{"id":518,"date":"2010-06-01T18:09:51","date_gmt":"2010-06-02T00:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15bytes12\/2010\/06\/01\/art-of-obsession\/"},"modified":"2018-12-10T13:13:40","modified_gmt":"2018-12-10T19:13:40","slug":"art-of-obsession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/art-of-obsession\/","title":{"rendered":"Art of Obsession: Julie Lucus & Jeannie Hatch at Sugarhouse Gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“Play” by Julie Lucus<\/p><\/div>\n

The Art of Obsession<\/em>, a duet for gallery by sculptor Julie Lucus and painter Jeannie Hatch, will have closed by the time this review goes to pixels, though according to director Scott Waters some of the sculptures will remain in the Sugarhouse Gallery during the next month\u2019s show of photographs by Greg Sumner.<\/p>\n

If the twentieth century\u2019s flirtation with \u201cmere crafts\u201d as fine arts is over, the word hasn\u2019t reached Julie Lucus, possibly because living in the West has allowed her not only to see assemblage and other demotic expressive forms, but freed her from the need to stick close to the mainstream in hopes of leap-frogging whoever\u2019s up front into the history books. So she re-fashions witty, satirical comments on current events from found objects, often covered with mosaics. Some, like \u201cPlay,\u201d a dog whose head is modified to do one thing\u2014catch the ball\u2014are exquisitely crafted, while others, like \u201cWMD\u2013Wallaby of Mass Destruction,\u201d may prove as ephemeral as we hope their subjects do. It\u2019s not a problem, though, any more than it matters that the responses they re-present aren\u2019t particularly deep or original. What\u2019s important is that they give direct visible and risible form to feelings that precede words and sentences.<\/p>\n

Jeannie Hatch\u2019s paintings hang well with Lucus\u2019s shaggy dog sculptures, not least because they display as many varieties of medium and style. While she occasionally renders a subject in the round, her typical mode owes more to cubism and the graphic breakthroughs of Toulouse-Lautrec\u2014with a twist. \u201cRapture,\u201d with its balance between anatomy and design, signals a role for voyeurism with its focal eye. Something far more complex goes on in \u201cHeartless Trinity,\u201d in which three circles make three heads but one face, while a second face doubles as a hole where a heart should be, and three falling drops could be tears or something more seminal. Given the ambivalent but clearly present sexuality\u2014a welcome treat after having to contemplate too many sacramental indulgences\u2014the possibility of more sophisticated stories cannot be overlooked. He wants her, but so does she.<\/p>\n