How to go
What: Ninth annual HWD Regional Competition
Where: Rosewood Gallery, 2655 Olson Drive, Kettering
When: Continues through Sept. 11
Artist reception: 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 23
More info: 937-296-0294 or www.playkettering.org
"HWD" (Height x Width x Depth) at Rosewood Gallery in Kettering is one of my favorite art exhibits, and this year's presentation does not disappoint. Regular viewers of this show walk in expecting to be intrigued and impressed at what the best regional sculptors can create.
Thirty-one artists submitted 77 works, from which juror Steven Matijcio chose 24 pieces from 22 of them.
“The work in ‘HWD’ alternately twists, warps, folds, skews and transforms; evidencing and amplifying its quintessentially human manufacture,” said Matijcio, the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center curator. “Aaron Smith is especially, and intriguingly, iconoclastic in his acts of metamorphosis. He turns tired objects like a prayer bench and player piano into a birdcage and guitar respectively.”
In the east gallery, viewers won’t turn to stone by looking at “Medulla” by Carol Boram-Hays of Columbus. The cast concrete, blue “head” stands on reclaimed metal pipes that fall into a mass of tangles on the floor. Or maybe the artist literally references the hind portion of the brain with its nerve-cell mass. In any case, it’s the viewer’s interpretation that counts.
Jason Tanner Young of Athens is presenting “Up on Plane,” a wood, steel and copper construction with revealing shadows, and “Backlog,” stacks of wood, that, by the way it’s organized, become more than just a stack of wood.
“My work is composed of raw beliefs and curious fixations,” said Tanner Young, a sculpture/woodshop technician and sculpture instructor at Ohio University. “These truths open memories and start a stumbling internal dialogue. Stories and lived events surface in the form of objects and installations.”
Other interesting works: “Iron Cage” by Irina Koukhanova of Moreland Hills; “Tessellate” by Nicole Crock of Galloway; “Midsummer Niagara VIII” by Janet Kelman of Ann Arbor, Mich.; and “The Way Through” by Pamela L. Deaton of Liberty, Ind. My “most uniquely beautiful award” goes to Cynthia Bornhorst-Winslow of Beavercreek for “Innocence Lost.”
Other participating artists: Matthew R. Burgy, Rebecca Carpenter, Mandy Goodwin, Jackie Holan, Ron Hundt, Sarah Hydell, Virginia Kistler, Carrie Longley, Carol McDonough, Rob Millard-Mendez, Matthew Obrebski, Elizabeth Runyon, Gary Schmitt and Chuck Sharbaugh.
The United Art and Education award winners will be announced at the Artists’ Reception on Aug. 23. Matijcio will give out five awards totaling $1,100. Hours for the exhibition are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fridays; and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays.
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