michelle marie murphy, gianna commito, natalie lanese,
janice lessman-moss, erik neff, paul o’keeffe, kristina
paabus and amy sinbondit approach materials, processes and
concepts in disparate fashions, yet their work is united by a shared
visual vocabulary of non-representative curvilinear and rectilinear
forms. Once dominated by rigid dogmas and hierarchies imposed
by powerful art critics, the practice of abstraction has broadened,
allowing contemporary artists to explore the genre on their own
terms. With images and information readily available via the Inter-
net, abstract artists reference a multitude of styles, art historical
periods and facets of visual and popular culture. New technologies
have multiplied the tools available to artists and reenergized
experiments with process and materials.
Geometric abstraction has been a vibrant
mode for artists in Northeast Ohio for
decades. As Abstract Expressionism—a style
associated with spontaneous, energetic
mark-making or flowing fields of color—
dominated midcentury art in much of the
United States, geometric abstraction became
Ohio’s vanguard movement.1 Painters and
sculptors in Cleveland, Oberlin and Kent
created hard-edged, non-representational
compositions guided by predetermined systems based on logic or
mathematics. They drew inspiration from psychology, science and
technology and sought to engage viewers as participants in singular
aesthetic experiences.
In 1965, the Museum of Modern Art presented The Responsive Eye,
an exhibition that catapulted Op Art into the international spot-
light.2 A type of geometric abstraction in which complex, repeating
patterns create illusionary effects, Op Art was a global movement
with a special connection to Northeast Ohio. Julian Stanczak,
Richard Anuszkiewicz and the Anonima Group—founded by
(continued on last page)
Opposite:
Michelle Marie Murphy,
Eyeshadow Overlap Op,
(detail) 2011, chromogenic
print on metallic paper,
34 x 30 in.
Right:
Julian Stanczak, It’s Not
Easy Being Green,
1980-2000, acrylic on canvas,
57 x 57 in., collection of the
Akron Art Museum, Rory
and Dedee O’Neil Acquisition
Fund, 2013.1
Born 1981, Lakewood, Ohio; lives in Cleveland and Chicago
michelle marie murphy responds directly to Northeast Ohio’s rich
history of geometric abstraction. Murphy graduated from the Cleveland
Institute of Art’s five-year bfa program, which devoted its first two years
to foundational design principles. Murphy photographs makeup products
arranged in repeating patterns that mimic Op Art paintings. She uses
both in-camera and post-production methods, physically arranging the
palettes and altering the images digitally to enhance the optical effects.
In Business Casual (2015) Murphy musses a beige rectangle of eyeshadow
surrounded by the impeccable surfaces of whites, pinks and blues,
revealing the identity of her material through an effect impossible to
create solely with a computer.
Murphy’s Perceptual Beauty series, ongoing since
2011, both pokes fun at and celebrates Op Art,
a movement she was introduced to as a student
her first semester at cia. (The series’ title
references Perceptual Art, another name for
Op Art.) But it also functions as a critique
of consumer culture and the beauty industry.
“I see makeup as a loaded art supply. It’s
designed to be enticing and appealing,”
Murphy said. “From a consumer standpoint it
is marketed toward specific target audiences.
It’s put on display in very specific ways.”3
Murphy’s photography represents a common consumer good that
countless people purchase to alter their appearances daily. The idea for
the series occurred to the artist during a walk down a drug store cosmetics
aisle; she invites us to consider the economics behind cosmetics, a product
primarily marketing toward women, who as a group are paid less than
men. And what are these products’ role in the way women present them-
selves to the world? “The goods that you may consume as a person—aside
from being an artist—it’s hard not to look at them critically,” Murphy said.
Michelle Marie
Murphy
Opposite:
Business Casual, 2015,
chromogenic print on
metallic paper, 40 x 30 in.
Above:
Eyeshadow: Going Out ‘n
Back Again, 2012,
chromogenic print on
metallic paper, 30 x 30 in.
Born 1954, Pittsburgh; lives in Kent, Ohio
w i t h t h e i r e x p l o s i v e , swirling
patterns, Janice Lessman-Moss’ jacquard
tapestries share a visual kinship with Op
Art. The works are inherently geometric—
weaving has a structural grid formed from
the intersection of the warp, or longitudinal
threads, and the weft, or the lateral threads.
