Review of Emerging Artists 2011 in AJC

An Pham, Unkreisen, 2010, Crochet Rubber Bands

An excerpt from Lucha Rodriguez at Swan Coach House Gallery; "Emerging Artists 2011″ at Spruill Gallery by Cathy Fox

An Pham, a recent graduate of University of Georgia's Master of Fine Arts program, is the break-out artist of Spruill Gallery's “Emerging Artists 2011.”

The artist works with a wide palette of materials, from handmade paper and old books to plastic strips, scotch tape and – most wondrously in this exhibit -- rubber bands. Pham crochets, plaits, knots, coils and otherwise manipulates this mundane item into mysterious sculptures, which she presents like the gifts they are in hand-made boxes.

It's a good thing that Pham wants you to touch them because they are irresistibly tactile. They also give off that rubber-band smell and, more profoundly, the feeling of intensity that comes from the hours of repetition and minute manipulations that making these works require. She manipulates books and their pages with similar inventiveness. I'm watching her.

Click here to read the full review, including words on Lucha Rodriguez's exhibition Fluoressence at Swan Coach House Gallery

Excerpts from Cathy Fox's article "Spruill Exhibit Celebrates Printmaking"

Jim McLean, Urban Fragment III, 1973, Collagraph

Now, we can revisit the work of Nexus Press, the nationally known and respected book art press that flourished here between 1976 and 2003.

A display of artist books published by the press is the heart of “Out of Print,” a group show centered on printmaking, at Spruill Gallery.

The exhibition is also a timeline of sorts, as it surveys printmakers and acknowledges printmaking organizations from the ’70s to the present. Included are Nexus Press, Rolling Stone Press and the newest, the Atlanta Printmakers Studio, as well as college programs at the Atlanta College of Art, Georgia State University, Savannah School of Art and Design and the University of Georgia.

That this is a living tradition is announced right when you walk in the door.

Read the entire article in today's AJC and be sure to join us for next Wednesday's free lecture of the Books of Nexus Press featuring JoAnne Paschall.

Read between the LINES

Review: Engaging “Align” at Spruill Gallery draws a multimedia bead on line

by Catherine Fox | Mar 9, 2011

Contrary to retail blandishments, one size never fits all. Yet, Hope Cohn, Spruill Gallery's energetic director, organizes exhibitions that serve the multiple and sometimes competing interests of the community, offering a judicious mix of readily accessible and high-concept work by an equally broad cross-section of artists. “Align: An Exploration into the Artistic Use of Line,” on view through March 19, is a case in point.

High on the accessibility index, Jeffery Merritt’s charming wire animal sculptures exemplify line in space. They bring to mind Alexander Calder’s circus, though the self-taught artist knew nothing about them when he began bending wire. The drawings George Vlosich makes on Etch-A-Sketch screens are not profound, but anyone who’s tried the thing will marvel at his virtuosity. It’s hard to get it do anything but horizontal and vertical; Vlosich not only makes organic line but also shading and subtle detail.

Read the entire review on ArtsCrticATL

Today on ArtsCriticATL

Emerging artist Margaret Fletcher finds her way to an impressive debut

by Catherine Fox | Oct 15, 2010

Margaret Fletcher makes an impressive debut at Spruill Gallery. Her elegant drawings and paintings achieve a meditative calm, in part by balancing opposites. Both lush and spare, they read as surface and space, and their effect is allusive and elusive.

Fletcher’s core language, as it were, is press-on letters in a crisp Helvetica script, each smaller than a coffee ground, which she positions in patterns that suggest swarms constellations, maps, microscopic particles.

Read more on ArtsCriticATL

Review by Cathy Fox in today's AJC

Here is an excerpt from an AJC review of "Certainty Principle" and "Ocus" written by Cathy Fox.

"Margaret Fletcher makes a stunning debut in her concurrent exhibition of drawing and paintings. She composes these ethereal abstractions using press-on letters that are no bigger than the head of a pin. She has the crisp Helvetica letters specially made and places them with the precision of an architect, which she is, who knows that God is in the details.

The letters are fixed, like insects in amber, by layers of milky, translucent encaustic (wax), sometimes infused with an aqueous blue-green. Her application is so extremely thin and smooth that it makes other encaustic paintings look vulgar.

These small works may evoke the stars in the night sky, swarms of microscopic beings, or other naturally occurring patterns. In one series, the letters hover at the edges, a suggestion of dispersal. Mostly, they are elegant, meditative and really, 
really beautiful."

See the full article on accessAtlanta.

Review of LATinGA in AJC

Pilar Martinez

Spruill Gallery’s “LatinGA” features eight Atlanta artists with Latin roots, but don’t expect insights or epiphanies about being Latin or Georgian. The artists come from different countries, and their origins play very different roles in their art -- for some not at all. Gallery director Hope Cohn uses the theme as an umbrella rather than a scaffold, a way to corral a group of artists who merit our attention. The exhibit succeeds quite well as a series of mini-solo displays.

The bottom line: Spruill Gallery does a good job of showcasing undersung Georgia artists, as it does here with a group whom you’ll want to know about.

Check out Cathy Fox's full review of LATinGA for the AJC here.

Cathy Fox review of Run for Cover on Arts Critic ATL

Someone should make a list of all the talented artists who live, all too often under the radar, in our city. Here are a couple of names: Flournoy Holmes and Susan Archie. Crack designers and Grammy winners both, they get a well-deserved shout-out in “Run for Cover,” a really fun and aesthetically illuminating exhibition of 432 new and vintage albums at Spruill Gallery.

You can check out the full review here.

Cathy Fox's Review of on the flip side

Check out Cathy's review at Access Atlanta, Say Hello to using cellphone to make art.

We hope you can make it to the artists reception and talk this evening from 6-8pm at the gallery!

Review of Emerging Artists 2009

Check out Cathy Fox's review of the show at her new blog, Arts Critic ATL.

"Emerging artist" is an elastic term. It can mean young practitioners at the beginning of their careers, artists of any age just getting recognition and even an existential condition: As Atlanta artist Lisa Tuttle famously said, "In Atlanta, artists emerge until they die." Spruill Gallery's "Emerging Artists 2009" includes the first two and, like all of Spruill's programs, intends to help artists avoid the last."

Check out the rest of the review here.

AJC Review

In case you missed Cathy Fox's review of "Man of the People" in the AJC, here is a link.

Peter Magubane became a photojournalist in 1954 to fight apartheid. He discovered that camera skills were only the beginning. To cover a revolution, a photographer has to be as brave as its participants, and as tough and cagey as a guerilla warrior. A lifetime of photographs sampled at Spruill Gallery suggests he was.