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Laney Contemporary has established itself as Savannah’s premiere high art gallery, and practically every exhibition is worth a visit to the off-the-beaten-path brutalist building at 1810 Mills B Lane Blvd. that houses the gallery’s exhibition spaces. The gallery’s two current exhibits, Branch Nettles Powers’ “Percolate” and Ansley West Rivers “Holding Time,” are no exception.
Branch Nettles Powers, “Percolate”
As of late, I find myself frequently pleading with art lovers to go see work in person, rather than letting images on the internet decide one’s feelings about an artist’s creations. With “Percolate,” Blanche Nettles Powers’ stunning new exhibition, I’m banging that drum again. In digital form, Nettles Powers commitment to color fields is clear, and her artist statement at least tells us that the work is physically multi-layered. But until you stand in front of the paintings, you really don’t understand the essence of what she’s created.
For the show, the Savannah-based artist is showcasing monochromatic compositions with subtle gradient shifts on predominantly medium-sized canvases, arrayed around the gallery’s downstairs viewing spaces. They’re peaceful and meditative, an emotional response that she noted manifests when humans interact with fractals, a major influence on this collection.
Closer inspection, however, reveals a visual treasure trove for those willing to investigate. As I moved from painting to painting, standing close enough for each to fully encompass my visual fields, an optical illusion of sorts made them appear almost as reliefs instead of flat, two dimensional works. For me they became akin to tree bark, or, in the cases where the shifts in the intensity of the texture-like application of paint was more dynamic, landscapes expanding into the distance. At times I also felt like I was looking at EKG machine readings, an interesting direction for my mind to wander given the artist’s commitment to the connections between patterns in nature, mathematics, and science.
Another reason to see the paintings in person are the sides of the canvases. Part of Nettles Powers’ painterly technique involves her pouring viscous layers of oils to flow across the surface of each piece. “Paint is guided, not controlled,” she explained in the aforementioned statement. Since she’s only concerned with the front-facing portion of the visual plane, however, the edges of the works are a snapshots of what she’s done to get to the final product, with drips and blobs aplenty. As an art nerd, I was delighted by the insight I received by being able to see evidence of her process, especially given how refined the pieces appear in the digital promotional images.
“Percolate” has me intrigued as to where the artist is going with this body of work. Amongst the paintings discussed above is one outlier, “Tillandsia Tapestry,” a piece where she has woven Spanish moss into a copper grill. The composition is impermanent, in that it must be watered and maintained or the moss will die, a contrast to the rest of the works in the show. Does Nettles Powers follow that path to see where it leads, or stay truer to what has defined her practice over the past decade? Wherever she decides to go, I’ll be at the gallery, not on my computer, to find out.
Ansley West Rivers’ “Holding Time”
The upstairs galleries at Laney showcase Ansley West Rivers’ “Holding Time,” the photographer’s first solo show in Savannah in five years. Most of the collection was curated by Telfair Museums’ Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Erin Dunn, who put together a version of the exhibition for the Margie E. West Gallery at the University of Georgia last year.
For both fans of West Rivers’ work and those just getting to know the artist’s visual style, the show is certainly a crowd-pleaser. The hallway leading to the main gallery is filled with small, moody black and white images, landscapes with features that both recede into the background, and appear to emerge from dense fogs or morning mists. As visitors enter into the large upstairs gallery space beyond, the artist’s color work takes center stage, with numerous large-scale photographs, many from her long-term “Rivers” series. Simply put, they’re beautiful, with their rich hues and carefully considered points of perspective. Moreover, given the perilous state of our natural environment, a subject that the artist has built into the foundations of her work for over a decade, they feel timely. Looking at them it feels impossible not to ask the question, “Should we be doing more to protect these places?”
In this humble reviewer’s opinion, however, it is the grouping of pieces in Laney’s fabled mirrored room at the back of the gallery, collectively titled “The Water That Surrounds Us,” that steal the show. Created exclusively for this exhibition, the visually connected, mostly vertical floor to ceiling mixed media pieces are like an open door into West Rivers’ creative process.
In the most basic terms, they’re maps detailing some of the places where West Rivers has gone to shoot the photographs for which she has become known. Although the artist has done maps before, these go a step further. Combining hand-colored cyanotypes, bright blue riverscapes, island forms, depictions of things you might find in such locations, and charmingly simple hand-written pencil notations, it felt to me like I was standing within a montage of the artist’s mental process as she follows her muse.
“She wanted [the work] to reflect in the ceiling so that you felt like you were surrounded by this feeling, concept, [and] area,” said the gallery’s namesake and Director Susan Laney, confirming my instincts about the installation. “It’s really got a lot of depth.”
One could spend hours in front of “The Water That Surrounds Us” and still not uncover all its secrets, a testament to the artist’s commitment to her creative philosophy. I want to go back to learn more, in spite of having engaged with the work for a good thirty minutes already. I encourage others to do the same, and quickly: Both “Holding Time” and “Percolate” end August 17th.
Laney Contemporary at 1810 Mills B Lane Blvd. in Savannah is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Friday, and 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Saturday. More information can be found at laneycontemporary.com/.
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