Metro Pulse/Artbeat/Beyond the Frame

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The Beyond the Frame series challenges traditional painting yet again

by Heather Joyner

Seeing the work of Pam Longobardi and Catherine McCarthy presented in tandem at the KMA is almost overwhelming. It's as if a runaway dessert cart has deposited its entire contents onto your table; you realize that you can't possibly consume it all, but you're sure as hell going to sample as much as you can. The physical richness of both artists' mixed media constructions, rather than forming a gloppy high-calorie mess, has instead combined to produce a balanced exhibit. Each woman has developed complex methods to attain desired visual results, and each risks surrendering meaning to glorious effect—sort of like the director of a movie with faces morphing into animal heads and things erupting in colossal balls of flame. Except here, in the artists' intricate layers of color and symbolism, we find messages surviving their respective media. Narrative impulses aren't lost in the shuffle, no matter how chaotic or muscular the dance into which they're swept.

Third in the KMA's Beyond the Frame series, the current show lives up to its predecessors' impressive level of accomplishment. And like the previously paired John Ford and Robert Van Vranken or Willie Cole and Renee Stout, Longobardi and McCarthy utilize a wide range of materials in a spirit that's become both nationally and internationally acknowledged. Call it a return to basics—to the power of individual stories.

Of course it's still how rather than what one paints (or assembles), but after decades of art emphasizing mass media, popular culture, archetypal minimalism, and, sometimes, downright bullshit, we're enjoying a return to that which is personal. Whether it's Longobardi's acid-etched copper beneath images of knots assigned various meanings or McCarthy's canvases split into sections conversely restricted and unleashed, an underlying narrative is served. The assertion that one's own idiosyncratic perspective can be the subject of art and mean something to others is gutsy as we head into a new millennium.

Speaking of gutsy, the New Jersey-born, Georgia-raised Longobardi subjects her materials to chemicals that don't always behave predictably. After nailing sheets of metal to wood, she uses different acids to create a patina. Some surfaces don't stabilize for weeks, and when they do, the results dictate how paint is then applied. Says Nandini Makrandi, KMA's assistant curator of collections and exhibitions, "Man's relationship of conflict versus coexistence with the natural world is a dominant theme in Longobardi's work; the textures of Longobardi's patinas have come to represent nature with the painted images becoming the 'cultural markers populating the wild environment.'"

No matter how we view the less-controlled aspects of her work, Longobardi treats us to visually enthralling blues and greens with to-die-for depth. Add to that her unusual set of symbols, and we're privy to delightfully mysterious amalgams. Large-scale pieces like "Nature and its Double" and "Display/Attraction" employ hands (in positions relevant to both Christianity and Buddhism) and eyes contrasted with intertwined rings and chains suggesting DNA; likewise, the circle's continuum is found in a laurel wreath. "Double," with portraits of twin girls inspired by the 16th Century Dutch painter Cornelius de Vos, is made of merging circular panels that dominate the far end of the gallery. Its chain-like tassel linking two sides appears to refer to the subject's cellular—as well as social—significance.

Even painted Renaissance collars or "ruffs" (and lace adorning the figures of two lambs) allude to the double helix. Given Longobardi's background as a scientific illustrator, her use of such elements makes sense. But it's no less potent than it might otherwise be. Some assemblages veer toward muddiness—for instance, like an attempt at a first novel, "Deep Water" feels as though the artist is throwing too many things together. But the concise—and undeniably clitoral—impact of 1997's "Knots and Hitches," resembling fur-fringed hats hung on the wall, bespeaks a definite boldness.

McCarthy's displayed pieces also possess an unusual visual vocabulary. However, her language is often literally that, and words and phrases related to childhood experience are both direct and striking. On the other hand, subtle layers of pigment partially masking certain words lend them further context. As if seen through the denial of memory, words like "snake," "splat" and "silk" hint at dangerous emotions.

We learn through her work that McCarthy was subjected to eight years of speech therapy with Mrs. Ship, an obese old nag who undermined her self-confidence. Like pages from a girl's psychologically-burdened primer, the focus of numerous canvases appears juvenile but isn't in the least. With a name confirming that truth is often stranger than fiction, Mrs. Ship is the subject of McCarthy's three largest paintings, and her presence as an ocean-going or sinking vessel—what Makrandi calls "woman as a massive frigate"—is more ominous than humorous. As a perpetual kleinigkeitskramer (German for nit picker, the title of one piece), Mrs. Ship represents our fears and the need to make sense of past wrongs in order to move on.

McCarthy frequently divides her works into two planes: one illusionistic and reminiscent of mid-19th century Luminism's polished seascapes—and the other two-dimensional and flawed. The latter areas contain her story, and her vulnerability is embodied by an imperfection necessary to the whole. Her teacher's name and McCarthy's Massachusetts origins no doubt account for the nautical references, but she's carried them to impressive heights. Despite Mrs. Ship, we see the ocean as baptismal; a place of refuge. Or as Byron put it, "Man marks the earth with ruin; his control / Stops with the shore."

The Beyond the Frame series continues to provide a feast for our eyes and minds, and it's one that should not be missed.