Casey Roberts - Indianapolis Star, April 23, 2010, Pg. 34

 Casey Roberts, Prints, Indianapolis, Indiana Artist, painter, Indianapolis Art Center, Freaky ForestBy Mary Lee Pappas/Star Correspondent

April 23, 2010

Casey Roberts is more than an artist. He's also concerned about the environment in his own way, which shows through in "Freaky Forest," his latest exhibit at the Indianapolis Art Center.

Roberts, 38, uses unique cyanotype paintings to offer a critical look at environmental issues, but with a bit of levity.

Warm blue and beige tones -- created through a Civil War-era technique called cyanotype, which includes the use of baking soda and mild bleach solutions -- lend an overall visual coziness and a dreamy, comfortable quality in which beauty overshadows any bigger message.

"It's real simple. I'm not a super conceptual artist," said Roberts. "I want people to relate to it."

Trees are his major artistic protagonists in the 20 new works on view. However, he's introduced some new woodsy characters, too.

"Tons of trees. Armies of moths. Lots and lots of moths. They are almost like protectors, or scouts," Roberts said, explaining their role in his illustrative scenes, in which plant and animal forms are blocky and flat but resonate as delicate.

"There are trees with magic, obviously," he says with a light laugh. "It's the only way trees can communicate -- through magic."

And you actually start to believe him as you become immersed in his imagined landscape's full pine trees.

"It's all fantasy," Roberts said about his work. But there's an antagonistic undercurrent, a dark side at play here, too. "It's not all bubble gum."

His color scheme and topics easily lend themselves to being spooky and eerie, quiet like a fairy tale. "Freaky," he said, with a sense of humor.

For example, "Home Town" features a hole-riddled tree whose trunk is graffiti-emblazoned. "It's kind of a conversation between nature and man and how we clash and relate to each other," said Roberts, who for the first time has introduced sculptures into his repertoire of characters.

His "Freaky Forest" includes the outrageous addition of white ceramic, ambiguous animal heads with blue eyes. The busts, which have accompanying portraits, range in size from 15 to 24 inches and are among the exhibit's many surprises.

"I am so happy with them. They crack me up," said Roberts, who maintains a studio in the Murphy Building in Fountain Square. "These are the things I am most excited about in the show.

"With every show, I make a few steps forward. I feel like I'm progressing. (But) I'm still kind of chicken," he said. "One of these days I'm really going to break out and freak some people out."

Freaky Forest: Works by Casey Roberts

» When: Today through June 6. Center hours are 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday; 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday; noon to 6 p.m. Sunday. » Where: Indianapolis Art Center (Churchman-Fehsenfeld Gallery), 820 E. 67th St. » Cost: Free. » Info: (317) 255-2464, www.indplsartcenter.org.

In abstract manner, Carla Knopp gets attention

 By Mary Lee Pappas / Star correspondent

Posted: April 9, 2010

"Some of it looks otherworldly, so you could almost get a sci-fi take on it," says Indianapolis artist Carla Knopp. The two pieces behind her are part of her show that begins today at the Harrison Center for the Arts. - FRANK ESPICH / The Star

Knopp worked on the Art in Motion project in 2003, in which painted race cars were displayed throughout the city. This one was called "Botany in Motion." - Kelly Wilkinson / The Star

Artist Carla Knopp has managed to stay under the radar, but her life could soon become less low-key when she unveils new oil paintings in "Spawn," an exhibit opening today at the Harrison Center for the Arts.

"There was a part of me that needed to lay low," said Knopp, a 1984 graduate of the Herron School of Art and Design. "I was living life."

Still, she and her notable classmates -- Steve Paddack, Brian Fick, Rob Day and the late Ed Sanders -- have been significant players in the local visual-arts culture for more than 25 years, earning their places in Indianapolis art history.

In 2009, Knopp exhibited in New York and was featured in New American Paintings, a juried magazine. Later this spring, she has a show at the Russell/Projects gallery in Virginia. Not too shabby for being inconspicuous.

Knopp's narrative works, which are executed on pod-shaped, non-symmetrical wood panels -- some as large as 5 feet in diameter -- exude an organic, feminine feel.

"Some of it looks otherworldly, so you could almost get a sci-fi take on it," she said of the soft abstractions resembling little microcosmic worlds or deconstructed florals. "There's kind of a spawning in the creative process, so it's a very general term that just happens to work well with the imagery."

That process is what's significant about this new body of work.

Taking an intentional naive approach, Knopp has allowed herself to paint without inhibition. The results are a testament to her marked skills as a painter. It's also a drastic difference from her day job as a decorative painter and muralist.

"I just let myself paint circles, as many as I wanted," she said. "I just went ahead and let it happen." She said she follows her instincts, has fun and pushes herself with the work.

Employing a standard theory of mixing red, blue and yellow to get a full spectrum, Knopp chooses and responds to color psychologically. Each painting winds up having its own color scheme, ranging from hot pink to grays or beiges.

"I am so into color, it's crazy. I become extremely engaged in the palette," she said. "I feel like I have a real structured palette, even though it's not a conventional one. It's not even a conscious thing."

Knopp doesn't have any expectations for viewers with this new body of work.

"I used to worry a lot about the purpose of what I was doing. At some point I just came to believe that it's important for me to be extremely engaged in what I'm doing," she said. "I just started believing that that's what matters, and I still do."

