The Washington Post - USA (2022-03-27)

SUNDAY, MARCH 27 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST PG EE E5

like a child being dropped from a

burning building. That perilous

scenario certainly suits the title

of “Human Nature,” a showcase

of the 10 current members of

Sparkplug, the District of

Columbia Arts Center artists

collective that has been

repopulated every two years

since 2007. But it is individual

imagination, not the human

condition, that links the works

selected by curator Eric Celarier.

Much of the art is abstract, or

nearly so. Adi Segalprojects a

gold-emblazoned geometric

screen print into the third

dimension with artful folding.

Rebecca Perez’s loose red-and-

black gestures on scroll-like

vertical canvases embody both

physical and emotional trauma.

Gayle Friedman’s colorful

assemblages feature painted

bandsaw blades stretched into

loops to impart a sense of

tension. The decorative arts turn

feral in Maggie Gourlay’s

“Wallpapers for a Warming

World,” in which regular

patterns melt into more realistic

renderings. Louisa Neill makes

handsome stoneware boxes filled

with ceramic sticks that can be

repositioned to represent the

passage of time. Letters and

simple house shapes, but also

free-form drips, punctuate Pixie

Alexander’s acrylic and spray-

paint picture.

The representational works

include one set in stark black-

and-white and another in Day-

Glo colors: Alex L. Porter’s high-

contrast drawings of interlaced

tree branches against a blank sky

and Caroline MacKinnon’s

dramatic landscapes of what

appear to be alien terrain or

Earth’s volcanic prehistory. Also

seemingly plucked from the past

is Shelley Picot’s “Paradise Well,”

in which a face stares up from an

abyss suggested by a ring of

charcoal-hued paper-clay balls

piled like stones around a

campfire. As in Balse’s painting,

an urgent upward gaze captures

the drama of being human.

Human Nature Through April 3 at

District of Columbia Arts Center,

2438 18th St. NW.

part of the original slab. More

characteristic of the artist’s style,

though, is the multipart

“Descending,” which was

inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s

“Nude Descending a Staircase,

No. 2,” a 1912 canvas that’s far

from naturalistic. Balfour

highlights wood’s intrinsic

qualities while giving the

substance a Futurist twist.

Renee Balfour: Nature Unbound

Through April 3 at Amy Kaslow

Gallery, 4300 Fordham Rd. NW.

Human Nature

Birth becomes a rescue

operation in “Catch,” an

expressionist painting by

Kanchan Balsé in which a baby

falls toward outstretched arms

Renee Balfour makes sculptures

that emulate natural forms, not

architectural ones. That doesn’t

mean that the 11 pieces in

“Nature Unbound,” her Amy

Kaslow Gallery show, are rough

and craggy. The sinuous shapes

are artfully shaped and smoothly

polished, and fitted together in

ways that emphasize the artist’s

control over her material.

The finished products are not

altogether unbound. Rounded,

smaller segments wrap around

larger ones or attach to them in

fringed arrays, and two

sculptures are penetrated by

arrow-like shafts. Most of the

sculptures are wall-mounted so

they cast elaborate shadows,

mini-forests of shifting gray

contours on the gallery’s white

surfaces.

All the pieces are made from

walnut or cherry sourced from a

canyon near Balfour’s studio on

the edge of Virginia’s Blue Ridge

Mountains, and were carved to

reveal the wood’s grain.

“Regeneration,” the only

horizontal composition, includes

a curved depression that was

yet still have the quality of

reveries.

Since it consists partly of

handmade accordion-fold books,

landscape painter Freya Grand’s

“Journeys” slots naturally into

Terzo Piano’s bookshop. The

show also features free-standing

pictures, most of them small but

a few large enough to convey

fully the grandeur of the D.C.

artist’s favored subjects: rocky

coasts, gnarled trees and

steaming volcanoes, rendered

mostly in subdued hues but

energized by occasional touches

of lava-red pigment. If the tiny

pictures express Grand’s

pandemic-era sense that the

world was contracting, the

bigger ones demonstrate its wild

expansiveness.

Andrew Christenberry: To the

Inquisitve and Freya Grand:

Journeys Through April 10 at Te rzo

Piano, 1515 14th St. NW.

Renee Balfour

A painter turned woodworker,

BY MARK JENKINS

The title of Andrew
Christenberry’s Terzo Piano
exhibition comes from a found
object that’s mysterious yet
intimately familiar to the artist.
The small piece of a wooden sign
that reads simply “To the
Inquisitive” hung on a wall in his
parents’ D.C. home. The
domestic connection is apt.
Andrew’s father was William
Christenberry Jr. (1936-2016), a
noted sculptor, photographer
and painter who taught at the
Corcoran School of the Arts and
Design for four decades but took
inspiration from his native
Alabama. The younger
Christenberry makes mostly
wooden sculptures that
sometimes resemble his father’s
work, and in a few cases refer
directly to it.
Thus Andrew Christenberry’s
“Landscape for WAC Jr.” features
a model of Sprott Church, a
modest Alabama structure that
became a motif in his father’s
work. Yet the younger
Christenberry grew up in D.C.,
not Alabama, and was
influenced by the capital’s
monumental edifices. His show
includes arches, rotundas and
“A rmored Washington
Monument,” a black obelisk
surrounded by 51 bollards
(including one for the potential
state of New Columbia).
Neoclassic and high-tech styles
fuse in another model structure,
the wood-and-metal “Lightning
Rod.”
Some of the artworks evoke
more rustic vistas: The thrusting
“Precipice” combines urban and
alpine spires, and “New Mexico
Daydream” places a Georgia
O’Keeffe homage, complete with
simulated animal skull, inside a
Joseph Cornell-inspired box.
Architectural designs meet
natural ones in the striking “Big
Wave,” which arrays wooden
curves with jagged, seemingly
torn edges. The sculpture freezes
in miniature the power and
volatility of big water in motion.
The pieces are beautifully
crafted by the artist, who also
makes furniture, and cleverly
installed. Several mounted
pieces stand in front of
backdrops painted directly on
the wall, and some of the models
sit on mirrors, so they appear to
float like apparitions.
Christenberry’s constructions
are solid, specific and hard-edge,

IN THE GALLERIES

Portrayals of nature’s wild side, from rocky coasts to steaming volcanoes

PHOTOS BY TERZO PIANO

TOP: An installation

view of Freya Grand’s

exhibit “Journeys” that

includes free-standing

pictures and handmade

accordion-fold books,

aptly placed in the

facility’s bookshop.

BELOW: An installation

view of sculptor Andrew

Christenberry’s show

“To the Inquisitive.”

Some emulate his late

father’s work and others

reflect the influence of

structures found in D.C.,

where he grew up.

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