VSA Arts of Indiana Group Show - The Bungalow - June 21, 2001 - 3 stars

Freedom and joy in the self-expression experience is evident in the furious finger marks in the clay art made by VSA program participants. My immediate reaction: VSA participants must be very at ease with their teachers because of the abandon and uninhibited independence demonstrated in their art. They feel it and create it. The Bungalow's eclectic, sleek and whimsical store environment befits the spirited show. The clustered clay masks, bowls and small people figures are, however, arranged too tightly together. An arm-locked, sitting, headless, clay people trio made with happy abandon gets lost alongside the throngs of other imaginative small figures. Of particular beauty was a hazy purple landscape executed on a small swatch (10-inches-by-10-inches) of untreated canvas; a blue structure sits on an impulsively-imagined orange-touched green foreground, flat against a lavender sky. This artist understands color. Another piece we'll call "bust of a white kitty" was very impressive as were the clay life-size, and proportionately correct masks. Nurturing self-expression with technique is freely balanced in this show. www.vsai.org. Through June 27, 2001; (317) 253-5028. - Mary Lee Pappas