24 Jul 2018

Splash

Art Garage - Cooperstown

Reviewed by Franklin Einspruch

The Art Garage, like many spaces not sheltering a convertible, is putting on a group show for the summer.

It's always a pleasure to revisit Petey Brown's swimmers, cavorting in their flickering, Expressionist waters. Megan Adams Irving's landscapes executed in glazes on rectangles of stoneware are attractive, and given how dull glazes look prior to firing, of considerable technical interest.

Steph Marcus works in an adventurous array of media. Her figurative pictures are sometimes invaded by a cartoon rabbit, which among other things has blissfully possessed one of the characters in Artists Play Pool (Humans) (2017).

Ashley Norwood Cooper's oils are summer-appropriate: picnics, sunbathers, shirtless couples in love or at least relationships. Astonishing light emanates from her imagined, evocative scenes, particularly in one work in which in a child's face appears through blue glass and the teal reflecting off of a cake pan turns a deviled egg lime green.