E.G.G. Gallery
1474 West Hubbard Street
2nd Floor
Chicago, Illinois 60622
Telephone: 312/ 666-0553

"Newspaper Rock," 1992
Acrylic over Newspaper Collage
48" x 60"
© Jean Poklop

Memory -- personal, collective or, as in art, vicarious, is of course a function of time. Modern physics and neuropsychology tell us that without memory of past events and recent status, there is no discreet, personal identity. As the old millennium wanes, this seems as true of humankind as it is of nations or individuals. And what we discard or what we bring into the new millennium may be more a matter of vagary than choice.

"Through the Portal" is an intriguing, evocative exhibition which provokes many such reflections. E.G.G. Gallery offers a well-curated display of paintings by Jean Poklop and assemblage by Barbara Schnell, both Chicago artists. And on Saturday, November 21, 12-5 pm, the gallery will host an artists' salon in which the artists will discuss their work.

"The Spinners," 1996
Watercolor, 23" x 30"
© Jean Poklop

Jean Poklop's showing of eleven oils on linen as well as some of her more recent watercolors spans a period of ten years. It reveals a progression in her focus on the myths and artifacts of humanity, and it is this progression that has brought her to more personal interpretations of nature in her most recent work.

Poklop's first three canvases reveal the artist's strong attraction to the Southwest, particularly the Santa Fe region. The painter has stated that despite her desire to employ the monumental imagery and particular color of that terrain, she did not wish to fall in with a "Southwest artist" genre. She has escaped those conventional formulae.

"Weeping Woman"
Oil on Linen, 60" x 48"
© Jean Poklop

There is much more at work in her visual perceptions and instinctual associations. Many of her larger oils make use of a technique that, while concretely figurative in execution, upon reflection distills the seen into a cognitive surrealism. But she does not wear the surrealist tricks on her sleeve like a Salvador Dali; nor does she sacrifice an underlying rationale for the lure of sheer painterliness like the later Miro. Her works credit the viewer with curiosity and intelligence. They spring from coherent and sincere, visceral insights intuited by the artist. Each painting, like a pictograph, has a meaningful core, but the viewer gains by having to decipher out his or her own recension.

"Weeping Woman" is the first of Jean Poklop's oils. The ancient rock of the background stands in graphic contrast to the ephemeral fashionings of human hand in the fore. And foremost is a dressmaker's form which was bought off the street in Michigan. Its skeletal figure, draped in black shawl, black lace scarf and costume eyemask, stands as mute overseer of the Christian graveyard in the mid-ground. It is the only human contour in a site where the flesh has since become dust. The childrens cribs before each gravestone reinforce the air of human fragility before enduring nature. The addition of American Indian objects such as the Kachina doll and blanket seem like flotsam after a momentary flow of human time.

"Nightway"
Oil on Linen, 48" x 60"
© Jean Poklop

In "Nightway," the accretion of varied human cultural artifacts seems greater, like an increasing sediment over time, and this is heightened by the dishevelment of the ever more scarecrow-like dressmaker's form. The garments flutter as wind disarranges earlier tokens --the graceful animation about the human form is not human, but betokens an inevitable victory of the elements.

Jean Poklop's first three oils create veritable, large-scale still lifes out of undeniable landscapes. Both the incongruity of scale between objects and locale, and the seeming inappropriateness of the objects' presence in an exposed, undomesticated and impersonal setting, create an tension acting against the plausibility of the painting's composition. The overall sensibility brings to mind E.C. Escher's "Still life and Street" (1937), but Poklop's representational skill and compositional judgements in these unreal "still lifes" combine toward a subtler achievement.

"Last Tango"
Oil on Linen, 65" x 46"
© Jean Poklop

The aforementioned works, whether intentionally or not, harken back to the centuries-long tradition of the vanitas theme, albeit in a distinctly original and specifically American expression. The dressmaker's form seems a vanitas of human self-flattery, and yet at the same time its exposure to the elements serves as an impersonal momento mori far more poignant and, because previously unrecognized as such, far more disturbing than the conventional human skull. The animal skulls in her work, so common for the Southwest scenery, further intensify rather than mitigate the association. It is an artistic turn that even so introspective an artist as Audrey Flack might delight in -- an outward-looking "Wheel of Fortune" on an environmental scale.

"Last Tango" (1989) thematically belongs with the previous two oils, but displays increased complexity in the artist's perceptions. There is both an expanded range of ethnographic reference, and signs of human reaching out to a elemental cycle. A Celtic cross expands the cultural bric-a-brac; a totem pole sports our contemporary suit and tie... and a recreational skier; these all contribute to the deposited overlay of human cultures on the land table. But still growing roots encroach even faster over all.

But among the human tokens attesting to humanity's self-preoccupations and beliefs, a spirit mask stares out at the viewer. It is an image inspired by indigenous art from British Columbia, and is displayed as split halves, revealing a new spirit visage emerging from within. It is only a frail, material mask, fashioned by human hands, but it attests to a naturalistic intuition that pasts are shed like old skins in the due course of renewal. Cyclic nature does insinuate itself into human awareness and is so noted. In this work it is still only human semblances that stare out at the viewer in the midst of a silent and disinterested natural setting.

