This is Sandy Brown Jensen, and you’re listening to Viz City, KLCC’s arts review program. I found myself in the main gallery of Maude Kerns Art Center’s current show “Art for All Seasons” with a lot on my mind and heart. I find sometimes when I am feeling or thinking deeply that an art show within an art show will come out of hiding and speak to me and my concerns personally. It’s like my own secret gallery.
I spent the two days before Thanksgiving waiting for hours in the Emergency Room at Sacred Heart waiting on a loved one. I talked to so many concerned and worried caregivers, so when I saw Jon King’s blue and gold abstract oil called “For Kazumi,” it seemed to me like a hospital room bathed in morning light on medical equipment.
I was led next to Jo Christiansen Archer’s oil called “Reticent,” and I flashed on the man I had seen in a wheelchair hunched over reading in the same posture in the hospital hallway, striving for normalcy.
Then I saw Nillie Ellison’s pencil drawing called “Human” of half a child’s head peering through a constraining wire fence, that one eye so full of trepidation that I just wanted to say, “Everything is going to be okay,” although I know sometimes that isn’t the truth.
But this is what art does for us. It helps us think about what’s on our minds with new images. These artists gave me a more nuanced view of the compassion that filled me up after my hours in the ER.
Zoe Cohen’s magnificent “Holding Up the Sun” is a bold gold disc rising out of darkness that makes me think about how many caregivers hold up the sun for those in their care.
And then Lisa Jean’s “Solace Series” just lifted me into another realm with its sunlit sea below a vast expanse of heavenly mist and clouds.
“Art for All Seasons” is a huge, multi-faceted exhibit just in time for the holidays. Whatever is on your mind, take it to the art show and discover your own secret gallery.
This is Sandy Brown Jensen for KLCC.