Even In The Quietest Moments...subSURFACE: Stacey Rosende @ HCC Dale Mabry

HCC 221 Gallery, Dale Mabry Campus. Work by Stacey Rosende.

 Unable to attend the vernissage for this show, I went a few days later. Often, due to several reasons, I have to see shows before or after hours. Most gallerists (with a few notable exceptions) are 100% accommodating. Being alone in a gallery is an undiluted experience. Yes, art has its sociological aspects, and I love making the rounds of openings, meeting the artists, gallerists and the arts cognoscenti and habitues, some of whom I only see at these events, but being alone with the art has its seductive charms. The curation stands out when not blocked by a staccato of figures. The secondary interactions and dialogues between the works is easier to discern. The quiet and solitude, broken only by the echoes of my footsteps and aging joints, seems to allot the visual more brain power. It reminds me of the bygone days of my youth, when I was an altar boy, being alone in the chapel, among the painted icons and gold leaf.

The HCC Galleries currently in ascendance in the Bay area, are college galleries, but not outlets for undergraduate work (as in USF). They are a rich, educational visual resource for students and the community, bringing out emerging and established artists in top quality shows.

The work in this show are the result of a residency in Venice during the Summer of 2013 and how Rosende was affected by the textures, patterns, colors and rhythms of the city. The patterns were in weathered stone, architectural decoration. textures of plaster, and transparency of water. These are mixed media works, using printmaking, painting and stenciling.

Stacy Rosende, "Teeth".

 In the 2D works, like in "Teeth", shown above, there is a sense of rhythm between the colors, and the textures that overlay them (Visible in the picture above, looking a little like weathering or scuff marks). There is a sense of jazzy riffing off the colors, textures and history of the city (and perhaps its stairways?).

Stacey Rosende, "Venetian"

In the work above, one can see patterns. There is a small book of iphotographs made by Rosende that is in the Notebooks available to viewers at the gallery titled "Informing the work". These were like preliminary sketches for the works in the show. The artist, as a photographer, is exploring the play of light, texture, pattern, color and history. I could not help but refer to the spectrograph, the output of a scientific instrument used to identify things like the elements present in a sample, or the composition of stars. The results look like this:

 
     Spectrograph

These paintings remind me of an aesthetic, organic analysis or reading of Venice, the most salient parts, yielding their secrets.

Work by Stacy Rosende

The small, somewhat "hairy" sculptures are bisected. They look similar to geodes, which are often also dislayed bisected so that the crystals formed inside can be seen. Here the contrast is between the rocky, hairy exterior and the colorful, emotional (cool or hot) interior, a subsurface view.

Congratulations to Stacey Rosende, HCC Dale Mabry Director Katherine Gibson and the Student Government Association for a very good show.

--- Luis