STUBNITZ GALLERY HOSTS ‘NOT QUITE NATURE’
Exhibit showcases work of Bastian and Joseph posted 1/10/06

Stubnitz Gallery presents “Not Quite Nature,” an exhibit that runs Jan. 9 through Feb. 4 and features the art of Duane Bastian and Phil Joseph. The artists’ paintings and ceramic works will be showcased in the exhibit.

Phil Joseph, detail of "Tre Angle" (detail size 10" x 8"), acrylic

Bastian is a professor emeritus at the University of Toledo and a nationally known ceramic sculptor who lives and works in Lenawee County. Phil Joseph, a painter, is professor emeritus at Miami University (Ohio). He has works in more than 40 corporate collections in Ohio, New York, New Jersey, and Georgia, and is represented by galleries in Columbus and Cleveland. He currently resides in Onekama, Mich.

Both artists will speak at a reception in the gallery on Thursday, Feb. 2, at 6 p.m. The reception begins at 5:45 p.m. and continues until 7 p.m. Additionally, Joseph will give a slide talk about the development of his work earlier that day, from noon – 12:45 p.m., in Room 8 of Mahan Hall. All gallery programs are free and open to the public.

Stubnitz Gallery is located on Madison Street on the Adrian College campus. The exhibit will be open from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, and from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. on Thursdays. For more information, please contact Catherine Royer, gallery director, at 517-264-3903, croyer@adrian.edu.

A DESCRIPTION OF THE SHOW:

Visitors to “Not Quite Nature,” at Adrian College’s Stubnitz Gallery through February 4, will find themselves surrounded by Duane Bastian’s large stacks of logs, garden follies built of mortared rocks, and carved stone columns topped with wide bowls filled with antlers, river rock, and fungi-covered branches. On the walls are Phil Joseph’s colorful representations of trees, transcendent blue skies, branches and twigs, and bits of twine and metal.

Kind of.

Various levels of illusion apply to both artists’ work. Bastian’s sculpture is entirely ceramic, so faithfully painted with underglaze and sculpted—life-size—that visitors repeatedly ask: “OK, I get it . . . but that one is really an antler, right? And that’s gravel?” No, the artist gently insists as he picks up a piece to show the hole in the bottom of the hollow form—it’s all made of clay. And although representational painting is, by definition, about illusion, Joseph switches up whether the twigs are real or painted, the wood and metal are those materials or skillful faux finishes, and a tree form (or a gap where the gallery wall shows through) is a subject or a background.

Both artists use the gee-whiz factor their masterful technique inspires to prompt viewers to look closely not only at the captive nature they present in the gallery but at nature in the raw. They ask one to think more deeply about the relationship of humans and the natural world—from an ecological point of view, and from a spiritual point of view. Some of Bastian’s sculptures suggest altars; some of Joseph’s tiny, jewel-like painted images built into wood structures suggest icons. A whiff of the vast historical relationship between humans and trees, stones, and bones hangs in the air.

Both artists made work steadily throughout their university teaching careers—Bastian, who lives just outside Adrian, MI, was an art education professor at University of Toledo, and Joseph, now living in Onekama, MI, a painting and drawing professor at Miami University (Ohio). But as retirement approached, each kicked up the intensity of his art making and took off in some new directions. Most of the work in the gallery has been completed since 2000, and much of it in the last year.