Review
May/June 2015
Small Things Considered
Davis Dominguez Gallery

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Our art year in Tucson typically starts in the fall, blossoms in the winter, and then takes a slow cruise into the cruelest months. True, some of us die-hard desert warriors don’t abandon Tucson at all in the summer. We suffer through the heat (but it’s a dry  heat!), and then we glory in the banshee monsoon that brings cooler temps and male rains. At the moment, though, we’re in that cruise-into-June phase.

Thanks to Davis Dominguez Gallery, we can enjoy the close of Tucson’s 2014-2015 art season with a wonderful exhibit of small works by local artists. The 23rd annual Small Things Considered exhibit is open now and will go through June 27, 2015.  There will be an opening reception on Saturday, June 6, from to 6 to 8 pm. that happens in conjunction with Central Tucson Gallery Association and the 2015 Summer Art Cruise.  (Looks like a 12 month art season is emerging in the Old Pueblo!)

Davis Dominguez is always a delightful gallery to visit with its revolving exhibits of contemporary arts by top artists. The Small Works exhibit remains a favorite, though, because art lovers get to see a wide selection of works by many local artists. The gallery informs us that artists showing in this invitational exhibit include “gallery regulars, guest artists borrowed from other Tucson galleries, and the ever-changing contingent from the ‘wild card’ of lesser-known locals.”  Artist diversity, and the fact that there is no stated theme means that the work is varied and stimulating in a way that other exhibits in other galleries is not.

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This exhibit includes intensely colorful abstracts, sumptuous desert landscapes, and some intriguing images with messages for us to ponder.  Take, for example, the lithograph by Andy Polk, When Laughing is Crying, a multi-level image with a kanji or hànzì-like script fronting a map-like abstract form that asks us to consider how words and images affect us, how they can take us to another place in our minds, and how they can make us laugh or cry.

Alfred Quiroz’s artwork is always colorful and very often has a kind of edgy humor that makes us laugh and sometimes cringe or rejoice depending upon who we are.  His Ah Luv Mexkin Food is a portrayal of Maricopa County’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio who probably does like to eat his tacos while he’s busting heads. However we recognize that the viewer brings his/her own perspective to any artwork and will experience it in his/her own way. In the case of this reviewer, Arpaio looks uncomfortably like a fundamentalist preacher from a time long gone in a place where the reviewer is grateful to no longer be residing, a certain small town in Texas where only Anglos were welcomed (that’s where the “cringe” factor comes in).

APolk_When Laughing Is Crying_

AQuiroz_Ah Luv Mexkin Food_

Another work with a kind of edgy humor is Barbara Brandel’s Kitty Head. Brandel uses her trademark postage stamps to create a new collage image. In this case, a faceless human head is covered in kitty stamps and a kitty sits atop the head. Somehow this Kitty Head must surely belong on the Spaceship Enterprise on his/her way home to Kitty Planet somewhere in the far reaches of the solar system where felines reign and no dogs can be found dead or alive.

Seeing works by two former curators of the Tohono Chul Art Gallery, Vickie Donkersley and Ben Johnson, is also a pleasure.  Donkersley’s abstract is in a different world from Johnson’s ethereal landscapes featuring trees.   Beata Wehr’s small painting Three Circles is part of her on-going series of works regarding her efforts to make a life in two wildly different places: the cities and woodlands of Poland and eastern Europe versus Tucson and the Sonoran Desert.

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BenJohnson_As If From a Dream_

VDonkersley_Coming Undone_

BWehr_Three Circles_

TKerrigan_Golden Doves on Cholla Ribs_

Three-dimensional work is also an important part of the exhibit. This year there seems to be more 3-D work than in the past which benefits gallery visitors.  Here is Thomas Kerrigan’s Golden Doves on Cholla Ribs, a beautiful piece that gives homage to the creatures of our desert homeland.


To learn more about this exhibit, go to Davis Dominguez Gallery.

The opening reception is Saturday, June 6, from to 6 to 8 pm.




~C.J. Shane

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