COMFORT ZONE: Right or Wrong?

Bill Stewart and Kathy Calderwood opened the fall season with an exhibition of their work in the spankin’ new art gallery at Nazareth College. Kudos to Nazareth College for having the good grace to include such a class space in the re-do of their art center and to the Sands’ family (Wine anyone?) for underwriting this brilliant facility. I am, however, unclear about how the gallery will operate. Is it to be used strictly for Nazareth College faculty and students? What a shame that would be! And who is serving as its director? Experience tells us that unless a qualified dictator is hired, the gallery space will fall into an art cow pie. So let us be positive and assume that the future quality of the exhibitions will be top rate with art that inspires, challenges and informs us all – faculty, students or voyeurs.

But is that what we truly want? Or do we really crave “comfort art”? Otherwise, how else can you explain Thomas Kincaid (the “painter of light”) with his cheesy cabins sitting in moonlit snow/English spring garden/fall foliage/beside a stream, animals peeking through windows, the top money-producing artist in America today? (Yes! It’s true!) Or the quilt show at Memorial Art Gallery being the largest attendance draw they had all year?

I was asked today to give my opinion about an up-coming tour of art galleries in our region with the caveat that “some members really don’t like that far out stuff.” So is the steering committee right to avoid subjecting viewers to the art fringe? But how and when does the fringe become mainstream? Has our definition of "fringe" changed in the last 5 years? 10 years? How did that happen?

Is it true that the greater our exposure to art of all ilk, the more refined and informed our art tastes? Then are museum guards the MOST sophisticated art audience in the world? Must I keep staring at the “white on white” painting until I understand it or can I simply walk away and admit that it’s all bunk?

Mihaly Cskszentmihalyi, the “happiness professor” at the University of Chicago reports that the longer we experience happiness (read his books on “Flow” for full description of that loaded term), the higher we evolve as individuals. Looking at art makes me happy and I've seen a bunch. Playing golf makes my friend Fred happy. He thinks my art taste is weird. Who's to say which of us is a more highly evolved individual? Can we respect the differences among us without being judgmental? Or does staying in a comfort zone too long give you brain sores?

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A word or two about the Nazareth show: Bill Stewart is a friend of mine, someone I’ve known well for nearly twenty years. A few years ago, I feared – and wrote publicly – that he had entered a “comfort zone” of his own. This body of work dispels those fears. They scream “Catholic saints” – size, presentation, even the spare use of red and gestures of hands look like Stations of the Cross. It’s difficult to infuse artwork with humor, subtlety and intellectual content. Stewart manages all those things with this group of all-American saints.

The very best painting in this show is Kathy Calderwood’s little girl in “Green Shoes,” a painting of her 3 year old granddaughter. There isn’t a grandparent alive who could resist this picture and there isn’t an art critic anywhere who wouldn’t be happy pointing to this painting as an example of the essence of excellent contemporary portraiture.