Posts & Smoke Drawings
Patrick Marold: Posts & Dennis Lee Mitchell: Smoke Drawings
Also: Bill Amundson: Select Drawings & Yoshitomo Saito: Small Bronze Works
William Havu Gallery
1040 Cherokee Street, Denver, CO 80204
January 15-February 27, 2021
Admission: Free
Review by Mary Voelz Chandler
If you walk into the William Havu Gallery, and turn left, it is as if you were entering a magical forest.
Patrick Marold’s Posts are created from wood or metal; they are neither overwhelming nor ethereal. They are perfectly right in the middle, so a viewer can relate to them, while admiring the beauty that Marold has contributed with unexpected flourishes.
Shiny steel, charred wood (which smells intoxicating), iron oxide pigment, and a sprinkling of charcoal powder or glass oxide or the insertion of sterling leaf—these sculptures pull a viewer more closely to the basic materials for Marold: wood and metal, metal and wood. And, as the basis: the environment around us.
Patrick Marold , collection of Posts, from left to right: Rope Orb, stainless steel and hemp rope, 110 x 38 x 38 inches; Pale Column, Sitka spruce, chalk, wax, and charcoal powder, 62 x 5 x 5 inches; Cone, black walnut and sterling leaf, 65 x 12 x 12 inches; Oak Tripod, charred and burnished oak, steel, 96 x 48 x 36 inches; Red Post, Douglas fir, iron oxide pigment, and charred top, 65 x 12 x 6 inches; Wedged Post, black walnut and sterling leaf, 70 x 12 x 6 inches; and Steel Post, mild steel and glass oxide, 46 x 8 x 6 inches. Image by Wes Magyar, courtesy of William Havu Gallery.
Marold has been working in Denver and around the United States and other countries for decades. He balances his gallery-sized sculptural works with commissions for large-scale public art installations.
He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a concentration on industrial design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1997. Soon after that, he served as an apprentice in Scotland with Andy Goldsworthy, the British artist noted for his sculptures in natural settings.
Marold also won a Fulbright Fellowship that allowed him to pursue sculptural and photographic investigations in Iceland. In his travels—and at home in Colorado—he has focused on the land and the sky, while understanding that salvaging materials (like beetle-kill wood found throughout the state) is a smart approach to retrieve what has been left behind.
For example, when Marold’s works were on view at the Goodwin Fine Art gallery in 2018, wood and metal and more stood out as a trinity of beauty. He also had exhibitions more than a decade ago in Artyard and the renamed Center for Visual Art.
Patrick Marold, Rope Orb, stainless steel and hemp rope, 110 x 38 x 38 inches. Image by Wes Magyar, courtesy of William Havu Gallery.
And now, at the Havu Gallery, Marold’s view of minimalism is again on center stage, with Posts that quietly instruct viewers about the importance of the materials so easy to understand. Unexpected applications of pigment or charred edges or other eye-catching attributes contribute a dash of adornment, while not overwhelming the basic materials.
Marold’s commissions for monumental works are impressive. If you have taken a trip on the A Train to DIA, it can be thrilling to pass through the Shadow Array, which comes into view for quite a while as the train pulls into the airport’s transit center and hotel. Some 250 beetle-kill wood logs are slanted out on both sides of the track that create variables with light and shadow. At night, there is a special lighting system to keep the lights and shadows intact. In all, Shadow Array covers about seven acres.
He also created The Windmill Project, which was installed in a mountain valley with light-generating turbines to capture and visualize the wind that whips through this unusual landscape. It has been a moveable feast, and at this point The Windmill Project now sits at the base of Austin Bluffs in Colorado Springs (until the end of this year). Of course, there are more large-scale projects created by Marold, in Colorado and elsewhere.
As a side note: Marold’s installation claims the round center gallery of Wood. Works, the exhibit now on view at the Arvada Center. The title of Forest Floor—Trees and Branches describes a ring of about two dozen beetle-kill logs stretching up to the windows on the Center’s second-floor gallery. A few branches are placed carefully among the trees. It’s as if a visitor is suddenly transported to a forest, once living and now dead.
