St James Art Show

This Saturday, I attended an art show at St James Episcopal for some very local artists. St James is a pretty little church in its own right, unlike the nuclear plant of St Mary's downtown. It has stained glass windows and dark wooden pews which evoke the comfort of a small traditional church rather than the grandness of Grace Cathedral or the large-university-class feel of some evangelical churches. The plethora of wooden furniture makes the church space more elegant, but also heavier to move. The liturgical space was transformed into a visual spectacle that would have made an Orthodox architect proud.

The three featured artists were Patrick Vennari, John Foster, and Pat Meyer, all of them congregants. Foster practiced the art of what he called keigo, the juxtaposition of image and text, which can include Japanese poetic forms. When I looked up the term, I only found information on Japanese honorifics, so perhaps this is a homophone or perhaps actually a Chinese or Korean term. In general I find it diffiult to correlate East Asian poetic forms and the English language.

Patrick Vennari presented a variety of paintings, including one of a restroom in the park. One would thinki that the restroom would not be a suitable object for painting, but a judiciouscombination of colors and the natural beauty of the park transformed the watercloset into a beautiful watercolor.

Several of the paintings were produced using a procss called giclee, which uses special printers and backing to make photographs seem like paintings. I am reading up on the process, but there is much about visual art that I do not understand. A lot of the giclee images were of local landscapes, and many of them made me yearn for the end of the rain so that I could take a walk out to Ocean Beach.

Pat Meyer makes collages. I don't know where the line is between fiddling and art, but she is on the side of art. I would compare her to Dave McKean, but I'm sure a "serious" artist would take the comparison as an insult. Unlike McKean, her art doesn't give nightmares.

The art show was a success. People mingled. Many paintings and collages sold and there was talk of inviting other artists to do another show. If any artists are interested, Vennari took a film of the show which soon will be on the Saint James website.