Modern Spring pours into Artstream

New Englanders embrace signs of spring like awards for enduring the longest, coldest and darkest part of the year. An awards ceremony of this sort is taking place now at the Artstream gallery in Rochester.

The current exhibition, Modern Spring, runs until July 8, with contemporary mixed-media works by several artists that mark the season in different ways. Also featured are more than 25 new flower vases by Megan Bogonovich of Concord. An opening reception was held on May 2, coinciding with Rochester’s monthly Art Stroll, which is held the first Friday of every month from 5 to 7 p.m.

New works by Mary O’Malley of Boston, Heather Smith Jones of Kansas City and Albina McPhail of Illinois are in the main gallery. Artstream owner Susan Schwake has new collages on display in the Equinox Gallery.

The recent collages by Mary O’Malley are a simplified version of her ornamental drawings and paintings, which depict a beauty that, in her owns words, is “blatantly sensuous, silly, unapologetically pretty, boldly decorative and aggressively feminine.” Her previous paintings are like dimly lit chandeliers in the darkest of rooms or glowing jelly fish in deep waters, and some of her drawings are reminiscent of intricate lace against black velvet or spider webs in the rain. While the new works on display contain some similar patterns, While the new works on display contain some similar patterns, these are smaller images contrasted by brightly colored backgrounds. These include a delicate bird with a flamboyant headdress three times its size.    

The refreshing work of Heather Smith Jones offers a peak into a concise but personal journal or nature sketchbook. Her works combine life-like pencil drawings, sweet crayon doodles, fragmented or parenthetical sentences in the style of e.e. cummings, bold watercolor and tiny pin points. The resulting pieces portray a childlike sense of wonder about the world, though they are skillfully composed with an adult sensibility of word choice and color. Her observations of a clover or an insect are recorded thoughtfully, but maintain the simplicity of the natural environment. In one case, she begins and never ends the phrase, “In my neighbor’s field there are many beautiful.”   

The new work by Albina McPhail differs from the vibrant nature she’s depicted in the past. What Schwake called the “Darling Buds of May” collection is representative of early spring before it is green and lush. There are several rich layers of subdued colors and print materials underneath the large, bold outlines of single flowers. It’s somewhat like thick, black markers of graffiti over concrete walls that authorities keep trying to paint over, but much prettier.      

Just in time to gather a full bouquet of forsythias or a few daffodils, Bogonovich’s vases are available in a range of sizes and prices. The vases start at an affordable $35, compared to the elaborate porcelain sculptures she sold at the gallery last month for over $2,000. The handful of these sculptures that remain at the gallery are awe inspiring and captivating. The artist seamlessly combines natural and abstracted imagery in fragile detail to create what she calls “a whimsical reality.” There are, for instance, conservatively dressed figures with their upper halves buried in a mass of fantastical coral or fungus. It suggests the possibility of the real and the imagined together, the daydreams of explorations people may have while in the comfort of their own homes.

Along similar lines are the small, slip cast sculptures Bogonovich creates by combining humans and animals. These, including a chipmunk with a woman’s head and a squirrel with a man’s head, are popular items at her online Etsy shop at www.etsy.com and can also be purchased at the online Artstream shop for around $40 (www.artstreamstudios.com).

Squirrels are an annual sign of spring for Bogonovich. When the weather becomes warm, she wakes daily to a squirrel that leaps onto the screen of her bedroom window before crawling up to the roof. She personifies squirrels in her conversion much like her sculptures do visually. “Do they hibernate?” she asks. “I guess they just stay in their nests a lot in the winter, but they are very active in spring.”

Teaching a variety of processes in ceramics at New Hampshire Technical Institute sends her work in different directions. The flower vases at Artstream are relatively simple for her to make, and she calls them fun and functional. She created many reusable stamps to imprint the pottery with patterns and shapes.

“I think I just wanted to play around with textures,” Bogonovich said. She also achieved a handmade look and earthy feel, but over the terra-cotta clay are vibrant stripes of color. “I like a more-is-more-is-more look,” she said. “I like color—every color.”      

Flowers and “just the possibility of having things grow” are inspirational, she said. By the end of March, Bogonovich said, “You feel like you’ve been tortured. You feel devastated.” Spring comes as a relief, she added.

The Modern Spring show was arranged in September, before there was any hint that such a long winter laid ahead, Schwake said. She said everyone looks forward to the new growth of spring in the dead of winter.

“It’s like a rebirth every year,” she said. 

For her part, Schwake contributed a fresh collection with whole and cross-sections of fruit overlapping doily-like patterns.  
“It’s springtime,” she said. “It’s going to be a really springy show.”