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Saturday, July 14, 2001

By Mary Thomas, Post-Gazette Art Critic

There were so many submissions to "Fellowship 2001" that pleased juror Jean Caslin, executive director and curator of the Houston Center for Photography, that she requested permission to award more than the specified number of honorable mentions.

"Fellowship 2001" is only the second of these annual juried membership exhibitions to be sponsored by the Silver Eye Center for Photography, South Side, but it has the look of an established show, and its reputation is growing.

This year, 95 photographers from 22 states submitted applications, including 32 from Pennsylvania. Five of the latter made the cut, including Pittsburghers Sue Abramson, Akihiko Miyoshi and Richard Gribenas (the father of 2001 Emerging Artist of the Year Richard P. Gribenas, whose show opened last night at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts).

Caslin, who called Silver Eye executive director Linda Benedict-Jones "a true visionary leader" in her juror statement, said she looks for work that "shows an uncommon way of seeing" and providing a statement gave photographers a "competitive edge."

Each entrant submitted 10 photographs. Caslin selected one representative work from each honorable mention artist to hang in the exhibition alongside the photographs of fellowship recipient Susan Dunkerley, who also received $2,001.

The individual works she chose are mostly black and white, sophisticated and have a fine-art quality. A unicorn appears awkward here, infrared photography has become too commonplace to make a group of poppies stand out, and a close-up of hands sharing grief is unfortunately predictable.

But Pamela Ellis Hawkes' "An Artichoke" is an elegant work that plays with perception, Orit Raff's chic "Untitled" (glass on paper towel) makes much out of nothing, Marlo Marrero's "Star Studded Moments at 25" is uniquely embellished with resultant punch and Jessica Todd Harper's digitally altered "Self-portrait with Christopher" is an effective probe of relationships.

Robert Vizzini's star-streaked time exposure, "Bedtime View, Castelina in Chianti, Italy," and Abramson's "Tulip Leaves," a continuation of her ever-evolving and inventive ant-level pinholes, both make the commonplace uncommon.

The mysterious "Before I was born out of my mother ..." by Debra Goldman, which recalls Duane Michals in the writing on the surface and the Whitman quote, is evocative in form and concept. Also gaining from enigmatic circumstance are two atypical photographs of children: Gloria Baker Feinstein's "Joseph with Ball, Missouri," in which a small boy in a shaded yard stares directly at the viewer from behind a large, glowing white ball that covers all but his hands and the top of his head; and "Bolivar Peninsula" by Carol Vuchetich, wherein the child, standing on a rickety chain swing, faces away and across a vast and empty seaside playground.

In her photographs, fellowship winner Dunkerley creates delicate, dreamy worlds that suspend within glassine-like layers, occupying a space between light and air, accentuated by shadow. Using found objects, organic and other, she constructs intimate scenes that exist momentarily on windowsills, flooded by sunlight.

In "Wishbone," for example, two reindeer Christmas figures stand on either side of a wishbone that's backgrounded by a glass sphere. Overhead are another wishbone, seeds, a small bird. Scale, solidity and perspective may not be what they seem, and the viewer may chose to try to decipher or to suspend belief and draw in. As Dunkerley says, "They give the mind room to wander."

Dunkerley, an assistant professor of art at Baylor University, Waco, Texas, will be in Pittsburgh next week to lecture on her work and to conduct a portfolio review.

In the Members' Gallery, Rob Long and David Harris share the city as subject, with Long's art-from-artists portrait series, including well-known South Siders, and Harris' color street compositions with weed trees and trash, standing out in a full show.

The exhibitions continue through July 28 at 1015 E. Carson St. Dunkerley's slide-illustrated lecture is at 8 p.m. Friday, with a reception following ($8, members $5); the portfolio review begins at 1 p.m. July 21 ($22, students $17, members $15; limited to 10, advance registration required). Gribenas will give a gallery talk at 7:30 p.m. July 26 (free). Gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and until 9 p.m. Thursday. For information or to register, call 412-431-1810.