{"id":49034,"date":"2020-01-16T11:46:41","date_gmt":"2020-01-16T17:46:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=49034"},"modified":"2020-01-22T21:11:44","modified_gmt":"2020-01-23T03:11:44","slug":"destiny-and-petits-fours-heather-barron-and-nancy-vorm-at-phillips-gallery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/destiny-and-petits-fours-heather-barron-and-nancy-vorm-at-phillips-gallery\/","title":{"rendered":"Destiny and Petits Fours: Heather Barron and Nancy Vorm at Phillips Gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“Heart of Gold,” oil, 36 x 36 inches<\/p><\/div>\n

A feeling of almost baronial formality falls over you as you approach paintings by Heather Barron, a feeling you should straighten your clothes as you approach framed mirrors. Petits fours, <\/em>anyone?<\/h4>\n

In America, petits fours<\/em> are received as a gift in a long, very shallow box: they\u2019re a study in variations of pastels, and they\u2019re much more delicious than you think they will be. Their colors: luminous almost clear yellows and mid-greens, ice pinks, recurring creamy whites. They\u2019re a shy dessert, but intensely delicate, surprisingly pleasing \u2014 small, glazed squares of cake, decked with restrained florettes of icing. At first you are accosted by how small they are: then, you realize the intensity of effort which has gone into their making \u2014 glazed on all sides, within them many tiny layers of cake separated by bits of thin but intensely bright lemon or raspberry or other fruity jam \u2014 making you think of a many-floored, small, square house, or a chess board which has risen to five or six levels of play. Such intensity of work going into their careful making makes you respect them. How much work for one cake! How carefully made this tiny cake is, how self-contained!<\/h4>\n

Similar intensity and delicacy are in these paintings by Heather Barron; what seems like an oversweetness, when you come close, becomes, yes, still sweet, sweet in emotional tone and colors, but a labor of love and variations, like garments carefully tailored. Like petit fours<\/em>, they seem at first to be too much for presentation, display. But what dispels too much sweetness in these paintings is also a distant look in the figures\u2019 eyes: they look at you, but do not quite: these eyes have a floating effect, much like the fish or birds or hearts rising in the air beside the figures, dangling silken cords, like scantily-filled helium balloons.<\/h4>\n
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“There Are No Ordinary People,” oil, 48 x 36 inches<\/p><\/div>\n

In \u201cThere Are No Ordinary People,\u201d both figures have aqua-pastel eyebrows, and skin of flat, almost putty color, imbued and shaded also with aqua. They wear, as many of her figures do, above-the-elbow gloves, distancing them keenly from normal life. Oddly, each of these two figures is wrist-tethered, each by blue cord. To what, we do not know. Their pasts? Baronial mystery.<\/h4>\n

In many of her paintings, such as \u201cCross My Heart,\u201d \u201cHeart of Gold,\u201d \u201cShe Beats Her Drum to a Different Beat\u201d (titles also as sweet as confections), you sense her subjects \u2014 all female \u2014 are almost pottery objects: rising to each side of the women\u2019s heads in these paintings is their own twirled and twisted hair, forming on each side of head what on sugar bowls or urns or serving dishes would be artfully twisted handles of fired clay. On old china, these handles would be gilded, dishes for ceremony. Or, baronial everyday.<\/h4>\n
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“She Beats Her Drum to a Different Beat,” oil, 24 x 20 inches<\/p><\/div>\n

In the small painting \u201cHe Gave Me Wings,\u201d wings on each side of the figure, sprouting like new growth, seem also like handles, forming to each side of a divinely, lovely, flower-embellished vase, the woman. There is feminine confoundment expressed in these paintings: that our delectability seems to be our destiny, our treat, and our cage.<\/h4>\n

In \u201cFollow Your Heart\u201d and \u201cThere Are No Ordinary People,\u201d each woman\u2019s hair is doubled, managed, bound by laces or cord, as horses\u2019 tails are sometimes compactly doubled\/bound for display, for shows of English riding.<\/h4>\n
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“She Can Sing Like A Bird,” oil, 48 x 36 inches<\/p><\/div>\n

