"Texas Draws" at the Southwest School of Art and Craft

July 12, 1:29 PMSan Antonio Contemporary Art ExaminerScott Dickens

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The Southwest School of Art and Craft has put together a selection of drawings from several Texas-based artists titled Texas Draws, which will be viewable at the Navarro Campus through September 6, 2009. The exhibition features drawings from artists such as Alice Leora Briggs, Suzi Davidoff, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Benito Huerta, Jules Buck Jones, Jayne Lawrence, Mona Marshall, Christine Olejniczak, Katie Pell, Jimmy Peña, Regis Shephard, Bonnie Young and Eric Zimmerman.

One cannot help but notice the wide variety of styles and methods to approaching subject matter. From one piece to the next, the viewer can identify work that seems more narrative in nature, while others less so. Some work borderlines the sculptural, while others maintain the purely two-dimensional form. All of the work, however, does seem cohesive in that it offers one of many approaches to drawing. Such approaches include an organic style of line as opposed to mechanical, or at times a combination of both, while others feature an exploration of multiple mediums.

Though quite interesting overall, the exhibition does, however, seem to demonstrate the idea that not all artists are created equal. A separation seems present between the work that effectively relays to the viewer a sense of mastery over the mediums and methods for creating a coherent and interesting narrative, and the work that seems to fall short.

In a piece by Jimmy Peña titled In the Mouth of the Elephant River, the artist beautifully renders the facial features of a figure that rests below a swirling vortex of line. As line forms waves of hair, and hair seems to mold itself along the woodgrain on which the piece is drawn, the movement that presents itself within the piece as everything begins to collapse heavily on the figure like a strong river tide begins to submerse the face that stares off into the distance.

 The piece titled One a Penny, Two a Penny, Three a Penny, Four; The Roses Have Bloomed; and We're Knocking at your Door by Jayne Lawrence offers an explosion of imagery that comes to life and forms a living, breathing, composite form. Aside from the skillful rendering of the piece, one can only attempt to determine the relationship between each component of the form without serious investigation into the origins of the piece. Upon further investigation, a single childhood memory is revealed to be represented by way of muddy hands, foliage and insects intertwining and connecting with one another. Following the discovery of the narrative that is taking place within the drawing, each piece of imagery becomes that much more vital to the drawing as it offers to the story what might normally be represented by pages of text. In this case, that text is completely replaced by a single image representing an experience lost to time.

For more information on the exhibition and artists, please visit: http://www.swschool.org/

                                                                                           http://jaynelawrence.com/

                                                                                           http://www.jimmypenaart.org/