"Liz Wolf: D'rash: Interpretive Commentary," Rosenzweig Gallery, Judea Reform Congregation, 1933 W. Cornwallis Road, Durham, through Oct. 21. For gallery hours, call 668-5839.
"Bombed: Panels, Picks and Kicks," LabourLove Gallery, Golden Belt, 807 E. Main St., Durham, through Nov. 14. Gallery hours are 11a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. For informaton, call 530-1300.
As art sites go Judea Reform Congregation in west Durham and LabourLove Gallery in east Durham are geographically as far apart as they can be and still be inside the city limits; their current art exhibitions, Liz Wolf at Judea Reform and five graffiti artists at LabourLove, are also the extreme ends of 21st century ideas. This is a microcosm of what makes Durham special -- diversity, diversity, diversity.
Wolf is a traditional printmaker who is academically trained in the medium. Here, she uses original lithographs to interpret some of the well-known stories of the Jewish Bible: Joseph in his coat of many colors, Jacob ascending the ladder to wrestle the angel, Moses parting the sea. She has also created a series on the creation and several images that include the Golem, a Jewish folkloric monster, looming over Anne Frank and Jacob and Esau.
The Bible is a treasure trove of written images, and artists have interpreted them over the centuries; some are so familiar we tend to accept them as the only version. For example, in popular culture, the scene with Charlton Heston ordering the sea to part is hard to forget, and Eve handing Adam the apple is the only event in the Garden of Eden that ever comes to mind, so when we see a different construction it gives us pause. Wolf titles her Moses, "Doomed Chariots" and offers a view of the patriarch from the back, breaking his staff in two as strident blues and greens swirl and disembodied wheels churn in the paint. In "Adam and Eve," a decorative screen of vines hides two faint figures in flesh tones, one sitting and one who seems to be running. Wolf is a talented artist with a new twist on some very old themes.
At LabourLove Gallery, five graffiti artists have had a field day, coming inside and creating their art on site. Franco, Greg Davis, Sean Kernick, Victor Knight III and Matt Schofeld all live in the Triangle; they began this type of art in New York and, although they have wives, kids and day jobs, on occasion still feel the need to go outside and yell their frustrations with big swipes of paint on an open surface that belongs to someone else.
Graffiti is considered vandalism and is punishable by law. Despite this people have been writing in public places since ancient Greek times. During World War II, "Kilroy is here," was seen everywhere. In the 1960s graffiti proliferated with messages of political and social dissatisfaction. By the 1980s the art world had co-opted graffiti, made it worthy of gallery status and subverted its declarations made especially against the crass commercialization of the art world.
At LabourLove, four of the artists, Davis, Kernick, Knight and Schofeld, went to work on four mural size canvases prepared by gallery director Kelly Dew. Dew told me she was awed at their freedom of spirit and composition, because she felt her academic training had put lots of constraints on her art making. "When we were organizing the show," she said, "I told them to do what your street art is and try to capture the process."
They came in with their spray paint cans, a few sketches and some stencils and began to "throw up" or "bomb" the canvases. ("Bombing" means working quickly with only two or three colors and sacrificing aesthetics for speed.) While they worked independently, from time to time, one would ask for help with a call "Come hit me over here." For the exhibition they completed the canvases in about five hours, with their own "Tags," (personalized signatures).
Over the generations street art has been useful to historians as another means of studying social history. In cities where it has been rampant, graffiti seems to shout neglect and a loss of respect for the community. Now that some of it is inside and police determination has cleaned up the cities, street art has been emasculated. The work in this show is a part of history and takes its place as just that -- ideas to relish from another time.
Blue Greenberg's column appears each week in Entertainment and More. She can be reached at blueg@bellsouth.net or by writing her in c/o The Herald-Sun, P.O. Box 2092, Durham, NC 27702.
