Art exhibition celebrates everyday inspiration, creativity
Review by Kelly McGilvery | Artwork by Steven J Athanas
TOLEDO – Steven J Athanas is an eminence grise in Toledo’s arts and culture community – though he is primarily known as a musician/frontman, he is also a writer, poet and a visual artist.
“I’ve kind of hung up my rock-and-roll shoes and put my energies into my visual art, which is … there’s a certain irony in it,” he said. “My dad is probably upstairs laughing. You know, I go from one high paying career as a musician to a visual artist. He must think I must have bumped my head.”
Life After Life, the new exhibition of his works in mixed media, is a riot of color and words. The show mixes pop culture and high art with a playful, poetic, handwrought sensibility.
Life After Life runs through Oct. 18 at the University of Toledo Carlson Library. Library hours are Monday-Thursday from 7:30 a.m. to midnight; Friday 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Sunday 1-8 p.m.
The majority of the works on paper in this show are created with Micron pens, watercolors and colored pencils, with a dab of nail polish or coffee, when needed. Poems, plays on words and illustrations mix together to build a testament to the joy of following everyday inspiration where it takes you in a sketchbook.
A good portion of this exhibition is from a series Athanas calls Bad Homophones, but are rather quite good homophones. The best example is Fig. 23F: Manet’s Mayonnaise, in which the women from the Edouard Manet painting Olympia are shown on the label for a jar of mayonnaise. The homophone series gives the sense of being pleasantly ensnared in a cryptic crossword. The numbered and lettered titles beg the question, “What is the imaginary encyclopedic compendium from which these illustrations are drawn?”
Athanas’ playful spirit is highlighted even in the titles of his works, which evoke worlds with just a few words. The Chicken Juggler is an illustrated 10-verse rhyming poem about a boy who taught himself how to juggle chickens. You’ll not find a finer 360-degree rendering of airborne chickens anywhere. If Tinkertoy made a living, breathing alphabet, it might look just like Athanas’ penmanship.
A personal favorite in the exhibition is the whimsical illustration, A Box of #2 Pencils Runs Amok, which delivers exactly what it promises – an exploration of the many moods and directions of a series of pencils. The standard materials for the piece – Micron pen, watercolors, colored pencil – are supplemented with splotches of coffee.
One wonders about the genesis of the nonsensical Fig. 13A: Mr. Rogers Floats Barefoot Through Space. Mad Libs, names in a hat, or merely an affirmation that something funny can result from a few stray words pulled together in a sketchbook?
Life After Life is not just fun and games, as several very thoughtful pieces consider legacy, aging and loneliness, including the title poem, which quietly prods us all to call our parents while we still can.
The show’s illustrations are supplemented by several of Athanas’ excellent Calder-esque hand-formed wire sculptures adorned with ceramics and colored tissue paper.
“I’m always trying to explore new ideas. I don’t want to be pigeonholed. You know, some people have told me, ‘How can you work with so many different mediums?’ If it didn’t work, I wouldn’t keep doing it,” said Athanas.
For more work by Athanas for the Toledo Free Press, see his Plight of a Homewrecker column and his editorial illustrations in these very pages for an idea of the breadth of his modes of expression.