Lessman-Moss, who moved to Northeast Ohio
in 1981 to teach fiber at Kent State Univer-
sity, elaborates on this system by introducing
pattern and color.
The artist uses simple shapes—a circle inside
a rectangle—to begin her complex designs.
She sketches in Photoshop, developing several
variants of a pattern by altering colors and
transparency or adding filters, before settling
on a final version. For Lessman-Moss, a good
design has an underlying sense of control, a
central focus and a push and pull of space.
“I’m interested in these as both illusion and
object. They are objects. They are weavings.
They’re tactile things. I want that to be somewhat pronounced,” Lessman-Moss said. “If you em-
phasize the border, the edge, you define the limits of the pattern so it takes it out of the realm of
the traditional textile, where a textile just goes on forever.”
Lessman-Moss lines her industrially-produced tapestries with hand-felted borders. Working with
assistants, the artist dyes and cards wool then fashions it into individual square-shaped pieces.
The wool is then soaked with hot water and stomped on. The physically taxing process required
for the felt stands in stark contrast with production of the tapestries, which are created according
to the artist’s design on a commercial textile loom in North Carolina.
Opposite:
#432, 2013
cotton and wool,
75 x 67 in.
Right:
#446, (detail) 2015,
cotton and wool
73 x 66.5 in.
Janice Lessman-Moss
Born 1962, Coshocton, Ohio; lives in Newbury, Ohio
erik neff earned degrees in biology and entomology before attending the Cleveland
Institute of Art, where he studied under Julian Stanczak. Neff finds inspiration in nature, specif-
ically the wooded landscape of his rural Geauga County home. These surroundings affect the
artist’s choice of colors, which he tones with gray during his wet-on-wet painting process. “For me
it’s a very intuitive palette,” Neff said. “I think a lot of it is probably influenced by the fact that I’ve
chosen to have this studio that is in a stream valley.”
Soft-edged, stacked rectangular forms fill the foregrounds of Neff’s paintings. Flurries of small
brushstrokes cover the backgrounds of his large canvases Quarry and Breakwater, (2015).
Neff weighs formal decisions with an intuitive, emotional sensibility to create an overall gesture,
or gestalt, evocative of an experience or place.
“Much of what I’m painting is a combination of
process painting, so it’s about one mark leading
to another mark. The overall arrangement
of marks and shapes are constantly juggling and
moving and getting scraped out and
repainted until they begin to form for me a
kind of abstract reality or narrative.”
Neff starts his paintings by wiping leftovers from
his palette onto blank canvas. For him, there’s
less pressure using surplus materials.
He rescues eye-catching bits of wood from the
pile he uses to heat his studio to construct small sculptures he calls “studio mascots.” Exercises
in surface texture, weight and color, these conglomerations of wooden blocks sit next to his
brushes, scrapers and palette. Neff adds a little bit of paint to them here and there as he works
on his canvases.
ErikNeff
Above:
Procession, 2015, oil on wood,
12.5 x 14 x 2.5 in.
Opposite:
Breakwater, 2015, oil on canvas,
69 x 74.5 in.
Born 1980, Cleveland; lives in Toledo
natalie lanese’s geometric designs, applied with acrylic or
latex house paint directly to walls and floors, alter viewers’ experiences
of the Akron Art Museum’s Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries and
challenge their visual perception. “The constant thrill for me with my
work is that the experience of a space can be completely altered just by
using color, shapes and lines,” Lanese said.
The artist, who lives in Toledo and teaches at Siena Heights University
in Adrian, Michigan, works intuitively. She develops doodles and loose
sketches in advance, and then spends time at each site to best understand
how to adapt her ideas to the architecture. Sometimes Lanese projects
and traces her studies, other times she applies
tape to the wall or draws without a guiding aid.
But she and her assistants always apply paint
freehand. That human quality is essential
for the artist. “Brushstrokes and slight wobbles
in the line remind the viewer that he or she
is looking at painting made by a person,”
Lanese said.
