The Washington Post - USA (2022-02-20)

E14 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20 , 2022

tan surface turns deep blue as it

curls intriguingly into a small

interior chamber.

Portals are compositional in

Pat Silbert’s complex paintings,

which inset smaller images and

boxed text; her “Calming

Stillness” juxtaposes a large

heron on water with a smaller

Buddha beneath the main

picture. A wooden panel with an

antique handle suggests a door

in an assemblage by Wanjin Kim,

who embellished the plank with

etched copper motifs that

artist show at Waverly Street

Gallery. The door-like shapes in

Geoff Desobry’s e xuberant large

pastels could simply be

rectangles, although they

sometimes glow yellow-white as

if lit from within. A similar

luminous form appears in

Barbara Mierau-Klein’s intricate

photo-collage of urban and

sylvan scenery, where trees

frame an open, man-made

doorway. The color contrast goes

the other way in Polina Miller’s

elegant stoneware piece, whose

so they appear at once fragile

and eternal, much like the

watery landscape that inspired

them.

Susi Cora: Chesapeake and Gale

Waller: Mass-Balance-Space

Through Feb. 27 at Touchstone

Gallery, 901 New York Ave. NW.

Portals

The doors of perception, to

borrow from William Blake, take

many forms in “Portals,” a 12-

this feeling this was my one

chance. I’d been alone for

decades before meeting this guy,

and had honestly believed there

would never be another

relationship in my life. Then

suddenly I was with someone,

and it felt like a door opened and

sunlight was filling my life,

partly because of him, but partly

into a rock tumbler and asking

how not to get shattered. The

only advice for that is to get out

or welcome the crush.

Dear Carolyn: My partner of

several years and I just split up,

which is as hard as breakups

always are. In addition to the

immediate pain, though, there’s

“Let’s see what life has in store”

is a lot more fun than “That’s it,

I’m doomed,” even though they

both share the same factual

roots.

You can upgrade your

reframing, too (museum-quality

mat?), and embrace that a

relationship will happen when it

happens, without regard for

what came before.

Your attitude toward being

single is apt — that you did this

once, so you can do it again —

but it also applies to being

paired. Your call.

You can even go one further,

and just do away with the either-

or, “winner”-take-all worldview

of living with a romantic partner

or with no one. There are more

communal ways to live, available

through work, specialized

housing, arrangements among

friends, or just careful

neighborhood shopping. Finding

one that suits you could allow

you to remain open to whatever

comes, but lower all the

emotional stakes.

Write to Carolyn Hax at

[email protected]. Get her

column delivered to your inbox each

morning at wapo.st/gethax.

 Join the discussion live at noon

Fridays at washingtonpost.com/live-

chats.

because I simply wasn’t alone

anymore.

Now it feels like that door has

shut again, and although I’ll be

fine on my own because I always

have been, I’ll never again feel

that exquisite comfort of being

part of something more.

How do I move on from this

dark place where I’m mourning

not just this person, but also

feeling desperately, hopelessly,

permanently alone?

— Feeling Alone

Feeling Alone: I’m sorry.

Breakups are awful, yes, for

breaker and break-ee.

I don’t suggest trying to

reason away the feelings you

have right now, though. You’re

blue and scared and if you throw

arguments at your blues that

aren’t persuasive, then you’ll

only be bluer and more scared.

But the pause is only

temporary, just to let the biggest

of the feelings recede — because

you do have a really good

argument against your fear and

sadness that I hope you’ll use

when you’re ready:

The years you were single

promise that a relationship is

possible even after decades

without one. So there’s nothing

to say it won’t happen again.

There’s nothing to say it will

happen, either, obviously — but

common.

Otherwise, to misuse a phrase,

your heart isn’t in the right place.

His playing footsie with

someone who’s rude to you —

dismissing you till he “let it slip”

— is dishonest and dealbreaking.

But if not that, try this: He

runs with a sexually restless

crowd. This seems like an odd

choice for someone worried

about getting hurt.

Both of your attitudes toward

dating are actually valid; they’re

just at odds. Even his promise

that he “won’t be with anyone

else while he’s with me” could be

referring to the x weeks/months/

years he is generally with

someone before he makes the

next switch. You fix on

“monogamy” at your peril if you

tune out the “serial” before it.

If you’d given any indication

he was rethinking his way of life,

or you were rethinking yours —

each for your own reasons, not to

appease the other — then this

would be a very different answer.

Even if you were just willing to

consider the idea that a mate-for-

now boyfriend could be a

liberating change from always

weighing mate-for-life potential

— and you clearly weren’t lying

to yourself — then I’d be saying

amen and good luck.

But the facts as presented

show a glass figurine jumping

Dear Carolyn: My
new boyfriend has
a large group of
friends who
change partners
within the group
on a regular basis.
When he showed
up with outsider
me three months ago, a woman
promptly told him, knowing I
could hear, that she had been
waiting her turn and intended to
have him. She did it again at the
next party, and last week she
called him at 1 a.m. when we
were at my house drinking
martinis. Took him a bit to get
around to telling her he was with
me, but he did. She hung up.
She has a lake house and he
loves to fish. She wants him to go
fishing with her, but she and I
both know this has nothing to do
with fish. He thinks I’m being
ridiculous, says he won’t be with
anyone else while he’s with me,
but then let it slip he was
thinking of going and not telling
me.
How should I handle this? We
are not children. I’ve never been
the easy-breezy type, and my
heart is at risk here.
— Never Been Fishing

Never Been Fishing: Too bad
you don’t fish, for real, because
at least then you’d have that in

B oyfriend and his friend both like to fish, and she wants to get her hooks in him

Carolyn
Hax

NICK GALIFIANAKIS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

MIKE DU JOUR B Y MIKE LESTER

IN THE GALLERIES

resemble trees and plants. Most

specific is a large stoneware

vessel from Kanika Sircar’s

“Doors” series, evoking the gates

to Hindu temples, which the

artist’s note says are mostly

forbidden to women. Sometimes

a portal serves as a barrier.

