I’m happy to report once again that art in places like restaurants and cafes can be good, even excellent. The only problem for a regular art lover is the screening process is dicier.
marchetta, theresa
I biked over to Cafe Loftus, which is also called Christopher Loftus Project Art Gallery, at 3649 Lancaster Ave. to look at work by Theresa Marchetta.
Marchetta had shown flowers made from peeled paint in a group show at the Optimistic in November. The flowers looked like fake flowers, but the material was inventive (right top, “Laura 1”, with two intense light reflections that are not part of the painting. sorry).
The paintings are also an inventive use of materials. But they are also beautiful and surprising. They are like giant cloisonne enamel work, with pools of intense, shiny color separated by squiggly raised lines of material. Some of the pools allow the wooden backing, stained or not, to show through. The paintings also reminded me of stained glass.
The same squiggles that contain the pools also serve as black drawing lines, which give the paintings a cartoony feel (left, detail of “Gorb”).
Each painting seems to be named after a person–“Laura 1,” “Gorb,” “Chandelier Gordon.”
“Carl” looks like camouflage accented with peach. It also is like a forested scene with flickering light penetrating between the leaves. I don’t know who “Chandelier Gordon” is, but the image reflects the name (right, “Chadelier Gordon”).
These paintings are worth a trip to Powelton Village, which now has four galleries on Lancaster Ave. There’s Photo West at 3625 Lancaster, the Community Education Center (CEC) at 3500 Lancaster, and Art on 38th Gallery at 3808 Lancaster (I haven’t been there yet but my intentions are good) as well as Loftus. Once the summer’s over, I have high hopes that enough good stuff will be going on there to keep me coming back.
Also showing at Loftus are photographs by James Jackson.
