Megan Van Wagoner Megan Van Wagoner's elegant "Subsidized Wealth," made with blown glass potatoes and cast aluminum basket, calls to mind the troubled history of potato farming and its modern consequences.

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Elizabeth Burger A large, orange, twisting form dominates the Artery Plaza Gallery. Artist Elizabeth Burger was (perhaps) thinking of friendly tornadoes, the kind that carry you to magic places.
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Emily Piccirillo Emily Piccirillo's "Any Given Moment" celebrates the minute to minute changes of the sky. The intersection of two and three-dimensional concerns reflects the open character of art categories today

Megan Van Wagoner Megan Van Wagoner's elegant "Subsidized Wealth," made with blown glass potatoes and cast aluminum basket, calls to mind the troubled history of potato farming and its modern consequences.

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On View

Claudia Rousseau

Juror and curator Tom Ashcraft described wading into the very large submission for the Washington Sculptors Group’s 2011 “Sculpture Now” exhibit, now at the Artery Plaza Gallery in Bethesda, as being immersed in a “soup of ideas.” From that soup, he selected 19 excellent pieces to represent the notion of “sculpture now,” with concepts and media as varied as three-dimensional art has become.

It should be understood that the primary definition of sculpture is artwork that is carved or cast. Early in the last century, that definition was expanded to include works that were welded or constructed. In the last 50 years or so, the world of sculpture, or perhaps more accurately, three-dimensional art forms, has become just about anything that is not painting.

That is the reason the exhibition includes a work by Brian Davis described as a “computer application.” A computer screen displays a human hand that emerges from darkness. At indeterminate intervals, one of the fingers lifts and taps the implied surface the hand rests on. “Tapping” is achieved with a program that continually scans Craigslist for a series of words. Whenever it finds one of these words, a finger is activated.

Although I question how such a work can be considered sculpture, even by the most liberal definition, Davis’ piece is brilliant and amazingly compelling. One might consider the virtual “distance” between the computer and Craigslist as supplying the necessary third dimension. However, even considering this as a justification for inclusion, something that emerged in Ashcraft’s colloquium-style gallery talk, demonstrates the variety of ideas and means of expression that fall under the category of “sculpture now.”

Among the works that were most arresting, Elizabeth Burger’s 10-foot-high orange “Twister” probably tops the list. Made of various materials including plastic netting and paper pulp, the “Twister” is suspended from the gallery ceiling, its bright color seemingly at odds with its subject. Yet, think “Wizard of Oz” here — a magic cloud that brings the viewer to another dimension — to explain its positively friendly affect.

Ben Lock’s two large metal constructions also could be considered in this category. “Rubber Burner” and “Second Class” are both made of heavy components, contrasting made elements with found objects. Both works speak of machinery, trucks and muscle men, but with elegance that, for Ashcraft is — and the comparison is not without interest — reminiscent of Martin Puryear’s delicate wood and metal constructions. The contrasts of heavy and light, so much a part of Lock’s works, also are an aspect of Alan Arp’s large piece, “Slit Gong 4.” While looking enormously heavy, it is rather light in weight, being graphite-painted wood rather than the metal it appears. Arp’s constructions are generally concerned with palindromes, and are precisely math based rather than randomly constructed.

Athena Tacha’s “Pacific Breastplate” is a wearable piece — a photo of the artist wearing it is in the show — densely textured with limpet shells on an armature of aluminum. This is a work about vulnerability and protection from a definitively feminist point of view. Greek-born, Tacha’s favorite toys as a child were a set of the warrior goddess Athena’s breastplate, spear and helmet. Here, she reconsiders these mythical ideas and their feminist implications in the 21st century.

Emily Piccirillo’s work seems to straddle categories. “Any Given Moment” is a construction that involves a carbon steel armature to which a canvas is tied with cords and painted on both sides. The painting reflects Piccirillo’s fascination with light, both in a natural sense in the sky’s continually changing, luminous presence, and with the effects of artificial light. In the gallery, the front side of the canvas, perforated with holes, shows a blue sky. The back is painted red, casting a red shadow against the wall. Altering the lighting in the gallery would produce very different perceptions of this work.

Mimi Frank’s wall piece also alludes to mythology and the sky. “Cassiopeia Dreams of Better Days” features tiny welded steel chairs splayed across the wall like the stars of a constellation. Further along the back wall are Maggie Gourlay’s crocheted “Spheres” that give the effect of fluffy, white constellations or some other organic combinations.

The trompe l’oeil works of Olivia Rodriguez are impressively crafted, and both humorous and strange. “Portrait of the Artist/Self-Portrait” is an epoxy resin replica of a Styrofoam coffee cup with a cast resin cockroach creeping from it. Her “Tripod,” also hand-made, imitates an arrangement of budding twigs.

Megan Van Wagoner is represented with two pieces, very different in character. “First Time” is a rather surrealist object; a cast aluminum scissor whose blades end in sculpted fingers — index, middle and thumb. One can imagine all sorts of interesting ideas for this, but the artist was thinking of childhood pinching contests with her sister. At first such things are fun, but they become painful. The concept of “at first” is thus implied in the work, which is not limited to these notions. Her installation “Subsidized Wealth” alludes to the artist’s concerns about subsidized agriculture. Her exquisitely blown glass potatoes on top of a cast aluminum basket send a chilling message about who profits from the production of food and farming in this country.

Maria Josephy’s “Tree” is a graceful spiral of books, all cut to small squares. Looking like wood, they are in fact the “leaves” of the trees they came from. Joel D’Orazio’s funny but wonderful “Acid Queen” is a chair with a long trail of colored wire “hair,” and the striking craftsmanship of Allen Linder’s “Man in Stream” combine to comment on the environment while making great art.