Art of the Festival: A Triptych
Out of the over 200 artworks displayed in the Festival of the Arts Regional Art Exhibition, 37 won awards for their work. We talk to just three of them in anticipation of the opening of the show this Wednesday, May 30.
Beyond us, across the water, stand a group of people. They are silhouetted by the setting sun. The people are anonymous; their reflections in the rust-colored water reduce them almost to abstractions. The sun is strange. It is not the sun we know, or think we know.
It only lasts seconds, Steve Scarborough knows: the last few moments before the sun leaves view.
“It distorts as it slips away,” he says. He took the photograph in Petoskey, at sunset. “It’s my favorite time of day. Several people were standing on the pier, which goes into Little Traverse Bay.”
He points to a couple of people in the shot, leaning into each other. “I imagine they’re whispering so as not to disturb the others.”
That kind of moment deserves to play out in silence.
Red dominates the canvas. Its shade, along with the yellow, conveys something of the idea of fire, or perhaps the sun. White rectangles near the center of the canvas could be people, or angels, or maybe they’re not objects at all. But the shapes, whether or not they’re referencing the real world, are imbued with a certain benevolence, an embracing grace.
Deborah Bowen starts with “lines, making marks with pencils, charcoal. Really marking up the surface of the canvas. Then it’s really bright colors of paint. But even when I’m painting somewhat randomly, I’m thinking about structure,” she says. “All those lines tell me where to go.”
Early in a painting, she finds that the process is like play.
“Sometimes I get lost, though. Then I go back to evaluation: ‘Is there enough color? Is there enough dark-to-light gradation? Is there texture?’” says Bowen. “I’m always asking myself these questions.”
She learns what the painting is as she makes it.
The Nymphaeaceae, beautiful despite some tatters and holes, lie upon velvety darkness. They could have sprung into existence a moment ago; they could be floating in space. But no: the darkness is water. The leaves are lily pads.
We have seen lily pads. Why do these look so new?
“I’ll tell you exactly where it happened,” Henry Droski tells me. The photographer and his wife were on a boat in White Lake, in northern Ontario. It was August 21st, 2017; they were waiting to meet a friend before taking in the eclipse.
They hung around an area Droski likes to use for fishing. He snapped pictures of some lily pads. One in particular struck him. “It looked Asian — just the flow of it, and the lines. I had to go back to that one. So simple and uncomplicated, but it conveyed, to me, a great serenity. Peace.”
Droski shot in black-and-white and, as is typical of him, did minimal processing.
“Too much of what I see today is a lot of manipulation and weird playing with colors,” he says. “What I try to do is convey what I saw when I took that picture.”
“I didn’t go out there with the intention of photographing lily pads,” he says, laughing. “But that’s what it is. You keep your eyes open. You try to see what’s in front of you.”
All three artists entered the pieces described above into the curated exhibition of the 49th annual Festival of the Arts, on display at The Fed Galleries at KCAD (17 Pearl Street NW) May 30-June 23, with an opening reception on the night of May 30.
Henry Droski’s “Lily Pads” won the West Michigan Photography Collective: Photographic Achievement Award. Steve Scarborough’s “Gathering At Sunset” won the 2nd Generation Festival Award. Deborah Bowen’s “Cover Up” won the Miller Johnson Purchase Award. They’re three of 37 artists earning awards in an exhibition showcasing over 200 works of art.
Droski has attended Festival since its inception. While he feels that, for a time, its main draw was food, he now finds it to be an inclusive and broad celebration of the arts in West Michigan. “It represents Grand Rapids more than ArtPrize,” he says.
“Grand Rapids is unique,” Scarborough says. “Not every area has a way for everyone to get involved in the art scene. I’ve very proud to be here.”
Living in Spring Lake, Bowen had not grown up attending Festival. But word traveled of its hospitality to artists. When she had left her dental hygienist position after 26 years, fully embracing painting, she knew Festival was one place where she had to submit her work.
Not everyone who submits to Festival of the Arts is accepted; not everyone who is accepted wins prizes. The three mentioned here were part of that small subset, the best of the best. To a person, they understand and appreciate what Festival has provided, and still provides.
“Festival has been very good to me,” says Bowen. “They always put such a beautiful show together. I just love it.”