It still startles her when people respond positively to her work. "(But) it's also wonderful. It's really cool. That's not to say I'm not concerned about how things will read or how they work within the art world."

'Spawn'

» When: 6 to 9 p.m. today (artist reception). The show runs through May 1. » Where: Harrison Center for the Arts, 1505 N. Delaware St. » Cost: Free admission. » Info: For more information about the exhibition, call (317) 396-3886 or visit www .harrisoncenter.org. For more information on Knopp, visit www .CarlaKnopp.com.

Carla Knopp, painter, Harrison Center for the Arts, Frank Espich, Hereon school of Art, Ed Sanders, Russell/Projects Gallery, Stye Paddack, Brian Fick, Rob Day, New American Paintings magazine, 

Artistic process is the story behind exhibit of 12 paintings

 

Artistic process is the story behind exhibit of 12 paintings 

By Mary Lee Pappas / Star correspondent

Posted: December 25, 2009

"Small Paintings," William BurtonLawson's exhibition at the Indianapolis Art Center, reveals all of the artist's artistic quirks.

The 12 little oil paintings in this show are all different. They aren't part of a body of work, but rather glimpses of Lawson's influences, his direction and what makes him tick as a painter.

His process, not subjects, lends the cohesion to the pieces that vary from plein-air vantages of the Oregon coast to a straight-on view of the Fountain Diner.

An Indianapolis native and professional painter for more than a decade, Lawson lists Hoosier Group artists T.C. Steele and William Forsyth, as well as regionalist artists of the Depression era William Kaeser and Cecil Head, as inspirations. But he doesn't imitate.

"There aren't too many artists my age who look up to these guys, but I have always felt a strong connection with their paintings. I chose to go against the grain and honor tradition," said Lawson, 35, who describes his work as "representational with both contemporary and traditional values."

Add his Precisionist tendencies, and the result is comfortable abstractions of what would otherwise be mundane.

Urban landscape scenes of buildings, homes and alleyways have distinguished Lawson from other local artists, particularly those in his generation. Half of the show features these works, which best represent his sensibilities and abilities.

Compositions of nondescript Downtown locales are tightly cropped like segmented studies where rooftops become flat color fields of unnatural hues and get bent in skewed angles.

In a painting titled "Rooftops," his mental method, the way he intellectualizes and dissects space, is fully realized. The works are simple and unemotional, and the everyday subjects seem irrelevant to the task at hand: painting. His gestures are smooth, steady and even; nothing feels forced.

"Carnival" is another such painting -- a garage is central to the fragmented scene, with a bit of a Ferris wheel tucked into the background and a car in the foreground.

"These paintings have a more contemporary feel," he said. "People can identify with the work, and I like to think that it creates a balance between individual expectations and conceptual thinking."

The visually easy balance he strikes with form and his stark palettes, which vary painting to painting, is effortless. It's upon closer inspection that you realize significant architectural details are missing, or that a gutter is disproportioned to create a comfortable, believable illusion. His visual twists are subtle and smart.

Two paintings of lone vintage typewriters also have found their way into this survey of Lawson's work.

"I have an ongoing series of typewriters that are getting pretty good response," Lawson said of this continuum. "I think it's important that people find something in your art that's fun and with which they can easily identify."

William Lawson, painter, Indianapolis Art Center, T.C. Steele, William Forsyth, William Kaeser, Cecil Her, Urban Landscapes, William Burton Lawson, artist, Indiana

April Show - April 27, 2001

 This is the program from The April Show, April 27, 2001

David Hittle, Harry Bloome, Zara Stephens, Thomas Curtis, Jeanette Tibbs, William McKenna, Berry Connell, Jerome Neal, The April Show, Painter, artist, Indianapolis, Naive, outsider

Bizarre and all true: Greg Brown

Greg Brown of Utrillo's Art is an intellectual social historian wild man. Two-D specimens of mundane popular “art" pieces of the 20th century - every man’s art – fill the crotchety confines of his rather unarchivally sound gallery space. Fashionable wall art of the middle classes, and then some, is staggered about. Kitsch. Campy. Bizarre and all true. Once upon a 1963 suburb, someone’s Aunt Lula displayed a self-generated paint-by-numbers of kittens on black velvet. These cheaply framed relics are again appreciated, salvaged from salvage stores, shedding a new dim and dusty light on how our culture has perceived art and the length (Mother, may I take one giant step to the craft aisle at Walmart?) we’ve gone to do it ourselves in our instant coffee worlds. Greg knows this. He is a cultural historian. A thinker.

Brown is also an apt painter, a good one at that, putting his pop collections to shame. A series of monumental wood panels (15 major groupings, containing a total of 126 panels) inspired by “The Secret Kingdom,“ a pamphlet written by Brown, the thinker, will open Friday, September 1 with a reception beginning at 7 p.m. The body of work is called The Kingdom of Heaven is like the Psychological Realm. Pieces have a religious orientation. They resemble stained glass windows with deep cobalt hues and geometric patterns. Arches of light look like doorways to heaven and or entries into a lion filled arena. The exhibit will run through September 4 in the Legion Hall directly across from Utrillo's Art, 3318 E. 10th St. Call (317) 684-3883 for info. Hours are 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

*Artist, Utrillo's Art, Greg Brown, Visual artist, Indiana, The Secret Kingdom, Painter, Indianapolis gallery