Her patterns, typically chevrons in contrasting
colors, call attention to the flatness of the
surface they cover. In recent installations,
such as Camofleur (2014), at Survival Kit in
Cleveland, Lanese pushes the illusory qualities by painting false horizon
lines. Sculptural elements constructed of plywood or foam add to the
deception—they match the background patterns but aren’t flush with
their surroundings.
Lanese thinks of her installations as 3-D, walk-in paintings. She’s mindful
of the shifting dimensions through which people experience her work.
The artist selected the gallery for her installation because the location
of the entryway and exit force viewers to walk through the painting,
adding the fourth dimension of time. Her vibrant designs make popular
backgrounds for cell phone photographs; posted online, the 3-D
installation is flattened once again into two dimensions.
Natalie Lanese
Opposite:
Camofleur, 2014,
installation at Survival Kit,
Cleveland
Right:
Sketch for Depthless
Without You, 2015
Born 1957, Dublin, Ireland; lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio
for his series a distant silence, Paul O’Keeffe works
quickly. His other bodies of work, which include sculptures cast from
bronze and aluminum, require extensive labor—such as model-
making, mold-making, grinding and sanding—and take months to
complete. To speed up his process, O’Keeffe needed an affordable
and readily accessible material. He decided on acrylic sheets. Off-cuts,
including the Victoria’s Secret cast-offs used to create his newest
works in the exhibition, are easily obtainable.
O’Keeffe, who moved to Northeast Ohio to teach sculpture at Kent
State University in 1983, studied with Anthony Caro at Central Saint
Martins University of the Arts in London.
It was Caro who stressed re-using discarded
materials; while O’Keeffe heeds that advice,
he seeks out materials that lack emotional or
conceptual associations, selecting acrylic for its
beauty, but also for its neutrality.
O’Keeffe instated a series of rules to follow,
or, in some cases, bend, in order to speed up
his process, restricting himself to straight cuts
in the acrylic with his table or miter saws. But
O’Keeffe does not assemble his sculptures
according to a formula; he actively makes deci-
sions regarding part-to-part relationships.
Despite his use of basic geometric forms, O’Keeffe does not see his work
as part of the geometric abstraction genre. “How I got to it was really
not so much thinking about the whole history of painting or abstrac-
tion, but it was more from looking at things in the world. Like windows,
doorways, reflections.” This source of inspiration seems apt for work in
which translucent acrylic surfaces reflect the world around them. The
highly reflective surfaces of O’Keeffe’s hard-edged, wall-hanging sculp-
tures play with viewers’ senses—they change color depending on the
angle from which they are seen. He contrasts the shiny, reflective areas
with the matte finish of highly pigmented vinyl paint.
Opposite:
a distant silence IV,
2013, acrylic, vinyl paint,
17.5 x 14.5 x 2.25 in.
Right:
a distant silence VIII,
2013, acrylic, vinyl paint,
17.5 x 9 x 2.75 in.
Paul O’Keeffe
Born 1977, Akron, Ohio; lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio
amy sinbondit’s work is about opposites: geometry and gesture,
comprehension and misunderstanding, planning and risk-taking. For
the artist, the genre itself embodies duality. “There is a certain amount
of control and order that occurs with the geometric side. With abstraction
you are able to twist and manipulate the geometry.” She balances
contrasting rectilinear and curvilinear forms in her ceramic sculptures,
seeking a rhythm between angles and curves.
Sinbondit creates her swirls and hard-edged forms through the extrusion
method, forcing wet clay through a specially designed die. She cuts,
bends, curves and twists the hollow ribbons of
clay. Sinbondit is not afraid to push her clay,
literally or figuratively. “It starts with understand-
ing what the material’s limits and capabilities
are and trying to twist those limits a little bit to
see what the spectrum is. Then you can take
risks to get things to work.” She’s not averse to
using atypical materials to achieve her desired
effect. Along with glaze and paint, vinyl tape,
lacquer, resin, epoxy or powdered gold cover
her work’s surfaces. If Sinbondit makes a
mistake, she considers it part of the work and
keeps going, sometimes even fixing the problem with a material that
accentuates the aberration.
Written communication inspired works like Pompadour and Drifting
Meander (2011). She derives the gestural, curved shapes from letterforms.
