Short Take: Fence Select 21 at ACCR

A New Blank Tablet: January 20, 2021 12:00 PM EST, oil on cradled hardwood by Susan Hoffer, is the juror's top choice in Fence Select 21

I’ve been remiss in taking so long to get to this year’s Fence Select show at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy, because it always features a wide swath of the region’s best and upcoming artists, and it ends this Saturday. But, as I am often forced to say, better late than never.

This year’s edition of the show was juried by Dan Cameron, a noted critic whose local presence seems to be increasing lately, and the 51 artists included are overall quite worthy. I regularly refer to this annual exhibition as “the other Regional,” and this year’s edition pretty much lives up to the title; seven of the included artists were also in the 2021 Mohawk-Hudson Regional, and several others have been in previous editions of that show.

William Fillmore's Red Warning #2;
in the background is a painting
by D. Colin

photo provided

My biggest quibble with the current edition of Fence is that only a few of the selected artists have more than one work in it (specifically, six artists have two each) and those works aren’t presented together in any case. But the gallery looks good with the show as installed, and there are very few clunkers in it (I’ll leave it for you to decide which they are).

Among the outstanding pieces to my eye and mind were the following:

• First-prize winner Susan Hoffer’s impressively self-actualizing studio view titled A New Blank Tablet: January 20, 2021 12:00 PM EST
• ORT Project Rockwell-Nelson’s Anthropocene Epoch: Eat the Rich, a super-sharp photograph that features a live baboon in an oval-framed still life arrangement
• Chris DeMarco’s lush, yet delicately colored photographs of a trailer park
• Karen Gerstenberger’s two coastal monotypes
• Jaime Courcelle’s oil on canvas It’s Not Goodbye
• Take Out, a timely and wry nod to Edward Hopper by Marion Reynolds, and
• Michael Oatman’s elegiac stack of unwatched 9/11 videotapes (shown below)

The exhibition’s other prize-winners are Royal Brown, for a futurist reinvention of found objects; Jeff Wigman, for a Bosch-like painting on wood panel, and William Fillmore, for a strikingly geometric steel sculpture.

The ACCR is open every day but Sunday; Fence Select 21 ends Saturday, Dec. 11.

In Brief: Fence Select at ACCR

Michael Oatman - American Spring (after Wallace Bergman), collage

Part all-inclusive members' show, part juried regional, the longstanding Fence Show at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy is a unique annual event. Like many other exhibitions this year, Fence was delayed a few months due to the pandemic, and so it is still on view in December, though it would normally be a summer show (historically, the show got its name because it was hung outdoors on a wrought-iron fence that surrounds a private park associated with the former location of the ACCR).

Victoria van der Laan - To Dash Against Darkness
sewn and quilted cotton

This year's Fence Select was chosen by Tang Museum Director Ian Berry, with additions selected by ACCR staff (possibly a first) and, if memory serves, this was the first time the show restricted entrants to just one submission each. Naturally, this would lead to a far less comprehensive presentation than a juried show with the typical three or more entries per participant, but it still resulted in a representative cross-section of many of the region's most interesting artists.

In this way, despite its limitations, Fence Select serves as a handy augmentation of the Annual Exhibition by Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region (aka the Regional), currently on view at the Albany Institute of History & Art through Jan. 3. Coincidentally, this year's Regional also features just one work by many of the participating artists, and several of those artists are in Fence Select - so a careful observer can actually combine those in their minds' eye to develop a fuller understanding of each of those artists.

Fern Apfel - The Yellow Envelope

For example, Fern Apfel, whose acrylic and pen on wood panel received the Best in Show award at Fence, has two related pieces in the Regional; and Victoria van der Laan, who was named runner-up at Fence for her lyrically graphic quilt, has another outstanding quilted work in the Regional.

Other important artists represented in both shows include Niki Haynes, Michael Oatman, John Hampshire, Mandi Coburn, Jeff Wigman, and Dorothea Osborn. I also noticed a few favorite photographers in Fence Select, such as Chris DeMarco, Ray Felix, and Jennifer Duke Anstey, bringing to mind the recent annual Photography Regional at Albany Center Gallery, where some of them were also represented.

Apart from these various associations, Fence Select stands alone reasonably well, but it is a bit thin, due to the relatively large space it inhabits at the ACCR. I suspect this underfilling may be the reason that five staff picks were added (making for a total of 28), and I'm glad they were, as they include some of the better works in the selection.

Fence Select remains on view only through this week, with open hours Tuesday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. - so , if you want to catch it, be sure to act now.

John Hampshire - Labyrinth 623, ink on polypropylene

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.