The mastery of beauty

4 exhibits in state showcase mastery of potters, painters

Potter Stephen Driver sits with pots by acclaimed potter Ron Meyers (foreground) and his own, the mug he holds and a teapot at left. Driver, assistant professor of art at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, has co-curated a show for Meyers, his teacher, at the Arkansas Arts Center.
Potter Stephen Driver sits with pots by acclaimed potter Ron Meyers (foreground) and his own, the mug he holds and a teapot at left. Driver, assistant professor of art at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, has co-curated a show for Meyers, his teacher, at the Arkansas Arts Center.

Master.

We call someone who has achieved the highest degree of skill in their field a master. Chess master, golf master, meditation master, master gardener.

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Gallery 26

This Stephen Cefalo oil painting, Five-Pointed, is part of his new show, “The World Is Flat,” at Gallery 26.

Yet many artists resist being called a master, for they always see room for improvement, room for growth, room for refinement. Nothing is ever truly finished in their eyes. Therein lies the true spirit of mastery, which is seen in abundance at these four Arkansas shows.

Don’t let the whimsical touches fool you. The prolific Ron Meyers, who helped revitalize American studio pottery, is a sly one. His utilitarian pots, like the basketry of Arkansas’ Leon Niehues, transcend function into art. See this influential work at the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock.

Is there any painter more American, more recognized, more loved than Norman Rockwell? His iconic creations capture another time in our cultural history and are the focus of a spectacular exhibition at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville.

The South has a distinctive culture and that uniqueness is reflected in its female artists. The annual “Southern Women Artists” exhibit is on display at Greg Thompson Fine Art in North Little Rock.

Old master painters are a major influence in the luminous work of Little Rock painter Stephen Cefalo, who is showing new work at Gallery 26 in Little Rock.

POTTER’S ‘MENAGERIE’

Stephen Driver saw the chance of his lifetime and took it.

“How often do you get to honor your teacher?” says Driver, assistant professor of art at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, who proposed and co-curated the exhibition “Ron Meyers: A Potter’s Menagerie” at the Arkansas Arts Center.

“I met Ron when I was 22 … he’s a teacher, a mentor. This exhibition is a real labor of love for me, a major accomplishment of my academic career.”

Meyers is a major influence in American ceramics who helped lead the revival of American studio pottery, a man so well known in ceramics circles, he doesn’t sign his work. He doesn’t have to.

Meyers’ spontaneous-looking, instinctual approach has been a major influence on potters. “I have never felt the need to dismiss or disregard the concept of function because it was something less than art,” Meyers has said, and that is reflected in his often humorous, but beautifully executed work.

To some, Meyers’ success might have come as a surprise. He made pots for nearly two decades before receiving accolades for his work. “Ron was a ‘C’ student in high school; no one expected him to be anything. His teachers would be totally amazed.”

Meyers’ utilitarian pots “integrate early modernist influences such as Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, impressionists and post-impressionists and visual effects with cartoonish images and historical Japanese pottery forms,” Driver, 62, says.

“That’s pretty amazing, given that his major teacher came out of the Bauhaus movement.” The Bauhaus, founded in Germany, was guided by a call for a union of art and design, stressing the concept of designing for mass production. That was reflected in a Bauhaus school slogan: “art into industry.”

Meyers’ art “is who he is as a person … unpretentious, ambitious and funny,” Driver says. “He uses fluid, asymmetrical forms that are very traditional within historical Japanese pottery with surface decoration that is part animal menagerie - dogs, pigs, rats, rabbits, goats - and part cartoon … the painting influences are there. He inspires me to loosen up and try things.”

Once or twice a year, Driver travels to Meyers’ studio near Athens, Ga. Meyers has a master’s of fine art degree from the School for American Crafts, Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester, N.Y. and taught at the University of Georgia, retiring in 1992.

As his teacher did before him, Driver is also stepping away from teaching. At the end of this academic year, he is leaving UALR to do what potters do. In Driver’s case, that means tea pots, effigy vessels and sculpture. He and his wife, fiber artist Louise Halsey, will create works at their rural Johnson County home, where his pottery studio is.

“I made a living for 20 years as a potter before I started teaching and now, I’m going back,” he say. “I’m terrified and thrilled at the same time.”

SOUTHERN WOMEN

This year’s“Southern Women Artists” show at Greg Thompson Fine Art in North Little Rock sheds light on a couple of important, now deceased, artists.

