{"id":47422,"date":"2019-09-25T09:35:06","date_gmt":"2019-09-25T15:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=47422"},"modified":"2019-09-25T09:35:06","modified_gmt":"2019-09-25T15:35:06","slug":"a-perpetual-dream-oasis-of-food-and-love-at-art-access-palate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/a-perpetual-dream-oasis-of-food-and-love-at-art-access-palate\/","title":{"rendered":"A Perpetual Dream Oasis of Food and Love at Art Access’ Palate"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Tess Cook, “Smooshed,” 10″x10″, oil & acrylic on panel,<\/p><\/div>\n

There\u2019s a lot for the heart and mind and mental taste buds in the Art Access II Gallery, where the color palettes used by painters are almost merry-go-round rich.<\/h4>\n

Most unforgettable is Tess Cook\u2019s oil-on-panel \u201cSmooshed,\u201d where a tropical blue turtle industriously works its way across the goo surface of a sparkly pink-frosted cake; on its poor back is a slightly smashed pink-frosted cupcake. What a sad party fellow he is; no birthday joy here, only a mocking burden, all the appeal of St. Patrick\u2019s Day decorations on a closeout table at Smiths weeks after St. Patrick\u2019s Day is over. Could this turtle be carrying our earth-burden of industry\u2019s un-sweet damage done to our earth? He\u2019s the earth, or his turtle shell is the ozone layer; that sick burden\u2019s becoming too horrible to solve or bear. He cannot gain traction. The pink frosting is our industrial addiction: it\u2019s under us and on us, now \u2014 no longer our comfort, ease, protection.<\/h4>\n

Lon\u00e9 Vilnius\u2019s multimedia puzzle \u201cLetter Eater\u201d is another standout. Embedded somehow in a large block of ceramic is a copper mesh strainer, fine mesh with a raw coppery glitter. On top, showy as a rooster\u2019s comb, is a pizza-shaped piece of wood, painted black. Tiny circlets and squares of letters dance on it, as if rolled from a board game\u2019s tumbler and all landed magically right-side-up. Two wooden blocks painted black form its feet. It\u2019s a mad clock, missing time; a man\u2019s face is underneath the strainer, peering out with melancholy eyes, a Romeo who wanted his letter to be read by Juliet, or vice versa: but it\u2019s too late.<\/h4>\n

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Vilnius\u2019s mixed media piece is a palate-cleanser here, in a room full of paintings of doughnuts (Terry Peterson, oil on canvas, \u201cDonut Friday\u201d), citrus fruit with ghostly blue afterimages (\u201cCitrusy,\u201d by Sue Martin, acrylic on panel), and Abigail Palmer\u2019s small, winsome produce images (\u201cTomato Tumble,\u201d \u201cBananas,\u201d \u201cPeach Slices,\u201d small oils on cradled panels).<\/h4>\n

Jana Parkin, who has a trio of brilliant watercolors of treats and dinners, including minestrone, cake, and salmon pasta salad, also has a book called Kitchen Alchemy<\/em> in Art Access\u2019s gift shop: each recipe is accompanied by one drifting, brilliant watercolor after another by Parkin.<\/h4>\n

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Jenni Eames\u2019 \u201cHome Cooking\u201d glories in geometries of tin containers for TV dinners of long ago: peas have their home on the range at the belfry-crest top of the dinner-tin. Pale, layered ovalettes of turkey with a ladling of darker gravy are central. At sides \u2014 seeming to guard the more serious dinner food in the middle \u2014 are drafted-to-duty potatoes at the left, sword-sharp slivers of peaches in sweet goo on the right. They suggest a well-protected Garden of Eating, everything there for you; all you have to do is turn up with a fork to glory in the fruits of the farm. Choose your farm plot or channel: each food seems to be a small garden raised for you in a tiny plot; the once-strutting turkey was kept in a central pen, surrounded by peach trees, potato plants, and peas too. And this tin container has everything but antennae.<\/h4>\n

Deft paintings of steak (\u201cDate Night Steak\u201d) and cake (very simply titled \u201cCake\u201d) by James McGee are splendid here. That drum-shaped uncut cake of pink looks like a cake left out in the rain; McGee has painted it in a hurry, it seems, before it dissolves. It\u2019s almost a hatbox, with a big red button handle at its top \u2014 that candied cherry or strawberry at its top a dutiful detail added by baker to increase its price\/prestige. (A same impulse might be felt by any hatbox-maker: a bright red nugget of a clasp might increase the hatbox\u2019s desirability and price.)<\/h4>\n