There is much to look at in the four shows currently at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art, including photography, glasswork, sculpture and painting. The five contiguous gallery spaces hold an array of divergent methods and materials.
In her show, "Barely Breathing," Michele Suchland is inspired by her concern for the apathy of our society. "Have we lost our human connection?" she wonders, while examining the indifference and self-absorption she sees in the world around her.
In 11 panels of acrylic on wood, the artist depicts evidence of our lost human connections through our constant involvement in "mindless diversions." Five of the panels represent film and television test patterns.
Visual references are combined with literary narrative in the form of numbers and news clippings, such as "Woman Dies Ignored," or "Ten Passengers Watch and Do Nothing." Toxic addictions and self-medications are a recurring theme. In her painting "Nearing Catatonia," she painted a person on a sofa with what resembles an intravenous feeding tube leading from a screen to her arm.
She employs a manner of scatter -- painting and mutes the palette with grays and sepia shades in keeping with the subject matter. Many of the images are small or muted and lose some of their impact when melded into the composition.
The center gallery space holds Holly McQuinn's "Memory Garden" of glass pieces. The work is based upon her childhood memory of a chance encounter with a family of rabbits in her grandfather's garden.
McQuinn uses sand-cast glass, kiln cast and hand-blown techniques. Glasswork is technically demanding and not many Alaska artists specialize in it despite our proximity to Seattle, a center for creative glass.
Sand-casting, particularly, is difficult to develop and often results in work that is too bulky or unrefined. McQuinn's work is refreshingly void of much of the sand residue. "Gramma Elizabeth" and "Rabbit Hidden Under the Cabbage" utilize the transparent properties of glass, and combined with painted wood form intriguing combinations.
"Stone's Throw" is less romantic, but exemplifies a more minimal use of color and glass. The textured yellow/brown glass diffuses light, and the edges turn black when viewed head-on.
Photographer Shannon Huber presents her show called "Decay: A Textural Appreciation of Maturity." The work was funded by a 2008 UAA undergraduate research grant. She describes her work as a quest for a "recipe" of what kind of treatment to put on what substrata.
The theme of decay and the resultant imagery sets the photography apart from the ordinary use of floral motif. Likewise the artist's extraordinary use of printing materials and methods should be of interest to others working in digital inkjet printing. "Daffodils," for example, is described as "inkjet gel transfer on hand-dyed ceramic coated paper with organic resists."
The photographs are exhibited in contrasting ways. Some are boxed, some are mounted on aluminum and others hung from the ceiling. Unfortunately others are seriously over-framed.
UAA sculpture professor Hugh McPeck's students' work inhabits the back gallery spaces. Minimalist sculpture, formalist arrangements and figurative subjects are formed with wood, hydrostone, bronze, wax, polymer clay, whalebone, steel, aluminum and found objects. The variety of materials and methods used with a sense of contemporary design is impressive.
Kehli Hohmann's "Artifactual Exhibitionist" makes use of cast metal and bone. The elements are strung and tied to a single rope, culminating in a loop on the floor. It's cool.
Likewise Craig Updegrove's use of rebar takes on the essence of rope but holds sawn wood chips surrounded by cement. The steel bar cleverly holds the work to the ceiling and to the floor. It has an appealing sculptural quality.
Philip Obermarck's "Steller Sea Ape" is displayed in a large specimen jar along with seemingly aged news clippings relevant to its origin. The enigmatic nature of the work invites questions for which the answers are only more ambiguous. It's a sophisticated demonstration of the difficulty in separating fact from fiction.
Two pieces of erotica are nicely crafted and provocative. But for public consumption, they're a bit too much.
The exhibits continue through the end of the month.
Don Decker is an Anchorage artist, teacher and writer.
By DON DECKER
Daily News correspondent