Ida Kohlmeyer, an abstract expressionist painter and sculptor from New Orleans, had ties to Mark Rothko, Thompson says. “Her work is in the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Arkansas Arts Center.” Kohlmeyer worked in oil and pastels; she also has work in The Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of Women in Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Theora Hamblett, who grew up on a chicken farm near Paris, Miss., was known as “the Carroll Cloar of Mississippi,” Thompson says. “She was a self-taught artist and her pieces are in a lot of important Southern art collections.” Like Cloar, Hamblett used some pointillism in foliage and trees of her landscapes. The University of Mississippi has the largest collection of her work, which includes paintings, drawings and glass works.

“This year’s show is a good mix of contemporary and traditional. There are a couple of new artists people might not have seen, Brittany Young of Little Rock and Betsy Brackin of Memphis,” he says.

“The South is a special place and it’s reflected in this art,” Thompson says.

Thompson recently opened a new space in the Turtle Creek area of Dallas. The new location is being managed by Jennifer Lee, who Thompson says has “a passion for Southern regional American art.”

‘THE WORLD IS FLAT’

So what are we to make of the title of Stephen Cefalo’s exhibit at Gallery 26 in Little Rock?

The question brings a laugh from Cefalo, a painter whose work clearly reflects his love of Old Master painters.

“Artists are, in a sense, in the same place we were at the time of the cave paintings,” he says.”Everyone knows the world is round, that’s the world of science. The painter lives in a world of perception and experience and to the painter the world is still flat, a place where everything is mystical. It’s an anachronism to pick up a paint brush in a world of rapid-fire imagery.”

Cefalo’s new exhibit, “The World Is Flat,” has new paintings and drawings. When he’s not painting, he’s teaching at the Arkansas Arts Center and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

“The Old Masters are a profound influence; they are the source. When I’m working, I look for something by a great master I can pin up next to my work; I use it as a way to push forward. Rembrandt is the painter I pin up the most.” Caravaggio and Titian are also influential, as are the symbolist painters of the 19th century, particularly Franz von Stuck.

“It all comes down to my interest in form,” Cefalo says. “I favor the Old Masters because they have achieved the tangibility of flesh … I am fascinated with that alchemy … oil paint transforming into human flesh.”

Those who have followed Cefalo’s paintings will, however, see changes. That arises from his interest in how the Old Masters worked.

“I’ve cut out most of my palette,” he says. “I’m trying to get more in touch with the ancient practices I paint. I’ve gone to earth colors, plus vermilion. I’m transitioning to traditional linen canvases. I’m trying to cut out the factory look from paintings, such as man-made pigments and cotton duct canvas that looks so uniform. I’m trying to hand make more things.”

His wife, Amy, and their children are frequent presences in his paintings.

“I use photography as little as possible and models are expensive. Sometimes my wife’s face just emerges in a painting when I’m not expecting it. My own face is most convenient to put on a figure.”

Cefalo says he doesn’t keep many of his paintings.

“I don’t like to have old work sitting around, looking at me,” he says. “I will never stop painting on a piece as long as it’s in my presence … I never stop nitpicking. If I plan to make new paintings, I have to put the old ones out of my sight.”

Exhibits “Ron Meyers: A Potter’s Menagerie” Through May 5, Arkansas Arts Center, Ninth and Commerce streets, Little Rock Admission: free Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.

Sunday Organized by the Arkansas Arts Center Sponsors: Brenda Mize, the Honorable Robert L. and Charlotte B. Brown, the Windgate Charitable Foundation.

Info: arkarts.com, (501) 372-4000 “American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell” Through May 27, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, 600 Museum Way, Bentonville Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday, Thursday, Saturday-Sunday; 11 a.m.- 9 p.m. Wednesday and Friday. Closed Tuesday Admission: $12 for nonmembers, free to museum members; admission to permanent collection is free.

Organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Mass., with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, American Masterpieces Program; the Henry Luce Foundation; Curtis Publishing Company; Norman Rockwell Family Agency; and the Stockman Family Foundation.

Sponsors: the Bob Bogle Family, Cadillac of Bentonville, the Paul and June Carter Family, ConAgra Foods, Hallmark Cards, Inc., NWA Media/Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Harriet and Warren Stephens, Stephens Inc.

Info: crystalbridges.org, (479) 418-5700

“The World Is Flat: Recent works of Stephen Cefalo” Through May 11, Gallery 26, 2601 Kavanaugh Blvd., Suite 1, Little Rock.

Hours: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday.

Info: gallery26.com, (501) 664-8996

“Southern Women Artists” Through May 11, Greg Thompson Fine Art, 429 Main St., North Little Rock Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.

Saturday Info: gregthompsonfineart.com, (501) 664-2787

Style, Pages 45 on 03/24/2013

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