"Death of a Tona"
Oil on Linen, 58" x 48"
© Jean Poklop

"Death of the Tona" grew out of a native ritual from what is now Mexico. It focuses on a deer kill rite, but the bright palette and frenzied stance of the hunters speak more about the human creature than any ethnographic minutiae. If I find this piece less gratifying than others in the exhibit, it may be because it is more explicit and timely -- more in our time frame. Although our century wears other skins, the beast beneath has changed little. One feels that perhaps the artist found fascination in the rite, but did not invest must empathy in the enactors.

Number sixteen in this joint showing is Jean Poklop's "Roots," a fifth oil on linen. I noted that the show 's curation is well worked out. In this painting it is the roots that are the agents with an actual and vital character. Their will to life is their great strength and, while a waiting element in the other canvases, they come to the fore here. As this painting is hung in the exhibition, it brings to mind an echo of the scenes which one remembers of lost jungle civilizations conquered by roots. Although the artist claimed she acted on impulse, it is right that the house is presented only as a incomplete part. "Roots" follows the deposition of precursory human cultures excerpted by the artist's wide-ranging curiosity. It comes home to a gathering of personal images, survivors for a time, but destined like other peoples' images to be swept by time. Here, the bird, alive, curious and investigating the scattered objects, seeking something of concern and use to itself, is an inobstrusive revelation. It will appropriate what surrounds it, but only selecting from a bird's awareness, and only for a very brief, unnoticed instant.

"Dance Macabre"
Oil on Linen, 58" x 48"
© Jean Poklop

"Danse Macabre" is dynamic example of Poklop's melding of historic Western themes with persistent, ethnic motifs, and it employs her involvement with American Southwest terrains to produce a fresh and personal expression. Here, the bare bones do rise up and dance; cattle skulls of the American West are animated by a moving flow of composition and line, and the bright palette brings to mind both a surprisingly festive dance of the dead and the bravado of a bullfight. That it is a bestial, rather than human totem in the dance, recalls an almost shamanistic identification with the other lives that share the inevitable fate along with mortal humanity. What if... a Georgia O'Keefe... studied with Holbein the Younger... and painted among the Pueblos or pre-Roman Celto-Iberians -- This painting is very much Jean Poklop.

Jean Poklop received her BFA in painting from the University of Illinois, and her Interdisciplinary Arts Education MA from Columbia College. She is affiliated with Space 900, a cooperative artists group at 1040 W. Huron, teaches painting at the Suburban Fine Arts Center in Highland Park and conducts water-media workshops from her studio in Park Ridge, Illinois. Some of her most current explorations are represented in this show by four additional watercolors and an acrylic collage.

"Dancing Spirit," 1998
Watercolor, 22" x 15"
© Jean Poklop

"Dancing Spirit" reflects the artist's concern that "technology will erase the collective memory of the ancient ones who left messages on rock and carved their stories in wood." They center about "Nature spirits who inhabit the rocks, waters, and plants...." In this watercolor and in "The Ancestors" the representations are well integrated into the textures of the wooden forms. They resonate with the earliest pantheism of human cultures, still lingering on among the folkways of the Slavs, Celts and Hellenes; all natural objects and beings are imbued each with a spirit that is their peculiar Genius. In these works, where the theme is clued, but subtle -- the viewer left to investigate and rediscover the cryptic anthropomorphism -- theme joins with excellent technique, and the work is admirable.

"Canyon Spirit" seems a bit too explicit, a bit too programmatic. The image appears "added," rather than integral to the rock; the viewer is left with no discovery in viewing the work. One of the greatest strengths of this artist is her ability to induce others to follow her content and continue on their own. This is a real accomplishment. And a crucial gift from art. One of the varied benefits that art can grant is to lead the often overcivilized adult back into relearning to be curious and to again approach the world with that heightened animal awareness present in the child. If all is given, the viewers leaves as complacent and perfunctory as before, and gain from a work nothing of use as their own.

"Canyon Spirit," 1997
Watercolor, 22" x 15"
© Jean Poklop

"Newspaper Rock," an acrylic collage is a delight. The "newspaper" elements fit in with the now familiar images of extinct languages on stone, prehistoric cave paintings and markings, and the frequent pseudographia that collectors discern on alphabet shells, mineral specimens or bark patterns. The patterns we read into things and the patterns things read out to us harmonize often enough that "Newspaper Rock" draws a viewer into full belief in the work.

"The Spinners" is an excellent example of Jean Poklop's first-rate watercolor technique and everything her artist's statement declares for. Her nature spirits reveal themselves through the patterns they press in the fabric of nature; deft and complex, but sparklingly before our eyes. In this, the artist draws us to the miracles we have very often ceased to notice, because they are everywhere. There was never any real need to carve false idols. Jean Poklop's paintings reveal our fashionings as a sediment, beyond which a very real and living world is going on, one which can be deciphered if we chose to join in with empathy.

