It’s Infringement Festival weekend in Buffalo and every resident in or
around the city is privy to visual, performing or media arts on nearly
every corner. Getting in on the action is Lily Booth, Fontini Renzoni
and Julio Martin as they open up Big Orbit Gallery this Saturday for
their three solo shows.
Lily Booth has developed a process of collecting neglected domestic
items during thrift store outings such as table runners, aprons and
place mats (see lead image). “I work with found textiles which I gather while junking
with my mother, grandmother and daughters,” stated Booth. “These are
hand-stitched domestic textiles which were used to adorn one’s home, a
homemaker’s craft of times past. Each piece already has a personality to
it, it is marked by the original creators hand, in the quality of the
stitch, imagery used, and even color of floss. I work off of these
things, inserting my own satirical commentary on issues that concern
me. There is a whole lot one can say with imagery; I’m a visual person
so the use of story telling by using picture is a great outlet.” This
will be Lily’s first solo exhibition to date.
Disfigured but strong, Fontini Renzoni’s complex and painstaking graphite
on clay illustrations sit beside Booth’s vintage household goods (see above image). “I
intently draw the freak that I am and the impact is beautiful. Aware and
sensitive, sometimes painfully, to human reactions to the strange and
abnormal, I grew up developing an insatiable need to communicate what
I’m capable of regardless of my appearance,” said Renzoni of his work.
“When I work in pencil, I see the raw movement of my hand in my work. I
control it to build what I already see. My innate ability to do this
excites me and there is a sense of freedom. When I begin a drawing, I do
not have a final image in mind. I simply put lead to surface and start
marking it with lines. A composition forms and I follow it until it is
complete, stopping only when I feel full and when the piece is balanced
and void of interruptions.”
As the third solo artist, Julio Martin joins Booth and Renzoni with his
physical appropriations of weather patterns. Having spent time observing
how water sculpts the earth, Martin is able to reconstruct the careful
grooves and mounds made by erosion and sedimentation (see above image). The act of
sculpting is as cleansing for the artist as the water is for the earth.
Martin stated for the press release, “I create vessels that serve as
surfaces to induce rhythms in water. The moving water will sculpt and
re-sculpt itself in a given water feature. From this I derive the
concept of sculpting water, water as a sculptural medium and subject
matter. The fluid element is the ideal bearer of movements; by virtue of
movement it allows itself to be molded, casted and plasticized. I
design in one hand the sculpted form in a fountain environment, and on
the other the constant change of mass in the organic configuration of
the moving water.”
Much of the time spent crafting this article was dedicated to
finding a commonality between the three artists exhibiting. Yes, these
are three solo shows simply taking place under the same roof, but the
small, open space demands that pieces sitting in close proximity to one
another share a common thread in theme, material or process. In this
case, one artist works in textiles, the next in concrete, slate, a
variety of stones and copper; fiberglass, acrylic and epoxy resins, the
last puts charcoal to paper or clay. They seem disconnected until you
consider the organic, feminine shapes of most the work and the hint at a
gender theme.
Renzoni’s work is not girly, the patterns are atmospheric, the image
smokey, but the soft lines and curves certainly lend themselves to
delicate shapes. Martin’s vessels for example, toy at the notion of
fertility; a fluted sculpture nests an egg shape, his surfaces are
curvaceous and smooth as skin. Of course Booth’s work is symbolic of
domestication, but her use of embroidery is offset by masculine images
of weaponry and destruction. Bombs stitched into place mats tell a tale
of conversion from domestic housewife to strong political figure.
Overall the show seems like an odd blending but Big Orbit Curator Sean
Donaher is ever challenging what we think we know about art exhibits.
Join the Infringement Festival crowd this Saturday night as Donaher
flexes his curator muscles to open three solo shows featuring Lily
Booth, Fontini Renzoni and Julio Martin at Big Orbit Gallery, tonight at 8 p.m.
—-
Laura Duquette is a former ballerina who now dances with words
and punctuation. She has a knack for asking questions faster than the
speed of sound, and her interviews are often off the cuff and personal.
She is Co-Owner of 12 Grain
Studio, a Buffalo based creative firm that gives typical web design a
kick in the ass.