Sewickley Gallery Walk
Where: Sewickley
When: Sept 14, Friday, 6-9 PM
Website: http://www.sweetwaterartcenter.org/gallerywalking.asp

Shadyside Art Festival
Where: Shadyside
When: Sept 14-16
Website: http://artfestival.com/art_festival/sept_2007_2.php

The opening reception of recent works by Joe Witzel is held at PANZA Gallery in Millvale yesterday. Joe, living in Troy hill of Pittsburgh, frequently drives up to Moraine State Park to draw the goldenrods in different seasons. When I stood in a full room of goldenrod paintings in vivid colors and eye-catching forms, the first question I asked is why I didn't see the beauty of them before, which have filled the slopes of shopping malls around Pittsburgh with their untamed green and bright yellow.

All goldenrods are painted with pastels, but they look more like oil paintings from Van Gogh: short strokes wildly drawing in diagonal manner, the majority in green and yellow, and the visible thickness of bright yellow tints built up on other layers. All these indicate energetic creation processes in plein-air. Later, Joe told me most of the works were done within three hours range on-site, with possibly some final touch-ups in his studio.

Looking closely at those pastel paintings shows that Joe specifically has chosen grey green paper for most of his works because he did not physically blend colors. Thus a base color with the right tone and hue is cruicial. Without being covered fully with Unison pastel sticks, the papers , here and there, show the base color and give the depth and vibrance to the whole pictures.

In most cases, he places strokes of different color on top of others. Sometimes feathering or scumbling are used but kept at minimum. Therefore, each stroke preserves its pristine freshness, yearning to tell people how the whole image comes into being from hands with masterful drawing skills once you can step back to allow different strokes of colors blend into your eyes.

The Canson paper that he used for the majority of the pictures cannot hold many layers thus mistakes made can hardly be corrected without compromising the raw state of stroke work. He told me there are some failed pieces but these survived successful works look incredibly crispy and clear compared to Wolf Kahn’s haze color patches.

Other ink and pencil drawings show Joe is very efficient in his drawings. Each line has its meaning. There is no scribble or smudge. Shades and shadow are done by changes in intensity and density of short strokes. If Wolf Kahn’s pastel determines his oil work, then Joe’s economical stroke style in pastel can be fully appreciated in those ink and pencil drawings.

Mainly Goldenrod – Recent works by Joe Witzel can be seen until Sept 29, 2007 at PANZA Gallery.

The Hoyt Institute of Fine Art now features a special exhibition of works by Wolf Kahn in pastel, a medium what Khan calls his determining medium. On the one hand, it is special to show works in a medium whose directness and freshness are less known compared to oil paint; on the other hand, the show is more business-driven. The collection is from Khan’s associated gallery and every painting is for sale. The underlining drawback is that it is not a flashback of artist’s growth and changes in his long artistic career, but instead a show of recent works: All works are freshening even bordering experimenting, but none go beyond his own color theory which signifies his late mature works.

It is almost impossible to describe Khan’s style in one or two words. In his early days, he was influenced by George Seurat. Such an impact of the optical color-mixing from pointillism resides in his pastel works even though his subjects matter has become succinct to almost abstract. In the current show, he chose white water-color paper exclusively. The irregular rugged surface naturally pops out in forms of tiny spots optically mixed with color patches, thus providing a more luminous atmosphere. His blending, on the other hand, reminds me of George Inness. Layers of colors float on top of each other as if there exists such inner glow that drives those colors out of the paper.

