “Winter Window.” In their presence, Robin Fruchter’s shadowed linocut “Cozy Chair” is more Alfred Hitchcock than “Hallmark Family Films.” 

A sense of primordial calm and tension hovers over the next three large-scale photographs; it is as if the three artists—working in disparate places on the globe—have collaborated on one story: Yvette Lucas’ rich, magisterial “Barbed Tree and Egg Rock” takes you into a primeval world. What creature, you wonder, would hatch from that egg-like rock? That question is seemingly answered by Charles Hunter’s “The Munich Dragon,” and deepened by the strange, tortoise shelled rocks of Jill Kensington’s “Mysterious Stones.”

There are large, haunting works—Bonnie Maranz’s charcoal drawing, “Structures from the Floating World,” and a pair of equally haunting small pen and inks by Hillary Shank-Kuhl. Clarence Mather’s two character “Home” asks psychological questions. 

Some very different landscapes arrest attention: Heidi Sussman’s black branch cuts across newly fallen snow like a gashing wound in her photograph “Silent Stix”, creating a stark abstraction; while Nancy Ori’s “Vila Lante” draws you into moldering textures. And at the end of the "Black & White" show, Catherine Kinkade’s drawings of snow on the wisteria vines at the town’s Van Vleck Gardens intoxicate with the hypnotic rhythms of her assured lines.

Kinkade is also represented upstairs in the Virginia S. Block Gallery with “Study: Clos Wall 2,” a beautiful water color and ink French summer scene. Hers is one of the 29 representational, non-objective, and purely abstract pieces in the varied medium and wildly different color sensibilities of “Full Spectrum.” 

Curators Virginia S. Block, the gallery’s director, and Karen Nielsen-Fried, assistant director, discuss the show: It "delves into the sensual realm of color and the power color has to evoke emotional response,” they said, “highlighting the surprising impact that color against color can have.” 

Three highly different works near the elevator immerse the viewer in brilliant color: Still life objects are like punctuation marks against the vivid pinks of Amy Martin luscious, painterly oil on canvas, “Pink Table.” The intense colors of Sarah Canfield’s oils in “Cascade” send her giant marbles into motion, like planets in alternate universe. Clarence Mather’s fearless palette intensifies the visceral response to his “Wrestlers.” 

Then all quiets down in the softer blue and greens of Pamela Deitrich’s oil and graphite “Birches,” the trees forming nature’s warp and woof. And, as winter's blacks, whites and grey’s overtake the landscape outside our windows, get lost in the petals of Kristin Krnogards’ two macro photographs, “Ranunculus” and “Rose,” or the many variations of green in Betty Guernsey’s wondrous “Palmettos.” 

Studio Montclair, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization open to artists and those interested in the arts. Its galleries are in the Academy Square Building at 33 Plymouth Street, Montclair. The exhibits are open weekdays during business hours through December 16 and weekends by appointment through December 18. Contact Studio Montclair. 

Most of the works are for sale, starting at $100 with many under $500. 

“Black and White” artists are Marion R Behr, Ron Brown, Angela Cali, Buel Ecker, Leslie A. Ford, Robin Fruchter, Raul Gil, Alice Harrison, Joyce S. Hollander, Phyllis K. Huggett, Charles Hunter, Peter Jacobs, Jill Kennington, Catherine Kinkade, Donna Levinstone, Monica Litvany, Yvette Lucas, Bonnie Maranz, Clarence Mather, Nancy Ori, Isabella Pizzano, Ruby Reichardt, Hilary Shank-Kuhl, Caren Sommer-Lazar, Heidi Sussman, Peter O. Tilgner, and Diane Whitebay. 

Showing in “Full Spectrum” are Sarah Canfield, Pamela Deitrich, Andrea Geller, Madeline Giotta, Joan Goldsmith, Alyce Gottesman, Donna Grande, Betty Guernsey, Catherine Kinkade, Kristin Krongard, Amy Martin, Clarence Mather, Carolina Medina, Arthur Paxton, Christine Parker, Ellen Reinkraut,  Judith Shneyer, Marilyn Stevenson,  Krista Svalbonas,  Lynne Toye , Deborah Ugoretz, and Jodi Csaszar Zielinski.