Steve Creson, “Heaven & Earth Magic #3”
Steve Creson’s Gallery Exhibit at the Holladay Library reflects the artist’s diverse interests across a few unique sets of works. The roots of the Black Arrow Project (BAP), as traced in an accompanying artist’s statement, point to the intriguingly circuitous route from inspiration to realization. Born of a hazy waking vision for a political-artistic movement to meet the moment of racial tension in the country, the concept took shape in the Arrow Series.
Heaven & Earth Magic series is starkly abstract simple shapes on sky-dark backgrounds. Shimmering on top, images seem to swallow light into their lacquered surface as the glossy top layer flows over and accents the shapes of forms below. Sparks of inspiration here leap back a generation, to the work of “Harry Everett Smith, 20th-century filmmaker and alchemist.”
The shiny whimsical collage paintings of the Great Basin series and related architectural works mesh with the artist’s vision of “representation heavily collaged with plenty of narrative possibility.” Creson’s idiosyncratic building portraits, shot along roadsides and Main Streets of small towns across the west, create source material for intrigue. Possibilities seem to emerge from old storefronts and walls of places along the way somewhere.
18×18 in, photo collage and enamel paint, resin on panel
Steve Creson: Gallery Exhibit, Salt Lake County Library-Holladay (2150 East Murray Holladay Road, 801.943.4636), through the month of June. Artist’s Reception/Poetry Reading and Q&A, June 7, 2022, 7pm.
James Mour, currently based in Southern Illinois, writes creative non-fiction and poetry.
Categories: Exhibition Reviews | Visual Arts
