{"id":12210,"date":"2012-08-01T17:30:56","date_gmt":"2012-08-01T23:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=12210"},"modified":"2025-12-23T06:09:52","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T13:09:52","slug":"drawing-together-cassandra-barney-brian-kershisnik","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/drawing-together-cassandra-barney-brian-kershisnik\/","title":{"rendered":"Drawing Together: Cassandra Barney & Brian Kershisnik"},"content":{"rendered":"

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For some time now I\u2019ve been thinking about something that, in the privacy of my mind, I call \u201cthe Utah School.\u201d This assortment of local artists\u2014their precise number varies\u2014display common concerns and make similar choices in their works: sufficiently so that a curious critic might look for some shared influence beyond the obvious. Unlike the Cubists, but like the Impressionists and Fauves, these artists have in no way unilaterally identified themselves as sharing particular tastes or strategies. They remain, so far, a phenomenon that primarily exists only in a critic\u2019s eyes. So when rumors of collaboration between two of the primary candidates for Utah School membership\u2014Cassandra Barney and Brian Kershisnik\u2014reached my ears, they pricked up. On the one hand, this could be the first signs of something emerging. On the other hand, it could be just two artists who know each other\u2019s work and are looking for a new outlet; art, after all, is also a business. I felt I needed to get over to the Kayo Gallery\u2019s new space (next door to their old digs near the corner of East Second and Broadway), where\u00a0Drawing Together,<\/em>\u00a0twenty-five of their collaborative, mixed-media drawings, is on display through August 11. The title alone is provocative: it could be a literal description of what took place, or it could be a gentle pun. Either way, it opens possibilities for the future.<\/p>\n

Dates for the onset of Modernism run all the way from 1200 to 1940. Modern visual arts arguably begin to take shape around 1850, contemporary with the invention of photography. The bath water of elaborately hand-made, extreme realism that was thrown out then has been followed since by many babies, including beauty, skill, discernment, and good taste. Another of the victims was collaboration between artists. It\u2019s ironic to hear critics talk about how \u2018huge\u2019 today\u2019s artworks are, as if St. Peter\u2019s in Rome hadn\u2019t been the world\u2019s largest building, or Angkor Wat didn\u2019t occupy over 200 acres. If anything, the slow growth in size of today\u2019s art is testimony to the gradual disappearance of the shibboleth against collaboration. But of all the art media, the last ones to permit artists to work together are the most intimate, including of course drawing.<\/p>\n

There were some negative comments about what finally showed up on the walls at Kayo: comments focusing on the fact that what\u2019s here are \u2018just drawings.\u2019 While it\u2019s true that as finished works of art, drawings are perceived as lesser works than the paintings they may turn into, there are several qualities that make these more compelling. First of all, because of their \u2018skeletal\u2019 condition, the contribution of each artist shows up more clearly, and viewers who know them individually can gain insight into how each proceeds from a given stage to a necessary next step. For another, even a professional who views their works regularly can be fooled into seeing more similarity than actually exists. Seeing Barney and Kershisnik in the same frame makes it impossible to overlook their differences. And studying just how they found a way to work together says something about how their works normally take shape.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Apparently, there was little conversation and no overt planning between the two artists. Rather than hammer out an idea that they then executed, each began by drawing on a blank sheet of paper. At some point, those sheets were exchanged. Sometimes one left a space in the composition for the other to fill. At others, a sketch centered on the page was handed off, possibly for the addition of a background or other details. In any case, differences remain that would almost certainly have been smoothed over during the many hours it takes to take a painting to a finished state.<\/p>\n

Among the most popular prints of M.C. Escher is one of two elaborately-rendered, illusionistic hands poised side by side, each holding a stylus with which it is adding the line-drawn, preliminary version of the other\u2019s wrist. Escher\u2019s version takes its cue from the yin-yang figure: both hands are identical but reversed with respect to each other. Barney and Kershisnik, perhaps inevitably, made several drawings on the same theme, but with each drawing the other\u2019s figure. While the idea may seem obvious, a philosopher could have a field day with the possibilities: one artist could draw both, combining a self-portrait and a portrait; each artist could draw a self-portrait; each artist could draw a portrait of the other. Since the subject could be the way I would draw it, or it could be the way I think my collaborator would, the number of possibilities is at least doubled. To me, it appears that the large drawing contains two self-portraits; in the smaller one, I think we have Barney by Kershisnik and vice-versa. Anyone else care to venture a guess?<\/p>\n

This is one case where familiarity with the artists\u2019 biographies can help see their differences. Cassandra Barney comes from an arts background. During childhood she was regularly exposed to art museums. Her trajectory was from child of artist to an artist in her own right. Her work reveals a trained hand in the way the varying weight of her sinuous line renders three-dimensional information, or the Leonardo-like angles she likes for posing a head. Brian Kershisnik\u2019s background, comparatively speaking, was that of a layman. Although he did turn to the formal study of art in college, his trajectory since has been opposite to the academic tradition that Barney may not actively pursue, but cannot entirely expunge. In other words, while one of the characteristics of the Utah School might be an affinity for Byzantine-style and weightless figures, Barney\u2019s figures rest lightly on the ground, while Kershisnik\u2019s tend to float, as though indifferent to gravity. His line is also far more architectonic than hers.<\/span><\/p>\n