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Lyle Salmi as Mentor
5 May – 22 July, 2006 Brandt
Exhibition demonstrates the success of Millikin painting professor Lyle Salmi’s mentoring; including work by Rob Fifield, Benjamin Gardner, Katie Hinton, Andy Messerschmidt, Michael Wille, Angie Zielinski
Tours to Decatur Area Arts Council, August 4 – 30, 2006
Opening reception, Friday, May 5, 5pm – 7pm
Art Talk, Tuesday, June 13, 7pm
Sponsored by Steve and Deb Wannemacher
“[Painting] gives visible existence to what profane vision believes to be invisible...”
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception
It is the ineffable in painting—that about painting which is hard to describe or articulate—that Lyle Salmi is able to teach students of art. His ability lies not only in teaching techniques and processes but also with his motivation and talent in revealing the underbelly of painting to students who will spend the rest of their lives investigating the material and surface of the medium.
Away from the classroom we as students often discuss what went on at Millikin, a sleepy liberal arts school of about 2,000 students, and try to figure out what we learned, how we learned it, and how to proceed. We are often mystified as to what we actually learned from the studio courses, because the ideas are not necessarily quantifiable. One practice that Lyle encourages is the process of discovery in a painting—the idea that a painting will change and develop a life of its own as a painter works on it. Lyle has also always taught the importance of working and dedicating a lot of time to the mental and physical space of the studio. And as Andy Messershmidt told me, Lyle was best at exciting students to “lay hands on this elusive and mystical craft.” But what is elusive about painting?
What do those terms mean exactly? Would Lyle let a student get away with using the words elusive and ineffable in a critique? Though the terms are difficult to describe, the show Painter as Mentor provides some visual examples that start to describe what in painting is elusive and ineffable.
The elusive stems from painting’s ability to use simple materials and convert them into something magical, something beyond the sum of the parts. Robert Fifield’s paintings reference landscape that is mediated and already interpreted through art history and visual culture, then redefined yet again on his paintings’ surface. Andy Messershmidt uses the tradition of oil painting to present works entrenched in spirituality, meditation, and mesmerizing adornment. The elusive also refers to subject matter of painting that is on the tip of your tongue yet still open to the viewer’s interpretation. Using brightly colored layers paint, Michael Wille references geographical locations by abstracting signifiers like a peculiar awning at a baseball stadium in Los Angeles or a specific style of roof tile in Rome. Angie Zielinski filters recognizable shapes and patterns of the every-day and abstracts them by collapsing space with colorful and playful layers of these objects.
Ineffable may refer to something within the painting itself because of its history and its objecthood. Lyle Salmi uses the material of paint as a physical object of expression and exploration. The brushwork, form, and layers of paint present on the canvas create Salmi's fields of undulating color. Also through the material and build-up of paint, Benjamin Gardner explores the psychology of interior space, memory, and palimpsest. Even with non-traditional painting materials such as duct tape and plastic bottles Katie Hinton explores composition and color as if painting on a three dimensional canvas while her two dimensional works explore a similar space.
These examples only serve as a temporary guidepost in defining the terms and the ambiguity of ineffable and elusive is important to painting as a medium. Their vagueness encourages our creativity, contemplation, and investigation as painters and viewers. As James Elkins’ states in What Painting Is, “When nothing is known, everything is possible.” Lyle Salmi is able to let students discover the ineffable and elusive in our own studio work and ourselves. Like the temporary guidepost of the work in the exhibition, Lyle has found the heart of mentoring—leading a student to the beginning of the long road of self-exploration and learning.
-Benjamin Gardner
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