Above: Ian MacLean Davis’ Spaghetti Western
A group of black-and-white drawings recently jolted me into thinking about just how much of an impact computers have made on prints and drawings. This realization struck me while I stood in front of Ian MacLean Davis’ Spaghetti Western, transfixed by the drawing’s abstract pattern. Its lines somehow convey fragments of the movie still from which it was derived.
Ian’s piece is a part of a competitive national drawing and print exhibition, juried by Baltimore-based artist Soledad Salamé. On view at Gormley Gallery through April 30, the exhibition features fascinating work by a selection of 20 artists, many from Baltimore including some of our best known drafts(wo)men and print-makers—Oletha DeVane, Joyce Scott, Linda Bills, Christy Bergland, and Linda DePalma—as well as an unexpected, encaustic, and encrusted etching by Gloria Askin, better known as a jewelry maker.
During my visit to Gormley Gallery, as I stared at Spaghetti Western’s seemingly black-and-white surface, I could just make out a figure in a cowboy hat and maybe a horse and a tree. Ian, a MICA MFA grad living in Baltimore, was there and explained the origin of his contribution. His drawing was first exhibited earlier this year at Call + Response: Images Answer Language at the Hamiltonian Gallery in Washington, D.C. It required each visual artist to react to a writer’s work; the writer provided the call, the artist provided the response.
Ian responded to Christian Howard’s short story, also titled Spaghetti Western. I urge you to read it in full. In this account, a first-person narrator sits at the hospital bedside of his child, who was rescued having attempted suicide. The distraught and distracted parent watches a western, with all its violence and conflict, and ponders death and its physical expression—how it looks and feels and smells. He ponders how the drama in his own life is supposed to end.
There are two figures in the drawing—a child and an adult in conversation—but the connection made between it and the short story are purely thematic. The appropriated image is simply selected from the myriad of visual images available in westerns.
The drawing appeared black-and-white at a distance, but as I got closer, I could discern the rich colors and complex variations of white. This work embodies what the artist described as his creative philosophy in Call + Response: “I aspire to present complex and textured object-images … derived from appropriated images, processed by digital graphics and reinterpreted by an authorial hand.” While inspired by a digital image, it is the authorial hand of the artist that makes this drawing so powerful.
After taking in Spaghetti Western, I headed to the Creative Alliance for the closing of Gary Kachadourian’s minstallation. This trip gave me an opportunity to view the items up for bid at Creative Alliance’s silent auction and gala on Saturday, April 24. There are some great works available there! Don’t miss the chance to support one of our worthiest artists’ organizations.
Doreen Bolger is always on the move because she can’t stop seeing, supporting, and writing about the arts in and around Baltimore City. Her lengthy love affair for the arts began in Long Island when her father, an executive in the textile industry, brought home breathtaking fabrics every night from the heart of the garment district. 