Upon the Ground, Below the Water at Albany International Airport Gallery

It can be easy to forget that the Albany InternationalAirport Gallery is one of the premier contemporary art venues of the Capital Region, right up there with Skidmore College's Tang Teaching Museum and UAlbany's University Art Gallery. Even more impressive is the fact that the Airport Gallery claims this high ground under a mandate of showing only regional artists.

But, for those of us already in the know about the Airport Gallery, and aware of the strength of our local artists, it comes as no surprise that Upon the Ground, Below the Water, the current show there through Sept. 3, is quite a knockout. Featuring six artists in a broad range of media, the show's theme is, in effect, our landscape - but it approaches the subject indirectly, in part due to a leaning in the direction of watery subjects (liquid or frozen), and in part due to metaphorical elements among these artists.

Kingsley Parker's 2018 mixed-media piece The Quarry
is paired with his 2014 wall-mounted UpRiver

The result is an immersive experience well worth a special trip to the airport (that is, if you're not already taking a special trip from the airport, in which case you'd be advised to budget an extra half-hour or so to peruse the show before going through security). As ever, the casual visitor gets a free half-hour in short-term parking, and you can get your parking ticket stamped at the Arts & Culture Program office or at the first-floor Departure shop for additional free time.

So, there's no excuse not to give yourself the pleasure of viewing Kingsley Parker's sprawling mixed-media wall piece UpRiver, or Richard Barlow's grid of 100 meticulous ink renderings of peeling paint transformed into new islands, or Daesha Devón Harris's masterfully evocative photo-collages under poetry-etched glass. And that's just a sample of the outstanding work in the show by these three participants (each offers other significant work as well).

Parker was the big revelation for me here. With his charming fixation on fishing vessels and inventive application of materials as modest as a #2 pencil and as labor-intensive as embroidery, he addresses environmental, economic, and graphic challenges in one fell swoop. It's a tour de force of art's profound ability to entertain, educate, and engage.

Terminus 2016 PLA print by Matt Frieburghaus

Among the other surprises in this collection (and there were several, all of them pleasant) were Matt Frieburghaus's many iterations of pure-white, 3-D printed icescapes, inspired by a residency in the far north. Made of PLA (polylactic acid), they feel both mundane and pristine; they are also elegantly complex in their geometry. It's the first time I've seen 3-D prints that really impressed me as works of art.

Also impressive are Tanya Marcuse's highly detailed color photographs of densely furnished plots of ground, which look natural (i.e. from life) but are actually carefully constructed of natural materials in situ, resulting in tapestry-like tableaux of the place at your feet. These beautiful images have a subtly morbid undercurrent of elegant rot - something like life itself.

Equally inspired by the small details at our feet, Claire Sherwood presents a series of pastel-colored rock-like forms modeled after stones large and small - those found in her backyard as well as in the pockets of her young children. Sherwood's technique seems to be a thing in itself - incorporating steel, plaster, paper pulp, acrylic paint, and encaustic, but the sculptures end up feeling fluffy rather than weighty.

In addition to his small drawings, Barlow contributes a very large, three-sided wall piece depicting ice floes, in the same chalk-on-blackboard-paint technique that he used for a drawing in last year's Mohawk-Hudson Regional at the Albany Institute of History & Art and, more recently, for two drawings in the MHR Invitational at Albany Center Gallery. Harris, along with her collage series of beautiful African-Americans from the past, contributes a newer group of photographs and a video that interpret a metaphorical river passage.

Fresh Disruption 2018 mixed media by Claire Sherwood

One more thing: Speaking of Albany Center Gallery, another outstanding collection of regional artists is featured in the current show there. Entitled Wonderland, it is very different from the Airport show - brightly colorful, mostly abstract - but equally eloquent in stating just how strong and deep the local lineup of creators is. It runs through July 13.