by Dee Moffett

Sometimes I feel that when I go to Gallery Stroll I am seeing the same things every month. Maybe I am going to the wrong galleries, but I often find myself leaving shows thinking “I’ve seen that before.”

Such was not the case this past month at the January Gallery Stroll. Granted, I had to leave the downtown area for Sugar House, but this small nook of the city is quickly becoming a place where you can actually stroll the galleries. Chroma Gallery and the adjacent Rockwood Studios have been here for years. But now there is One Modern Art, devoted exclusively to abstract art, as well as the nearby Saltgrass Printmakers. And I understand that a new Harrison Groutage Gallery will be going up in the former Maytag store.

Tanner Frames, located in the Rockwood space and run by Travis Tanner, has also functioned as a small gallery, holding small exhibits of small paintings. But there is nothing small about what is in there now.

A huge pastel drawing fills the front reception area of the frame shop. It is a tidal wave of color and form, bodies intersecting, dissolving and flowing across a five foot high piece of paper that stretches thirty feet across two walls in the gallery.

The work, entitled “Gilgamesh”, was created earlier this month by local artist Shawn Rossiter. He says that initially the aim was simply to work really large. The frame shop was slated to be closed for a week after Christmas, so Tanner gave Rossiter free reign to work on the piece.

Rossiter planned on doing a contiuous abstract drawing across the whole paper in the style he has been working on for close to two years. The piece would be too large to sell as one piece, or to frame behind glass for that matter, so he and Tanner thought about selling it by the square foot and letting the audience be part of the creative process.

But the Indian Ocean tsunami changed things.

“Timing turned out to be everything,” Rossiter says. “I came in here on the 28th [of December] to hang the paper and get started. I had no preconceived idea. No preliminary sketches. Just seven days to do something. But the tsunami had really engulfed my consciousness and I was thinking about it more and more. And I was thinking about the drawing and how I might integrate the whole thing. ”

“I had these visions of floating bodies in the water. The destruction and loss was really penetrating me. A friend was helping me hang the paper and I was talking to him about wanting to use the tsunami as a theme. I mentioned something about the destruction and flood and he — eighteen and fresh from high school english class– said ‘Like Gilgamesh.’ And that hit me.”

Gilgamesh is a superhuman king in the Sumerian epic titled after him. The Epic is principally about the friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, a wildman created by the gods and tamed by the seduction of a temple priestess. The epic follows their adventures, Enkidu’s death, Gilgamesh’s grief and subsequent search for immortality. The Epic includes a Noah-like figure, Utnapishtim, who survived the great flood that destroyed all mankind and who has gained immortal life.

“For me, the story was perfect. It allowed me to express my feelings about the tsunami without being maudlin or opportunistic. It gave me the right type of distance. Also, the Epic fit perfectly with what I wanted to do stylistically.”

Rossiter’s piece is full of swirling movement. There is violence, sensuality, a flowing narrative, and, in a work so very horizontal, a sense of upward movement and verticality. The sheer size of the paper fills the space in such a way that is almost overpowering. The flowing line keeps the eye moving across the paper, back and forth, from each wall. There seems to be no beginning and no end to the piece and it is not clear whether one should read it right to left or vice versa. Figures appear out of the flowing background of forms, and their vitality interacts with spaces of relative calm. Rossiter says that he hopes the visual qualities of the piece are compelling enough for a viewer to enjoy it without knowledge of the Epic. But the frame shop has a copy of Gilgamesh on hand for those with a little time and the inclination to lose themselves further in the work.

“Someone said to me,” Rossiter comments, “that rather than being engulfed by the waves the figures seem to be rising out of them. I think that is the best description for what I was trying to accomplish.”

Gilgamesh will be on view at Tanner Frames in Sugarhouse through the month of February. 1064 East 2100 South. Tuesday thru Friday 11 to 6, Saturday 11 to 4.

15 Bytes

UTAH’S ART MAGAZINE SINCE 2001, 15 Bytes is published by Artists of Utah, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.