Kahn did not deny the influence of modern painters which is synthesized in his works. When being viewed from a distance, Khan’s semi-minimalism works indicate more depth in colors than space from perspective. Such depths loosely relates him with Rothko, however, they differ not only in subjects (Khan’s are more representational), but also in the degree of meditation. In Kahn, there is an illusion of movement in those abstract colored shapes. When those pastel works are viewed closely, the traces of creativity can be as easily identified as those in Pollock’s works: either in the complicated light on the wall, or among the branches of woods, he applied his strokes in abandoning style, yet the layer relationship between each color seems both improvising and controlled. When his works are examined with focus on stroke structure, one can see how he dragged in effort the defining lines on top of other base layers. If De Kooning explored the possibility of the driest method for oil painting with his newspaper, direct tube, then Khan somehow tries to reach the same kind of stroke effect by making the driest medium look wet. Those strokes, thin or thick, are a variety from less defined to very rugged and demands viewers to explore hidden energy under the peace.

But above all, viewing works by Kahn is essentially an examination of his signified color theory. No matter whether the painting is abstract (for woods topics) or representational (for barn topics), it is the colors that draw spectators to discover beyond the subject matters: How do the colors interplay with shapes and lines and what kind of mood do they lead to?

In his woods series, paintings are composed of levels of stripes, triangles or irregular rectangles, whose simplicity is disrupted by vertical tree trunks. (The tree trunks are further disillusioned from a variety of horizontal short branches) However, colors play up the foreground from confrontational relationship but play down trunks by dissolving them. Thus when the crowns are founded again popping out of the sky, there is a sense of intimacy and satisfaction obtained through the discovery.

Here are some of his words about colors:

For the artist, purple has special qualities. The smallest variation in density of tone is significant. Purple can be made to appear airy or heavy. (Try to make a heavy yellow or an airy black.) It can describe a wide range of psychological meanings, from celebratory to tragic.

Bright orange is one of those really good attention-grabbing colors. It resists being used in a subtle way....It seems made to order to represent intensity, exuberance, and heightened feelings generally, without the hidden threats as does the color red. It relates wonderfully to cool blues....It has a very complex relation with magenta, red-purple, and an equally strong one with blue green....

There remains the question of when, exactly, to employ this useful color...The answer is: in fall, and at the time of brilliant sunsets. Then no one can quarrel with one’s use of orange, since it is sanctioned by actual occurance in nature.

The exhibition “Wolf Kahn Pastels” can be seen at Hoyt Institute of Fine Art until Sept 28, 2007.

A couple updates on furniture-making in Pennsylvania. First, my friend loaned me a booklet published in 1982 from the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania. Apparently there was an exhibit at the former facility in Oakland. The book covers clocks, chests, slant-front desks, glassware and silver. The book was reprinted in 2001, but I couldn't find a copy available online. The research does not provide insight into what was made in Western Pennsylvania after 1820.

Yesterday I also had the opportunity to visit Neshannock Woods, a cabinetmaker and antique dealer near Grove City. A period workshop provides insight into how furniture was once made. There are also some period Western Pennsylvania pieces available for purchase including an 1837 empire chest with origins in Washington, Pa.

You can visit them online at Neshannock Woods

While furniture made in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston and New York has been well documented, furniture made in cities like Pittsburgh remains to be fully discovered.

When the city and environs began to be settled in the late eighteenth century it was difficult to transport furniture from East-Coast cities. It would seem much of what was used in Pittsburgh, Washington and Greensburg at that time might have been made here.

A review of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from 1800 onward shows advertisements for cabinetmakers starting around 1811. By 1840 there were at least seven cabinetmakers and a number of companies including the Allegheny Chair Company on Ohio Street at the Diamond. By 1835, the book Pittsburgh’s Commercial development shows furniture being both imported and exported from Pittsburgh. Before 1811 there are quite a few advertisements from merchants in Philadelphia and Baltimore advertising wares.

There are documented pieces from Western Pennsylvania before 1800, but the extent of refined furniture manufacturing in Pittsburgh at that time remains largely unknown (at least to this author).

The early pieces that are known range from simple to sophisticated, from plain walnut to fine inlay featuring vines and leaves.

What were the influences? Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York? How much of the style is home-grown? How can Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania furniture be identified? Who were the cabinetmakers before 1800? What did the products made by the companies advertising after 1811 look like? These are questions I’d like to attempt to answer.

If you have any insight, please contact me.