The rectangles come from the boxes that appear on screens when a com-
puter is unable to read a font. Technology inspired one of Sinbondit’s
most recent works in the exhibition. This past June, she spent two weeks at
a residency at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine developing
a 3-D printer. The see-through form of Singularity (2015) is reminiscent of
the grid 3-D printers use to support the object produced by the machine.
Amy Sinbondit
Above:
Pompadour, 2011, red
earthenware, porcelain,
terra sigillata, glaze,
21 x 24 x 7.5 in.
Opposite:
Atone in Gold, 2014,
wood-fired porcelain,
ceramic stain, glaze, epoxy,
10K and 14K gold dust,
11 x 12 x 7 in.
Born 1976, Sea Level, North Carolina; lives in Kent, Ohio
materials are key to the practice of Gianna Commito, who moved
to Northeast Ohio in 2005 to teach painting at Kent State University following
Craig Lucas’ retirement. She layers coat upon coat of casein, a milk protein-based
paint with an opaque, matte finish, on top of panels primed with absorbent
marble-dust gesso. Commito applies masking tape to demarcate the edges of the
stripes, diamonds, rectangles and chevrons that form her compositions. Despite
her precautions, the casein allows for what the artist calls “scuzz-factor.” A close
look at one of her panels reveals surface textures rarely picked up in photographs.
The casein’s surface, which dries quickly enough to layer but is tacky until it
cures, mottles, lifts off in places, and reveals
the slightly raised outlines of the paint
underneath.
The surfaces of Commito’s panels have a
very physical presence, but they also create
the illusion of shallow dimensionality with
planes that hang in an anxious balance,
heightened by her jarring color combina-
tions. “I want there to be a little anxiety or
slipperiness in each piece—there’s always
something trustworthy like a clear horizon-
tal or vertical axis, but the periphery may
be slightly off kilter or uncertain.” Commito
works slowly and deliberately, taking the
time to step back and absorb the results of
one decision before moving on to the next.
“The pleasure in working for me comes from
allowing the image to unfold, for it to pass
through stages of feeling a little too pat, to
way too complicated, and finally into some
kind of resolved image,” she said.
Gianna Commito
Opposite:
Nepp, 2014, casein and
marble dust ground
on panel, 30 x 24 in.
Right:
Court, 2014, casein and
marble dust ground
on panel, 24 x 20 in.
Born 1976, Haverhill, Massachusetts; lives in Oberlin, Ohio
kristina paabus, who moved to northeast ohio to teach
reproducible media at Oberlin College in 2014 following John Pearson’s
retirement, examines man-made structures that keep society functioning
smoothly: concepts such as language, time, religious belief, strategy
and logic.
The daughter of Estonian immigrants, Paabus learned English as a kinder-
gartner. Language was a common conversation topic during the artist’s
childhood—gathered around the dinner table, she discussed newly discov-
ered words and phrases with her sister and parents. For her multi-layered
screenprints, Paabus uses stencils that behave like letters of the alphabet—
arranged in different orders, they generate
different meanings. The artist’s interest in the
printed multiple is not rooted in creating num-
bered editions, but in reinterpretation. “So you
could have the same thing, the same stencil
for example, and use it in so many different
ways, ” Paabus explains. She chooses from her
library of hundreds of hand-made and digitally
produced stencils. For monoprints such as
Safekeeping and Something to Believe In (2015),
Paabus outfits a plotter with a marker instead of
a blade, and digitally instructs the machine to
make marks.
Although Paabus’ graphite drawings resemble
Op Art, they reference the artist’s struggle with
insomnia while living in Estonia on a Fulbright
scholarship in 2009 and 2010. Winter in the Baltic country brings only a
few hours of light each day. Reflecting on her experience living and working
with very little sleep, Paabus questioned time as a construction: how does
the idea of time shape us physically and psychologically? To represent time
graphically, Paabus lays out a grid with marker, fills each square with an oil
sharpie, and uses graphite pencils of differing hardness to fill each circle.
The resulting gradient from light to dark represents the fluctuation in the
artist’s experience of the passage of time.
Kristina Paabus
Right:
Something to Believe
In, 2015, screenprint and
digital plotter drawing on
paper, 19 x 14 in.
Opposite:
3h, 2012, colored pencil, oil
and ink on panel, 12 x 12 in.
