BY STEVEN JUPITER
BRANDON—The conantsquareGallery in Brandon has a compelling new show of abstract art by a group of prominent artists who make Brandon their home. Warren Kimble, Fran Bull, and Sandy Mayo have had long, successful careers and have known each other for years, but this marks the first occasion that the three of them have shown their work together.
The impetus for the show was the opening of the gallery in the downtown building that Mayo purchased two years ago from Charles Powell, Steven Zorn, and Brent Buehler, who had run the antiques shop Found Objects in the storefront there for years. The space that the shop had occupied was perfect for an art gallery. And with the Brandon Artists Guild and the Vermont Folk Art Gallery already drawing art lovers to Brandon, it seems like another gallery would enhance Brandon’s reputation as an art hub in the area.
“I was reluctant to open a gallery,” said Mayo in the minimalist, gray-walled space. “I enjoy studio work.”
But the gallery is an opportunity for Mayo to present her own work and that of artists she knows and admires, like Kimble and Bull.
The inaugural show isn’t simply an excuse to haul old work out of storage. Instead, the three came up with an approach that was meant to stimulate their creativity and liberate them from their old habits: all the work in the show had to be painted with brooms. And why not? A broom is, in essence, a large brush.
The brooms could be big or small, but they had to be clearly brooms with stiff bristles and not soft brushes. So, they used classic floor-sweeping brooms, handheld dustpan brooms, and all sizes in between. While the technique may sound gimmicky, the results are reminiscent of the Abstract Expressionist work that dominated the art world in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.
WARREN KIMBLE stands next to “Ode to J.P.”, an homage to Jackson Pollock, who pioneered the drip technique that Kimble employed here. Photo by Stephen Jupiter
Kimble is perhaps best known for the faux-folk art he popularized in the 80s and 90s: highly stylized animals and landscapes that are instantly recognizable as his. But the success of that work was both a blessing and a curse. It was financially lucrative but boxed him in as an artist.
“I wanted to loosen up,” he said. “I needed to get wild. I needed something to get me excited. It was a healthy thing for me.”
The work he produced for this show has a great deal in common with Jackson Pollock, a similarity Kimble readily acknowledges. Several of Kimble’s works here use the drip technique that Pollock pioneered, covering the canvas in a veil of drips, drops, and splashes. As with any Pollock work, the key is in the control of the paint. Kimble takes care here not to present a wild mess but rather a coherent composition.
For example, in “Ode to J.P.,” the title of which is a direct reference to Jackson Pollock, Kimble creates a fabric of slender blue tendrils on a dark background, beginning and ending off the canvas, giving the illusion of infinite space.
In another piece, called “Passages,” Kimble plays at the intersection of abstraction and representation, allowing the Pollockesque drips to form shapes that suggest tunnels and roads.
“People don’t think of me as an abstract artist, but I am,” said Kimble. Not only does Kimble create abstract sculptures—assemblages—out of found objects, but he also sees his stylized folk forms as abstractions of reality.
Fran Bull began her long career among the artists who made Abstract Expressionism the hot new thing in the 50s. It’s work she knows well and which seems to come naturally to her, despite her years making representational work, ranging from photorealism to the exuberant exaggerations of her latest sculptures. In this show, she channels some of the gestural strength that was in vogue in the 1950s without devolving into kitsch. She recognizes as much in her artist statement, which references giants of that era, such as Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell, who created work with big, black forms much as Bull does in some work here.
SANDY MAYO next to “Incoming Storm,” which was inspired by the heavy rains Vermont experienced in July.
Bull used her brooms, which were mostly handheld, to create forceful blocks of color. In several works, isolated patches of bright color vibrate against darker backgrounds, creating an enjoyable tension that evokes a feeling of claustrophobia and release. In a work titled “Blue Broom,” a small field of bright orange is surrounded by a large sea of blue and it’s impossible to discern whether the orange floats on the surface of the blue, escaping it, or is captured by it and rendered immobile.
“I wanted to let the broom be a broom and not contort it to be a brush,” said Bull. “I felt completely flummoxed at first. But I put the canvases on the ground and it was almost like I swept the floor and you saw the marks.”
Of the three artists, Mayo had the most experience making purely abstract work, as the genre is what she’s known for. The work she produced for this show has a softer quality than that of her gallerymates. It’s somewhat impressionistic, evoking something familiar without depicting it directly.
In “Rain and Water,” Mayo uses blue and white paint to suggest the movement of flowing water. “Current” evokes lightning and electricity while still remaining steadfastly abstract. In “Incoming Storm,” she was inspired by the water rushing over the falls next to the gallery building on Conant Square (in which she also makes her home) during the heavy rains in July.
“I realize now that in the process of creating [these works], alone in my studio as well as being in dialogue with Fran and Warren, I fell into a whole new art experience,” wrote Mayo.
“We need to bring the viewer in,” Mayo continued. “This is a cross between a museum and a gallery. The work is for sale, but I don’t think about who’s going to buy it.”
The conantsquareGallery is open from 3 to 5 on Tuesdays and Thursdays and from 5 to 7 on Fridays. It’s open to the public. “Broom Art” runs through October 31.
