FIRST FRIDAY RAMBLES - DID YOU SEE THE SHOW?

Posted by arts_reviews

Posted: September 5, 2008 - 8:43 pm

The Rambles really started on Thursday this week, when the UAA Student Gallery held its opening reception for "Fontography," a group show worked around the theme of lettering styles. All of the examples were interesting to one who judges books by their typesettings. Some, like Liz Shine's digital print portrait made entirely of letters, "Typeface," were remarkable in their workmanship. Others - notably Aurora Hablett's "Ramona gets schooled by Dinosuit," a series of panels in which a little girl argues with a triceretops about whether Helvetica is a typeface or a font - were instrutionally amusing.

Up the street at APU, a fine show of recent work by Karla Moss Freeman at Carr-Gottstein had a good crowd of cogniscenti. Some of the pieces paid homage to Picasso or Matisse images; others were shrines with rosaries, crucifixes, Virgins. The show, most of which was three dimensional in some sense, is titled "Icons" - suggesting both the old masters and religious votaries, but also Freeman herself. It occured to me on account of the years of instruction, inspiration and motivation the stalwart Kenai Peninsula artist has applied to the Alaska art scene.

Next door in Grant Hall Scott Hansen had a display of bright and well-executed woodblock and other prints, watercolors and some acrylics. The subjects returned to motorcycles, old trucks and, my favorite, DC-3s.

I don't know anything about the biography of Mineko Hummel, whose first US show opened at Kaladi Bros. on Brayton Drive. But I will say she's a splendid portraitist, mostly of people (including herself), but also of pets. The study that grabbed me the longest was a curiously balanced piece showing humans at a piano, their backs turned, out of focus, and a contented cat in sharp relief in the foreground. It's titled "Meowsic to my ears."

Take a look, and let us know what's tickling your ears, or eyes, below.

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