Barbara Schnell shares the featured exhibit currently at E.E.G. Gallery and her series of assemblage is equally engaging and excellently done. Her work follows in a separate review.

To the child, everything is eternal, because everything exists in the immediate moment at hand. Children are notorious pack-raters: they'll gather up fossils and autumn leaves with equal curiosity and delight. I am grateful to Barbara Schnell's twelve pieces now showing at E.E.G. Gallery for reminding me how, as a child, I often wondered which fallen leaves or human litter would be found as a fossil millions of years in some unknown future.

"African Dancing Woman"
©1987 Barbara Schnell
Mixed Media Assemblage
16"w X 21.75"h x 5.5"d

Barbara Schnell's artist's statement declares the "work deals with presenting found objects as archeological artifacts that might be discovered from some unidentified past culture. I intend to have the pieces work at the visual level by the careful placement of objects as distinct, yet related forms, and at the emotional level by suggesting important cultural and spiritual content from the 'artifacts'."

And she does.

"African Dancing Woman" (1987) is a mixed assemblage of feathers and naturally textured objects that creates a distinctly Sub-Saharan impression. It rather seems to be a fetish object more than a representation, but upon first seeing it my visceral response oscillated between recollections of Paleolithic 'Venus' finds and the Cubists' entrancement with the indigenous art of Africa. Both this piece and " My Metamorphosis" (1985/1987) play upon the viewer's awareness that they are not museum pieces abducted from some native culture, but rather the deliberate working of a contemporary artist born into our current milieu. It is the artist's sensitivity to the patterns and materials that evokes a sensibility common to that part of the world and transcending local or tribal specifics.

"092494:Ancient Artifacts and Environs#3"
©1994 Barbara Schnell
Mixed Media Assemblage
13"h X 9"w X 3"d

There are three numbered pieces titled "Ancient Artifacts and Environs." Each of these consists of common objects such as might be sifted from the grounds of a former dwelling. Reproductions cannot do justice to the actual colors of the objects, but they do stand out in relief -- as if the dust of subsequent ages were just brushed away. These are the sort of scattered objects that could possibly be found in a Jean Poklop painting, after an epoch of several have passed. Jean Poklop herself noted in her artist's statement: "As I moved through an installation by Barbara Schnell earlier this year I felt the connection of my work to that environment. Cycles of time, cycles of life, cycles of nature...." Barbara Schnell distances our view of what we take for granted -- but it is a human distance, a standing back in archeology, rather than near history or distant geological periods.

"Oxidized Remnant" (1996) indicates that the time scale reckoned by the artist is a human measure. This assemblage is created from brass, bone, handmade paper, acrylic, graphite and rusted metal. We accepted it as an artifact -- and in accepting that, also allow that its components are young enough to permit the frailer materials to survive. Barbara Schnell has utilizes what we know to be current materials to play with viewers sense of time at hand.

"09024096-2:Oxidized Remnent"
©1996 Barbara Schnell
Mixed Media Assemblage
13"h X 10"w X 3"d

"Secured by Effort" (1995) gives the impression of being a Cro-Magnon cooking kit or toolbox. There seems to be a pun, a bit of whimsy, in the title. As an archeological artifact, one would simply believe that its recovery must have required effort and expertise. But, equally, as a contemporary art object, it is fastened to its mount by the artist's skill and diligence... secured by effort, buy on a different level of understanding. Many of Barbara Schnell's assemblage works play effectively upon the viewer's dual responses to the materials on display. This ability to convey the aura of antiquity in the face of contrary facts about the art objects must have required sincere and deeply motivated research, a love of cultures exotic in both time and geography.

"I'm Bursting To Sweep The World Clean, But Things Are All Tied Up" departs from the express them of time, but achieves a mastery that matches the work and the title in tandem. It seems a human form, bound with cloths, but the wire further about it creates a further secondary constraining boundary. It is not just the central form that is bound, but the immediate surroundings personal to it. This I found effective on all levels.

"I'm Bursting to Sweep the World
Clean But Things are all Tied Up"
©Barbara Schnell
Mixed Media Assemblage
26"h X 8"w X 8"d

"Birdman" (1989), shown here only in a detail, also uses a wire frame as prominent constructional element. I have seen in museums such wire frames, used to support isolated objects that form a costume ensemble. Perhaps this may have been an inspiration for the use here in this piece, but it strikes one that another effect could be to insinuate that a cage occupies the forms face. As an artifact, being viewed by alien eyes, the "Birdman" is no longer an object free in its cultural environment. It is fettered by time and isolation as a viewed "piece." I can only give my personal response. Barbara Schnell's work is worth seeing -- worth the reactions and discussions it provokes. It is even worth looking foolish, when the artist states "No. I never meant it to illicit that response!"

E.E.G. Gallery offers two excellent artists, whose works together make for an afternoon well spent. And the artists' salon November 21, 1998 should prove doubly interesting. It is from 12 noon through 5 pm.

--G. Jurek Polanski

Jurek Polanski has previously written and art edited for Strong Coffee in Chicago. He's also well known and respected among the Chicago museums and galleries. Jurek is currently a Visual Arts Correspondent for ArtScope.net.