By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The artists in the virtual NowOH are offering a way to escape from the confines of the pandemic.
“A lot of the work seemed to me about reimagining the world,” said Lane Cooper, who judged on the online exhibit. She noted landscapes that were idealized and beautiful.
“Then there were some surreal kind of magical thinking kind of offerings.”
This is the 13th annual Northwest Ohio Community Art Showpresented by the art galleries at Bowling Green State University. The exhibit is open to all artists in 12 counties in Northwest Ohio.
This year the show had to move online because the coronavirus pandemic. It includes 122 works by 45 artists. That’s in line with the number of artists who have participated in previous years.
Cooper, an artist and faculty member at the Cleveland Institute of Art, said she’d heard positive reports on the show, including from a friend who had judged it several years ago.
The NowOH remains available for online viewing through Aug. 15. Viewers can vote for the People’s Choice Award through Aug. 1. Cooper said she was happy they had that chance. “People can have a conversation with themselves about what would be their criteria for choosing the award winners.”
Cooper said she liked these open shows. “You get a real snapshot of the creative life of an area, and what the creative makers are thinking.”
Many works involved “a fanciful imagining of the world.”
She added: “With a lot of us locked up in our houses, it made sense. Artists are using art as a way to explore a territory, to take adventures. I really enjoyed looking at the work. It was a lot of fun.”
She found deciding who would be awarded the prizes difficult.
Criteria may shift depending on the show, Cooper said.
“What were the pieces most embodied the overall atmosphere? And what were the pieces that really did that well?”
She said: “The work I picked was a lot about inventiveness and reimagining the world. I wanted that to be in tandem with a certain skill set.”
The best of show fit the bill.
Joanne Cook’s “An Offer You Can’t Refuse,” done with oil paint on aluminum, plays on a gruesome image from “The Godfather.” Except it is a toy unicorn head, not the bloody head of a horse, on the bed.
This is not the first time Cook has found herself in the NowOH winner’s circle. She won for best two-dimensional work back in 2017 with another movie-themed work, “American Beauty.”
“It’s funny and really well done,” Cooper said. “Her piece really seemed to be emblematic of the feeling the show. There is a lot of fantasy, but also a little bit of a dark edge, a little escapism there for people trapped in their houses.”
That darkness was evident as well in the best 2D work, “There’s a Kink in the Hose” by Amber Koprin. “It looks like a still from a horror movie. It’s really enigmatic. I didn’t really know what was going on, and I liked it because of that.”
Emma Wilson’s sculpture “Dancer,” which won for best 3D, was “an incredibly made piece of work. There is high degree of skill in the making. It was impressive.”
In it Wilson turns fingers into an unlikely dancer, at once unwieldy, and yet graceful.
“I think those pieces do a nice job summing up what I was seeing in the show,” Cooper said.
Cooper said she was “particularly impressed by work submitted by young people. That takes so much guts. You’re under 19 and you’re putting work in and your work is going to be next to people who have been during this for years .”
Meara Holden won the Youth Art prize for her sculpture “Malevolent Maple.”
“It looked like it could have been out of ‘The Wizard of Oz,'” Cooper said. “It was so fun.” Holden had the attention to detail that enabled her to project her fanciful vision. “It was really ambitious and well done.”
Cooper also praised landscape work by Abby Burrell and Janealla Killebrew. She said it was “beautifully skilled” work. “Just looking at it takes you out of your current reality.”
Both received honorable mention. Burrell was honored for her screen print “North Star Mountain,” with the mountain rising into an expanse of blue sky. Killebrew was honored for her watercolor “On the Rocks” of waves crashing on shore.
“It touched my heart, all the work, the whole show, because you can see the artists’ uninhibited giving of themselves,” Cooper said. “It’s really nice to spend time with that kind of work. “
