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Maria
Director
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Sat May 31st, 2008 03:00 pm |
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http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080530/FEATURES02/805300319/1011/FEATURES02
(Be sure to click on "More photos" under the photo of Debora's panel on the main page to see Chris's panel.)
Excerpt from the article:
Chris Jeffrey, who has a studio in Barre, specializes in architectural work. The former attorney has made stained glass for Barre's First Presbyterian Church and a mausoleum window for Rock of Ages Corp., in addition to homes and businesses. Jeffrey's two panels in the show feature abstract elements and geometric forms. In "Circles," for example, he fixes small circles of mirror-like pieces in a dazzling field of multi-colored glass. It's the sort of glitzy décor you'd see in a fancy bar rather than a church sanctuary.
The rest of the stained glass offerings are stylistically, anyway, closer to the religious genre, featuring jewel-like color schemes, painted figures on glass and hidden messages. Somehow, though, I don't think most reverends would approve of the subject matter these artists experiment with.
In a sendup of the Christian tradition, Liza King and Rick Neumann of Brattleboro put a pagan goddess at the center of their paean to the gods. Their "Guardian of the Elements" brazenly bares her breasts and her legs are fused together in mermaid's tail. She is immersed in cobalt blue water, though the emerald green jungle behind her also seems ready to engulf her. I'm not sure she'd qualify as a guardian under these circumstances, but she's surely at one with the elements.
Debora Coombs also plays secular themes against the backdrop of the religious associations with stained glass. But in her works, part of a series called "Menfolk," she uses a more refined, esoteric approach. Her panels, which feature middle-aged men and soldiers, are post-Christian and post-modern. The hand-painted portraits are highly realistic, but in this disembodied context – a transparent pane of glass – they take on a haunting fragility and otherworldliness. Her tough guys are vulnerable, and appear to be dying actually – one is sleeping or is already dead; the other is bald and stripped of his uniform as he languishes in a hospital bed, linked to life by intravenous fluids. Patterns of nonsensical imagery and rectangles of pure color and light, surround the portraits.
Coombs, whose work was shown at MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) last year, has captured a facet of our post-Christian and post-modern culture. It isn't pretty or easily explained. Like the stained glass allegories that graced the churches of yore and conveyed a sense of mystery to an illiterate mob, Coombs' narrative-free imagery has a mysterious quality that even the mass of Internet-savvy, world-weary viewers might find perplexing.
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