The News-Enterprise June 26, 2003 COLOR INK 3D The administration building at Elizabethtown Community College is showing few signs of life these days. The classrooms are bare. The hallways are quiet. The couch near the door — where everyone wants to study or wait for a ride — is finally free. Campus life has nearly died for the summer. Yet, one room — the Morrison Gallery — is alive with the visions of three different artists. Through July 18, the gallery is hosting the Kentucky Visual Electric Inspiration art show. The show features Louisville artists Andy Cook, Scott McCrory and artcat, also known as Troy Head. "All three are very strong artists," said Ted Higgs, director of the gallery. Higgs initially asked Cook to exhibit his work in a solo show. "This is a great space, and when they asked me to do a show I thought, ‘I can't fill this,'" Cook said at the exhibit's opening last week. Cook also is the president of the Louisville Poetry Guild. He recruited McCrory and artcat, also poets, to join the show. Together, the trio has awakened part of the campus from its summertime nap. Just an ordinary pen Along the gallery's back wall are Andy Cook's ink drawings. Many of them are portraits, created in so many shades they look like black and white photographs from across the room. "I've been into art since I was this young," Cook said, holding his hand out at hip level. "I would always stay up until 3 o'clock in the morning drawing, cutting and pasting." Cook discovered his affinity for ink almost accidentally. "I was just messing around with a ball-point pen one day," he said. He has incorporated collages into several of his ink creations. Many of the collage pieces came from the National Geographic magazines he inherited from his grandfather. Others have been cut from newspapers. The first picture Cook drew in ink was of the pyramid on a $1 bill. He then surrounded the pyramid with magazine clippings, including a room full of stereo speakers and the Department of Treasury logo. Another ink drawing of a demolished building is surrounded by recent newspaper clippings, including a photo of a smiling George W. Bush with "Let's make some money" written in the corner and photos of Saddam, Odai and Qusai Hussein defaced with blue ink glasses and mustaches. Cook's poetry might lend interpretation to his artwork. In the poem he read to an audience of more than 50, Cook half spoke and half sang "I'm proud to be an American" in a husky voice. In his normal tone he added, "but I don't need 20 flags to prove it." The poem later suggested that if corporate America could find a way, it would sell the smiles we exchange. The love of color The left side of the gallery is artcat's lair. He attended the reception in a black shirt, black suit, black shoes and his black, wavy hair fell to his shoulders. Despite his ensemble, the artist can't hide his love of color in his artwork. His largest piece in the show, The Primacy of Color, is a tribute to color consisting of six large square canvases, one for each hue of the color wheel. When painting this piece, he imagined what each color thought was most important. He lets the colors represent themselves in this piece, depicting abstract versions of blue sea and sky, red fire, yellow sun, orange dessert, green earth and purple soul. "I wanted it to be abstract and concise," he said. With the exception of The Primacy of Color, which is a mixed medium piece, artcat's paintings, bright and often geometrical, are done in oil. He also is displaying sculptures in the show, some of which are influenced by his days spent in architecture school. The artist said he has always signed his poetry as artcat. About two years ago, he started painting a black artcat logo on his artwork. He said he once had a teacher who complained the public treated art like a commodity, only buying art because the artist was well-known, and not because the art spoke to them. He wondered if he could appease brand name seekers without changing his personal style. Troy Head, a former logo designer, adopted artcat as a stage name, giving up the small signature corner of his work to marketing. "I'm just going to go along with the system instead of bucking the system," artcat said. "But maybe at the same time I am bucking the system, because I'm not running from it," he added. A new way to see Dozens of Scott McCrory's 3-D pictures cover the right wall of the gallery. "A woman read my palm and told me I would show people how to see things differently," he said at the exhibit's reception, which he attended barefoot. Three weeks later, he saw a 3-D art display. He went home, held the 3-D glasses to his eyes and took another look at his own work. His art jumped out at him. He had never realized his work had a 3-D quality. For the last two years, he has purposely been creating 3-D art. "People look at it and they say, ‘Wow,'" McCrory said of his attraction to the style. The pictures, some loosely resembling common screen savers, are done in bright shades of blue green and purple against black backgrounds. "My work's a little deeper than it looks on the surface," he said. The most abstract in his collection is a series of names. He manipulates a person's name, written in their own handwriting. "In each piece, the personality of that person came through," he said. McCrory, like the other artists, read several poems at the reception. He said his passion for both arts are equal. "When visual art can't say exactly what I feel, I know written words can," he said. |