print September 1980

Roy Fridge

Roy Fridge’s recent show, “Souvenirs of the Voyage,” consisted of collage/drawings, sculptures of found wood, bones and nails, a functional boat (approximately 10 by 15 feet) and Hermit Shrine, an open, eight-foot high triptych. In the center of the Shrine is a cut-out of the artist “dressed” in real clothing, and on the sides are the artist’s journals and memorabilia. The literalness of this piece and of the boat contrasts with the other works in the show. Unlike the iconic art of fellow Texan Michael Tracy, however, Fridge’s work has no heavy sacrificial or idolatrous overtones. His art is

print October 1979

Sam Gummelt

SAM GUMMELT uses photographs of doors and windows as a point of departure for his large-scale, elegant paintings. He doesn’t paint from photographs, but is inspired by the overlay of colors on old wood and the proportions set up within enclosing rectangles of a door or window. Sometimes he scales his work exactly to the original doorway. The paintings consist of several stretched canvases put together, complete with strip molding. The back is almost as interesting as the front, where the stretchers are supported with a grid of subdivisions. Although the works are certainly to be experienced as

print October 1979

Michael Tracy

MICHAEL TRACY’s work is a combination of performance and powerful personal expression. One of his themes is martyrdom, by means of flaying, piercing or decay. Some of his paintings have heavy bronze spikes hammered through them, giving the surface a half-destroyed effect. There are also organic references: Tracy called a flap hanging in the center of one work a heart, and the canvas itself a skin.

The show of the last ten years of his work divided into two parts. The downstairs was primarily dark, heavy painting and a stagelike setting devoted to the elaborate Sugar Sacrifice executed in Galveston

print Summer 1979

James Surls

James Surls’ sculpture has started to dance, float and rotate. His recent show indicates a lighter orientation both in form and in handling of materials. The show included both drawings and sculpture; the drawings are not studies for the sculpture, but offer insight into a fantasy world that is certainly shared by the sculpture.

A drawing like Stick Dance for Red Bird is visually complex, but very revealing. Hard and soft outlines and scale distortions convey a mental, rather than a physical, reality. A large self-portrait of the sculptor reaches out at the left; carving and a female figure-tree

print Summer 1979

Tom Sayre

Tom Sayre works in the constructivist tradition. He uses straight-cut steel plate and cylinders welded together, rather than complex visual shapes as in the work of someone like Peter Reginato. Within this straightforward format he is exploring problems of balance and the relation of shape to space. An occasional edge demands attention because of its worked form, as in Good News, the largest piece in his recent show.

The complexity of Sayre’s sculpture is based on weight, counterweight, support and thrust, but in a visual sense; he is not so concerned with actual gravity. Some of the pieces are

Susan Platt