Art: Library Renewal

“Owning the Story: New Works”
Through Sept. 30
W. Dale Clark Library
215 S. 15th St.
444-4800

The next time you make a gallery crawl in the Old Market area downtown, be sure to include the W. Dale Clark Library. True, the relocated Pulp Gallery in the Old Market Passageway, the renovated Jackson Artworks and the expanded RNG Gallery next to Dixie Quicks, as well as the Fred Simon Gallery, have gotten all the ink, lately. Yet, the Michael Phipps Gallery on the first floor of the downtown library can occasionally surprise and please as well.

That includes the gallery’s current exhibit, “Owning the Story: New Works,” by mixed media artist Rodger Gerberding, which continues until Sept. 30. While the other venues feature polished and accomplished work from Jeremy Caniglia (Pulp), C. Daniel Newberry (Jackson), Watie White (RNG) and Jess Benjamin (Fred Simon, in the aggregate), Gerberding’s riskier, more personal figurative and narrative pieces are more engaging.

Despite the obvious skill and imagination exhibited by White’s entertaining pulp fiction prints and watercolors, one misses the social commentary and local color of previous work that is uniquely his in this area. Further, while one appreciates his pictorial technique, the sheer number and uniformity of scale in the show tends to overwhelm the viewer. The same can be said of Newberry’s tall aluminum sculptures in “Observations at a Distance” which artfully interpret a West African influence in modern Western dress. The exhibit is dramatically lit, the space looks as sophisticated as ever, but individual sculptures would benefit by being set apart in small groups at odd angles rather than the shooting gallery redundancy deployed.

Conversely, Caniglia’s drawings, paintings and prints enjoy a proper display at Pulp, but their mannered “Old Masters” style is virtually too academic and detached for the emotional connection they seek from the viewer. Only Benjamin’s large and imposing “jackstones” in “Dam” completely engage both aesthetically and conceptually as she continues her “problem solving” on behalf of the environment and renewable energy via her art. One senses a real commitment in Benjamin’s work as she belongs to a growing group of young Nebraskan artists who create original approaches in traditional and new media to matters of social urgency.

Meanwhile, Gerberding’s psychological art is provocative also, but in a distinctly different manner. Though a veteran in Omaha’s art scene, as well as a published writer and exhibited artist regionally and nationally, his return to the Phipps gallery is a renewal as well.

His exotic settings, lurid palette and erotic imagery will be familiar to his audience, but something new has been added which he explains in characteristically florid yet eloquent prose in his artist statement.

“My grandchildren are almost of primal importance to me now,” he says, “and I often find myself working beside them, knees and elbows to hardwood floor, playing yes, with happy derangement. To draw with crayolas, bleeding markers, smatterings of cat fluff and other necessary household implements is to bring things back to essence, to joy.”

This would explain the wide-eyed, almost child-like innocence that one sees in some of his female forms, a familiar motif that the artist continues in this on-going narrative. It would also account for the hands-on aesthetic that he admits to, what with his use of torn-paper labels and largely unframed and un-matted works on paper and rough panels. Add to that an occasionally desatturated palette in contrast with other pieces and one can see another side of his personality and character.

“Beginning in Chicago as a photorealist,” Gerberding adds, “I now find my line reduced, my colors gone to primaries and every learned procedure discarded by me. For this show, then, I am eclectic in making a sometimes uncomfortable way for myself, choosing pieces from last year’s studio hours, works which may satisfy me on some primitive level, or similarly displease me.”

The viewer may concur, as the exhibit is capable of both. What one can’t equivocate about is the show’s need for a stronger curatorial guidance as pieces look arbitrarily hung or placed while some labels are missing or fallen to the floor. In addition, at a recent visit, a list of the works and prices was not available. This is unfortunate as the art and its audience deserves greater attention to detail. Overall, “Owning the Story” is composed of approximately 20 mixed media or oil on paper and board and five mixed media sculptures. The more abstract sculptures aside, Gerberding, as indicated, has added a new dimension to his exploration of the unknown, or as he puts it, “The unknowable and I are old friends gathering in the major and minor achievements of our intertwined lives.”

In his previous library show, the impressive “Glass Houses: Story Pictures,” he acknowledged his dominant female motif to be “what Jung calls the Anima, the female component in all men.” The “she” in his show was a stand-in for his discovery and identification with his own feminine nature. “It may not be politically correct, but being creative and nurturing are more readily attributable to women.”

However, the creative process can take its toll as this critic described the face of virtually all of the show’s women as strikingly similar: “She is attractive yet vulnerable in dark hair and eyes with angular features … her liquid gaze and provocative mouth barely conceal a troubled visage, a longing and maybe a world of hurt.”

That woman is still with us in this exhibit in such pieces as the four panel mixed media titled “One Oh Four.” In all sections partially nude or scantily dressed women remind us that the opposite of innocence is not guilt but experience. Judging by their body language they seem to have lost not only their innocence but their way as well. Lost and scared as well as scarred, they are consumed by the materialism that surrounds them and the addictions that consume them. Gerberding, a recovering alcoholic and instructor for the Community Alliance, a center for mental rehabilitation, understands these women.

But his work here is hopeful too. Framing the darker imagery are two other more optimistic series. The first is a group of Native American and Southwestern influenced mixed media that features the wide-eyed wonder and innocence of young women with a softer, pastel color scheme in warm reds and oranges and cool blues and greens. Eschewing his more expressionistic, bolder and more graphic style, these pieces reflect a renewal of energy and creativity while flirting with magic realism. In a similar vein are at least three works that feature more mature women with the same exotic, cultural influence. It’s as if his earlier, younger figures have grown up. What is in their eyes is neither innocence nor resignation but, instead, wisdom and self-awareness.

Probably the most accomplished piece in the show reflecting most of Gerberding’s favorite themes is the aptly titled oil on panel, “Teacher.” In it a tall, statuesque brunette stands on top of a pedestal-like desk with what appears to be a whip in hand. Beneath her a chorus of men and women are variously engaged or disengaged, either her subjects or critics, perhaps both. Curiously, over her right shoulder is the all-seeing Eye of Providence slowly weeping.
As his art is autobiographical, whether figurative, surreal or abstract, “Teacher” is either a portrait of the artist or his muse, exposed and on display. Gerberding has always been his own biggest critic while wearing both his art and emotions on his sleeve, which mediates a certain self-indulgence with egoism. Besides, he continues to be an interesting subject as well as artist who willingly and creatively takes ownership of his own narrative. This chapter would profit with a bit more professionalism in its display all around, but it remains a worthwhile read.