Portals Through March 5 at Waverly

Street Gallery, 4600 East-West Hwy.,

Bethesda.

The Colors and Forms

of History

A portrait of pathbreaking

actor Sidney Poitier and a

collage that includes a photo of

police-shooting victim Breonna

Taylor are among the timely

entries in “The Colors and Forms

of History,” Zenith Gallery’s

Black History Month exhibition.

But Doba Afolabi’s painting and

Sheryll Cashin’s collage

represent just one aspect of the

show, which features work by

four local Black artists.

The Nigeria-born Afolabi,

whose pictures constitute the

bulk of the show, also offers “Girl

in a Head Wrap,” an

expressionist figure study whose

jumpy brushstrokes recall

Futurism. Among Cashin’s

collages, which her statement

says were made “as a form of

self-care in a time of ugliness,” is

a hopeful, symbolic landscape

titled “Stepping Stones.”

The other works are by

sculptors Bernie Houston and

Chris Malone,each of whom has

developed a distinctive

technique. Houston transforms

large chunks of driftwood,

leaving one end as found while

shaping and painting the other

into such dynamic creatures as

the agile dancer of his “Night

Rhythm.” Malone’s ceramic and

mixed-media figurines employ

ornate decorative motifs that

suggest African tradition while

clearly being the artist’s own.

Malone’s style acknowledges

history yet also transcends it.

The Colors and Forms of History

Through Feb. 26 at Zenith Gallery,

1429 Iris St. NW.

overhead.

“Transient” is less interactive

than most Artechouse

presentations, but it fastens

sound and image more tightly.

Not simply a soundtrack, the

music in this show is integral to

the visual symphonics.

Transient: Impermanent

Paintings Through March 5 at

Artechouse, 1238 Maryland Ave. SW.

Cora and Waller

The two solo shows at

Touchstone Gallery, Susi Cora's

“Chesapeake” and Gale Wallar's

“Mass - Balance - Space,” are

separate yet thematically

overlapping. The Alexandria-

based artists take their cues

from particular locales, but they

represent them in very different

ways.

Wallar is a realist painter

whose recent work is based on

photographs of Alaska’s Denali

that she took in 2019. Three of

the photos are included in the

show, yet they’re dwarfed in

scale and ambition by the artist’s

canvases. These are rendered

almost entirely in gray for rock

outcroppings, white for sun-

lighted snow, and midrange

blues for shadowed areas of ice

and snow as well as the

pristinely cloudless skies. The

views are majestic yet intimate.

Thinking of climate change,

Wallar hopes viewers will see

distant peaks and glaciers as

linked essentially to their world.

Cora distills the Chesapeake

Bay’s marshes and shorelines to

clusters of wrinkles, mostly in

ceramics but also in paper. Her

show’s centerpiece is an

abstracted tidal landscape made

of rumpled paper dappled with

pastel watercolors; it’s more

orange and gentler on the edges

and bluer and more agitated at

the center. The other items, all

stoneware or porcelain tinted

with natural materials, include

standing vessels that appear

almost functional and wall

pieces that ripple and rupture as

if made of something much

softer. “Cusp” groups seven

porcelain shards closely together

BY MARK JENKINS

Not long after the word
“Impressionism” was coined to
describe (and deride) a new style
of painting, the term also was
applied to music. Now the
Italian artist-musician-
programmer Quayola unites the
two media in “Transient:
Impermanent Paintings,” an
Artechouse exhibition. A
motorized Yamaha piano stands
at the center of the venue’s main
gallery, where it generates
melodies that arise and decay in
sync with ever-changing
patterns projected on the wall
and floor around the instrument.
Each note corresponds to a
digital brushstroke.
Born Davide Quagliola,
Quayola grew up among Rome’s
Renaissance and Baroque
monuments and was trained as a
classical painter. But “Transient”
was inspired by a different
country and a later era.
According to the artist, it was
conceived as an homage to
French Impressionism. The
algorithm-driven daubs of pastel
color, although they never
cohere into legible images,
“explore the heritage of
landscape painting,” he said.
“Transient” consists of six
pieces that together run about 22
minutes. Their pseudo-painterly
gestures are abstract, yet
evocative of details from
canvases by Monet, Sisley,
Pissarro and their peers. Where
the Impressionists used thick,
visible brushwork to provide a
sense of change and motion,
Quayola merely simulates their
paintings’ depth, texture and
spontaneity. But he does deliver
actual movement. These
“computational paintings,” as
the artist calls them, splash and
flow like perpetual works in
progress.
As is usual at Artechouse, the
side rooms offer different
versions of the experience in the
central space. In the back, an
automated keyboard controls 12
screens whose imagery changes
more slowly than in the
principal gallery. To the right, a
keyboard is linked to projections

Paint strokes and a motorized piano combine for an immersive journey

MAX RYKOV/ARTECHOUSE

Artist Quayola’s “Transient: Impermanent Paintings” exhibition was conceived

as an homage to French Impressionism.

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