Right:
Janice Lessman-Moss,
#444 (detail), 2015, cotton
and wool, 72 x 67.5 in.
Ernst Benkert, Francis Hewitt and Ed Mieczkowski in Cleveland
in 1960—had been working in this style for half a decade before
exhibiting in The Responsive Eye. The Anonima Group focused
on viewers’ psychological and physiological responses to their
vividly colored, highly structured paintings. In their rhythmic
compositions, Stanzcak and Anuszkiewicz drew upon the color
theory they learned studying with Josef Albers at Yale University.
Other artists working concurrently in the region, including
David E. Davis, Samuel Butnik, Craig Lucas and John Pearson,
focused on geometry, but were driven by formal concerns
expressed through reason and logic.
Mieczkowski and Stanzcak taught at the
Cleveland Institute of Art for decades;
Pearson and Lucas served as faculty at
Oberlin College and Kent State University
respectively for many years. The influence
of these painters, who were colleagues or
instructors to some of the artists participating
in neo geo, explains in part the longevity
of geometric abstraction’s relevance in
the region. neo geo demonstrates that
artists in Northeast Ohio working in this
genre today look to rich and varied sources
for insight and inspiration. Geometric abstraction continues to
be practiced by artists internationally; neo geo participants count
Mark Grotjahn (Los Angeles), Jim Lambie (Glasgow, Scotland)
and Diana de Solares (Guatemala City) among their many peers.
The artists in neo geo use unexpected materials, unusual processes
and state-of-the-art, as well as ancient, technologies to create fresh
significances. Geometric abstraction pares art down to pure shapes,
lines and colors, yet infinite possibilities lie within those boundaries.
The genre’s inherent limits provide a framework for regeneration,
a challenge heartily accepted by artists practicing in Northeast Ohio.
Theresa Bembnister, Associate Curator
Front cover, clockwise beginning upper left:
Gianna Commito, Court (detail), 2014,
casein and marble dust ground on panel,
24 x 20 in.
Erik Neff, Shoreline (detail), 2015,
oil on wood, 9 x 10.25 x 1.5 in.
Natalie Lanese, Camofleur (detail), 2014,
installation at Survival Kit, Cleveland
Paul O’Keeffe, a distant silence IV (detail), 2013,
acrylic, vinyl paint, 17.5 x 14.5 x 2.25 in.
Amy Sinbondit, Section Break (detail), 2011,
red earthenware, engobe, terra sigillata, glaze,
14.5 x 18 x 11.5 in.
Kristina Paabus, 3h (detail), 2012,
colored pencil, oil and ink on panel,
12 x 12 in.
Janice Lessman-Moss, #446 (detail), 2015,
cotton and wool, 73 x 66.5 in.
Michelle Marie Murphy, Eyeshadow:
Going Out ‘n Back Again (detail), 2012,
chromogenic print on metallic paper, 30 x 30 in.
Inside cover:
Kristina Paabus, 24h, 2012,
graphite, oil and ink on panel, 12 x 12 in.
neo geo
November 21, 2015-April 24, 2016
Akron Art Museum
neo geo is organized by the Akron Art
Museum and generously supported
by Myrna Berzon, Dianne and Herbert
Newman, the Kenneth L. Calhoun
Charitable Trust and Harris Stanton
Gallery. Media sponsorship is provided
by wksu 89.7 and Western Reserve pbs.
Catalog design:
Christopher Hoot
Akron Art Museum
One South High
Akron, Ohio 44308
AkronArtMuseum.org
©2015
Footnotes
1. See Elizabeth McClelland, “Art in
Cleveland After the Cleveland School,”
in Harmonic Forms in the Edge: Geometric
Abstraction in Cleveland, ed. Carolyn
Rabson (Cleveland: Cleveland Artists
Foundation, 2001), 7.
2. The exhibition featured the work of
99 artists from 15 different countries,
including Italy, Spain, Germany, Great
Britain, France, Hungary and Argenti-
na. See William Seitz, The Responsive Eye
(New York: The Museum of Modern Art,
1965).
3. Quotes in this essay are from
interviews with artists conducted by the
author in spring 2015.
November 21, 2015– April 24, 2016 Akron Art Museum
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