Not Exactly Mainstream Artwork
This show is like the difference between shopping at Safeway and pulling carrots out of your own garden.
Moreso a welcome home than a museum exhibition, “The Radiant Object” is an unstuffy saunter through ideas made fresh by self-taught “outsider” artists - meaning “outside” the hackneyed, copyist and self-absorbed “insider” mainstream. Uncontaminated by academe, “outsider” artists produce work with the sparkle, clarity and chill of spring water.
Little chairs made from chicken bones, a fish-head pipe and a cane with a doorknob grip - everything and everyone antithetical to Martha Stewart belongs here.
One artist made religious crosses from matchsticks and glitter while he was doing time in a penitentiary. Another painted his thoughts for 18 years in a mental hospital. An elderly woman put house paint to sheetmetal scraps to “brighten up the yard and please the Lord.”
Visitors to the gallery may play video tapes about selected artists.
The 70 paintings, sculptures and other creations belong to Willem Volkersz, a Montana artist who collects these objects on vacation rambles across the country. You may recall his own work from the recent neon art exhibition - wall-size scenes in paint-by-number style.
In the accompanying catalog to this new exhibit, Volkersz explains he selected these pieces because each “radiates something personal and unique.”
“This ‘radiant object’ often reflects an inner vision or a special, intense (even compulsive) relationship between the maker and the object,” he writes. “… It has to hold me, it must make me look again and again, and it may fully reveal itself only over time.”
Barbara Racker, CCM curator of art, hopes visitors to the show enjoy the simplicity, ingenuity and inclusiveness of the work.
“I think the message from this kind of artwork is that every man and woman can be an artist,” she said. “You don’t need formal training or expensive materials to express yourself making objects.”
The museum is providing a “hands-on” opportunity for making art from ordinary stuff at the “Reclamation Station” on the museum’s atrium level. “We provided recycled materials like buttons, felt and egg cartons for people to create art,” said Racker. “No chicken bones, and no fish heads.”
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: ART PREVIEW Cheney Cowles Museum, 2316 W. First, is hosting the exhibit “The Radiant Object: Self-taught Artists from the Volkersz Collection” through June 1. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday; and 1-5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $4 for adults; $3 over age 65; $2.50 for children age 6-16; $10 per family; half-price on Wednesdays.