A close-up view of Patrick Marold, Concentric Post, Sitka spruce and charred edges, 48 x 2.5 x 2.5 inches. Image by DARIA.
The Posts stand out for their attractiveness. And as with all of Marold’s work, the conclusion really speaks to artist and environment, and what each can say to the other.
A selection of Dennis Lee Mitchell’s Smoke Drawings, from left to right: Untitled 14, smoke on paper, 51 x 49 inches; Untitled 38.4, smoke on paper, 37 x 37 inches; and Untitled 45.2, smoke on paper, 37 x 37 inches. Image by DARIA.
Dennis Lee Mitchell began his art pursuit in education and later while focusing on ceramics. But then he had an idea to make “Smoke Drawings,” in which smoke colors the paper he uses to create abstracted floral images. Their beauty is “painted” in a very different medium, which makes the works so unusual.
As noted in a bio of Miller: “He applies acetylene torches directly to the surface of archival paper, creating rich brown-blacks and faint gradations left by moving smoke. The finished works require multiple preparatory drawings, as Mitchell attempts to chart the course of airborne solid and liquid particles.”
Dennis Lee Mitchell, Untitled 14, smoke on paper, 51 x 49 inches. Image by Wes Magyar, courtesy of William Havu Gallery.
A close-up detail of Dennis Lee Mitchell, Untitled 14, smoke on paper, 51 x 49 inches. Image by DARIA.
One would understand that Mitchell would require preparatory drawings while working with such a dangerous object—not quite as comfortable as a brush full of paint. When viewing the works on display in the gallery, they are intriguing, unexpected, and alluring.
The third artist with work in the gallery that focuses on nature is translated into bronze: curved twigs, pine cones, peppers, and other natural forms. Yoshitomo Saito is a master of bronze. He can create tiny pieces and large-scale objects, and on view at the gallery there is a range of small to mid-sized works.
Born in Japan, Saito studied glass-making in Tokyo, then moved to the United States, first in California, then North Carolina, and finally in Colorado. He began to work in bronze in California, and has used that material in numerous ways as he refines his work and his focus on objects found in nature. The gallery toward the back on the first floor features numerous pieces, including one of his sweeping multiple-object piece that sweeps across two walls. Titled 135 Milkweed Pods, the work can be used in different configurations.
Bill Amundson, In the Valley of the Job Creators, graphite and color pencil on paper, 48 x 37 inches. Image by Wes Magyar, courtesy of William Havu Gallery.
Bill Amundson, Speech Balloon Franchise, graphite and color pencil on paper, 9 x 6 inches. Image by Wes Magyar, courtesy of William Havu Gallery.
Finally, the fourth artist’s work is installed on the gallery’s mezzanine, and the pieces are what we might find along an interstate or a commercial strip. Big-box stores, roadside attractions, fast-food restaurants, gas stations—all offer a bit of satire or humor or the depths of the commerce beckoning to us, while bungling nature.
Bill Amundson has been a revered artist in Denver for more than 30 years, although he moved back to Wisconsin a decade ago. Amundson is not just a stalwart of defining and refining the American detritus around us. He creates remarkably realistic prints using colored pencils that give a soft aura even while making fun of celebrities and bits of art history and politics.
Some of the prints on view on the mezzanine are relatively new, tied to the Trump Administration with delicious off-kilter humor. And since the former president it still going to be in the spotlight in the Senate (and maybe too always), Amundson’s works may reverberate for years to come.
Mary Voelz Chandler writes about visual arts, architecture, and preservation. She held the position of art and architecture writer for many years at the former Rocky Mountain News in Denver. She has completed two editions of the Guide to Denver Architecture and was a co-author of the 2009 book Colorado Abstract with Westword critic, author, and historian Michael Paglia. Along with numerous awards for her writing, Chandler was honored by the Denver Art Museum in 2012 with the Contemporary Alliance “Key” Award, and received the AIA Colorado 2005 award for Contribution to the Built Environment by a Non-Architect.
