DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTO
Jimenez outside CAW.
Until Sunday, viewers approaching the glassy facade of Creative Arts Workshop (CAW) on Audubon Street will immediately notice the large-scale, exuberant paintings in the window. They were created through an interesting collaboration between students and teachers of CAW’s Young People’s Department participating in CAW’s Adventures in Summer Programs.
Part of the first-floor exhibit.
CAW gallery director Robin Green co-curated the exhibit with Nellie Shevelkina, a CAW instructor and head of the Young People’s Department. “Three Seasons 1 – 3,” occupies the first floor exhibit, and features work by visiting artist Noe´ Jimenez in collaboration with CAW Summer students 5 to 10 years of age. CAW’s second floor gallery is displaying a broad array of 2 and 3 dimensional works by students in the summer program.
Student hand prints create background textures.
Jimenez invited students to collaborate with him as “apprentices,” learning about the historic role of the apprentice in helping even the most famous artists complete their artistic visions. Jimenez noted that he did not teach a lot of techniques or provide conventional instruction, as much as allow students to express themselves over lines he created, emphasizing the color green, a hue that expresses nature and dominates the exhibit.
Suggesting nature, green was a dominant painting color.
Gallery director Green, said that Jimenez’s goal was “to encourage students to approach art in less precious ways — to see even ‘finished’ artwork as something that can be manipulated, transformed into different media, and still keep some essential aspects intact. To that end, his work provided limits — colors, for instance, or shapes, within which the children worked.”
Some paintings are paired with Jimenez’s small works.
The result is an exhibit of arresting, symbol-rich paintings in acrylic and mixed media on paper, which the students and Jimenez created during a series of one-week work shops. The symbols and slightly skewed representational shapes and forms in the paintings, to a large degree, reflect Jimenez’s personal visual vocabulary — some of it rooted in the cartoon imagery of 1993 Nickelodeon animated cartoon series Rocko’s Modern Life by animator Joe David Murray.
Skewed, distorted elements invoke cartoon spirit.
One of the paintings, according to Jimenez, is based on the Rocko’s opening sequence: “In the sequence a large TV falls on top of the characters and one of them says, ‘That was a hoot!’ This image stood out to me because of its back story. The creator, Joe Murray, had a television dropped on his head when he was a little kid, which he offers as the reason for creating a cartoon world that is always a little skewed. I love that anecdote because it says that in order to see the world in a different way than what is considered ‘normal,’ sometimes you have to go through something less than ideal. In the end, it enhances your perspective so you can see the world around you in a new and exciting way.”
VCR technology featured in this work.
Jimenez’s interest, if not fascination, with aging “tech devices” — old televisions, VHS and VCRs — has spawned a vocabulary of motifs he continues to explore and revisit in his work. It also appears in some the exhibit’s offerings.
“I like the idea of the technology, society, fashion — the art of your childhood — being an identity for all of us, and in identifying with these things, we accept them as part of who we are, well after we grow out of them.”
The exhibit presents an optimistic and whimsical perspective that Jimenez has characterized as “not hard to look at.” Appropriation of cartoon imagery is common practice among graffiti and street artists today, even among those who make the transition to canvas and gallery careers. For Jimenez, a fine artist, cartoons continue to be a way to celebrate life: “For me, cartoons like Rocko’s Modern Life were my art history before I knew what that was, and that visual education was always filled with humor. I want my artwork to be the same way, filled with meaning and sincerity, but always in the context of a joke or lightheartedness.”
Ceramic relief plaques cover a range of subjects.
Other elements of the exhibit include a wall of small, painted ceramic relief plaques (season 2) created by students who were inspired by Jimenez’s small painted paper constructions interspersed in the display.
Small, ceramic plant sculptures.
A long table in the center of the room (season 3) is populated by ceramic plant-form sculptures by students, exhibited among a number of paper forms — fragments from deconstructed Jimenez art works, all underscoring a nature theme that also figures into Jimenez’s art practice and the theme of the Three Seasons 1 – 3 show.
Part of the second floor exhibit of paintings and sculpture.
In addition to the Jimenez workshops works, the second floor exhibit features art work that children produced at CAW this summer in classes taught by Nelli Shevelkina and teachers Judie Cavanaugh, Eva Scopino, Gul Rukh Selim, Kris Wetmore, Katrina Casey, Bridget O’Neill, Jennifer Van Elswyk and teacher assistants Jasmine Thomas and Shaelyn Moody. Some of the larger pieces were created as backdrops (second floor) for a play that was performed, according to Green.
Tropical landscapes were represented in two and three dimensions.
A closing ice cream reception will be held at the CAW gallery at 80 Audubon St. on Sunday, Sept. 10, from 2 to 4 p.m. For more information or to learn more about CAW programs, visit its website.