Adding to this sense of display\/history are her figures\u2019 garments: in many paintings here there is a return of crinolines, stiff bouffant underskirts, dropped waistlines suddenly bursting into crinoline-fullness below natural waists. In \u201cShe Can Sing Like a Bird,\u201d there is even a wire construct beginning at the waist, but outside of the skirt instead of under, with the caginess of a wire dress-form or Victorian domed bird\u2019s cage. From its metal sides sprout single, stylized, peacock feathers, very much like a repeat petits fours<\/em> frosting motif, simple, single, and repeated.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

In Nancy Vorm\u2019s work, we encounter almost pure geometric form in melted wax: Wrightian form, as in her \u201cUsonia,\u201d in encaustic stained-wax. Many of Vorm\u2019s encaustics, such as \u201cFalling Slowly,\u201d suggest raked sand, a technique employed in Japanese gardens to suggest the peacefulness of freshly planted fields. In \u201cAsia Minor,\u201d some of its dull denimy blue suggests slubbed or pleated silk.<\/h4>\n
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“Falling Slowly,” encaustic and mixed media, 24 x 18 inches<\/p><\/div>\n

In \u201cOquirrh 1\u201d and \u201cOquirrh 2\u201d and \u201cOquirrh 3\u201d there is reassurance: only basic, primary colors: a fawn yellow, a brownish red, a dull denim blue, the reassuring treat of the primary colors all colors are made of.<\/h4>\n

\u201cFalling Slowly\u201d and \u201cWhisper\u201d and \u201cInner Circle\u201d and \u201cPacific Fusion 3\u201d are calmatives: there could be no more reticent a blue. (Note: blue is one color which never appears in or on small square petits fours;<\/em> as rare in pastries as in flowers. Red makes star appearance, though, inside petit fours: <\/em>strawberry or raspberry jam, always between layers of much paler cake.) In many of Vorm\u2019s encaustics there\u2019s vividness of red, but hers is not the red of jams, but a muted ashen dull red, like embers \u2014 almost \u201cCherokee red,\u201d which Frank Lloyd Wright was famously fond of. \u201cAsia Minor\u201d and \u201cPassage\u201d and \u201cLas Pintadas\u201d and \u201cMutability\u201d have red reminding us of magma, fireplaces, ovens, and blood: heart and hearth, and heat.<\/h4>\n
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“Asia Minor,” encaustic and mixed media, 20 x 20 inches<\/p><\/div>\n

Is it fair for a reviewer to review women\u2019s artwork and compare it to the preparation of sweets? Barron\u2019s work displays an almost caustic wisdom, in addition to sweet; and Vorm\u2019s art, no matter how it reminds us of upended and displayed pans of pastry is also art at its most Wrightian and Mondrian-pure: the deciding of how to fill a rectangle or a square; the fatefulness of a paintbox, land plat or blueprint; destiny linked somehow to the particular shape or size of a house or a farm: fate which goes with the ownership of a property.<\/h4>\n
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“Oquirrh 2,” encaustic, 12 x 12 inches<\/p><\/div>\n

Together, all the angularities of these encaustics, paired with Barron\u2019s paintings of women so ornamented, as if in dreams, do suggest dollhouse or architectural fantasy: how to fill our houses, our homes, our paintings or encaustics (our own petits fours<\/em> boxes), and with what temperature \u2014 what assortment \u2014 what fate of arrangement, we could bring.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Heather Barron and Nancy Vorm, Phillips Gallery<\/a>, Salt Lake City, Jan. 17 – Feb. 14. Opening reception, Jan. 17, 6 – 9 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A feeling of almost baronial formality falls over you as you approach paintings by Heather Barron, a feeling you should straighten your clothes as you approach framed mirrors. Petits fours, anyone? In America, petits fours are received as a gift in a long, very shallow box: they\u2019re a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1568,"featured_media":49042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[235,102,157],"class_list":["post-49034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-heather-barron","tag-nancy-vorm","tag-phillips-gallery"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/barronvorm.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-05 12:55:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49034"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49086,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49034\/revisions\/49086"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}