Art collecting vision board.
this is the first in a series tracking creating a vision board about art seen in person
Hunt Slonem - Black Diamond Dust
at Merritt Gallery, Chevy Chase
I was drawn to enter Merritt Gallery via their pop-up space on Wisconsin Avenue. What interested me was the size of the space and that it was in a transition period. I found the scene through the large storefront windows compelling being that the space and a current construction project outside on the sidewalk and streets offered a snapshot of a work in progress. A sign on the door directed me through the construction and around the corner to the much smaller main gallery space.
The work displayed in the window was a large black and glitter dusted canvas covered in rabbits made with a thick, gestural white painted line. The work was familiar although, as often is the case for me, connecting a name with the visual required an impromptu web search. I have seen these bunnies before, probably online and possibly in Brooklyn? Definitely (unfortunately) not at a point during my formal education. I know I would have found the mark making noteworthy in the past, but now that I actually have a bunny who occasionally acts as my studio assistant, I don't just find this work of passing interest - I WANT one.
Merritt Gallery also has locations in Baltimore, MD and Haverford, PA. I already knew the "bunnies" and everything else in there would be well beyond my means because I had recognized them from somewhere already connected to a feeling of the unobtainable, and the gallery has a very large storefront space at its disposal on Wisconsin in Chevy Chase, where nearly everything is beyond my means currently. (In layman's terms - all the $$$$ when you look for reviews of the gallery.) However, I have been tasked with creating this vision board, and now these particular bunnies are going to be on it. I went in for a serious look despite the fact that my personal fashionable look at the time could kindly be described as "grunge". The staff was friendly and fantastic despite this, and happy to answer my questions about pricing even after I'm sure my eyebrows must have reflexively raised at the answer and I did identify myself as an artist and lookie-loo. I didn't feel uncomfortable which is always a plus in my way of looking at any gallery. I want to absorb the art first, not the business sense of the place. When my vision board is realized, I'll be back for that, Neo-expressionist influenced by Warhol's factory process notwithstanding.
Of course the descriptor "whimsical" goes with this work but along with the rabbit imagery, the line was what attracted me and made me remember it before rabbits became "a thing" for me. Slonem also utilizes parrot imagery in his work, which actually are also relevant to my personal history, but generally with negative connotation. (Merritt's artist page online for Slonem mentions he has 60 pet birds - an apt definition of hell if you ask me.) Then there's the butterflies, but anyone is going to have to work hard to not make me think of Damien Hirst and symmetry whence there are butterflies. One butterfly work, heavy with tactile texture (Schauberg Castle), was on display during my visit, but truthfully I found the frame (Slonem also often salvages frames as part of the work) of more interest than the paint. The bunnies though - those are luscious texturally and it is evident Slonem has mastered not only the line required for rabbit-ness, but the three dimensional space it occupies as made with a heavy bodied medium.
Repetition is important in the making of the bunnies, but it is also evident that each one, like real life bunnies - the domesticated ones anyway in my experience, does have it's own spirit or personality, carried so well by the gestural quality of the line. Of the pieces on view at Merritt, I was more taken with the smaller 10 x 8 inch single portrait, or frame-bombing bunnies, than the piece in the window even if it did have diamond dust sparkles. However, there is something to be said about the mob of long eared friends one gets with the 69 x 97 inch "Hip Hop", where black line on white ground describes lots of faces looking at the viewer but not interacting with each other. The large piece "Black Diamond Dust" does have one individual that appears to possibly be grooming another, but all the rabbits seem to be imploring the viewer to look back at them more than anything else. My studio assistant mostly looks at me as if to say "Yeah? And? I'm busy here!" when I stare at her, so maybe my interest in this work has more to do with projection and wishful thinking than anything else. Nonetheless, I still WANT one.
Also of note on view at Merritt in Chevy Chase
Joshua Jensen-Negle
Ben Schwab
Alina Maksimenko
Raul de la Torre
Merritt Galleries and Renaissance Fine Art have plenty of information and lots of photos of work they carry at www.merrittgallery.com but its more than worth a look IRL.