Tom VanEynde
Gina Litherland's, “A Friendly Game.”
That two artists might share a fascination with folklore, myth and magical stories is perhaps not so remarkable. What’s intriguing is to compare the way they interpret these influences, one in paint and another in clay.
That’s just what the James Watrous Gallery/Wisconsin Academy lets us do in side-by-side exhibitions on view through June 18.
Gina Litherland, who grew up in Gary, Indiana, and now lives in Cedarburg, paints intricate scenes in oil that emerge from her reveries about fables, folklore and literary characters. Gerit Grimm, raised in the former Soviet East Germany and now an assistant professor at UW-Madison, is a ceramicist whose large-scale figures suggest puppets acting out a play. Both artists’ works reference something familiar but are, upon closer look, haunted by the less familiar.
Leda and the swan are here, invoking the Greek myth about seduction. Several images suggest the three graces. Don Juan visits from fable and opera, Reynardine from an old-English ballad, and a group of women and children from an early-Christian resurrection parable. Other works, such as Grimm’s two toiling fruit peddlers and Litherland’s three spinsters spinning wool, are less obviously derived.
The theme of Grimm’s exhibit is loss and renewal. After her father’s unexpected death last year, she found herself exploring depictions of mourning. Her three most recent works — “Deposition Caring,” “Entombment” and “Pieta” — are touching examples of this, in which lifeless bodies are gently carried and borne by survivors.
All of Grimm’s figures begin as wheel-thrown pots that are manipulated, shaped and detailed — it’s impressive just to consider her construction skills. Grimm pushes the pot beyond its usual boundaries and uses unglazed stoneware that’s fired to give the surface an almost metallic sheen. Her long-limbed figures have a doll-like quality that’s sobered up by the material. They’re decidedly not for play.
Grimm’s mourners mingle with other characters in the exhibit: a girl on a swing, several pairs of lovers, a trio of women representing three stages of life. There are flowers and references to spring. Facial expressions and interwoven hands convey tenderness. In her artist’s statement, Grimm quotes Friedrich Nietzsche: “Everything dies, everything blossoms again.” Her figures seem to be acting out that truth.
Gerit Grimm's, “Entombment.”
Litherland’s exhibit is organized around the theme of “Curious Encounters,” which is a rich vein for her to mine as a student of folklore and literature. Just as an encounter can lead to a pivotal discovery, Litherland’s creative process often does, too. She likes to begin with a scene or character in mind, then see where her brush takes her. She paints on wood or Masonite in a layering technique that imparts an old-world glow. Her female characters are riveting and self-possessed, even when they’re only represented by a pair of bare feet in the woods (“The Last Days of Werther”) or when they’re in seemingly vulnerable circumstances (“Terre Verte”).
Animals and the natural world are important to Litherland, and they play a role in some of the encounters here. I keep going back in my mind to “Bird Funeral,” in which a small girl comes upon three bird-women lamenting a dead fledgling. Two other human women appear, as well, as if to join the mourning — or are they interlopers? Or spirits?
This is one of several moments in the two shows when one artist’s gesture is echoed by the other — in this case women representing three stages of life, and mourners. There are other echoes, such as the lithesome and fluid movements of both artist’s figures, the expressive hands, the inward-looking gazes. Grimm and Litherland had never met before their juxtaposed exhibitions, but their work shares much in common.
Maybe that says something about the enduring power of the stories both artists plumb. These are cautionary tales and characters that have stood the test of time. Grimm’s earth-toned, three-dimensional figures and Litherland’s richly painted ones might be dressed in storybook costumes, but the themes they act out are timeless: death and hope, safety and danger, the mystical and the physical, and the resurgent power of the natural world.
These two exhibits are a reminder that stories handed down through the ages aren’t owned by anyone in particular. Two women can lay claim to them, adding their own truths and experiences. It’s like a reverse patina that, instead of aging the material, polishes it.