Post-Art Hop Review by Christopher Byrne
Editor’s Note: The South End Art Hop took place last month. This year, we decided to use Art Hop to scout for talent. Art Map Burlington contributors Amy Rahn, Karen M. Geiger, and Christopher Byrne were each asked to identify three artists whose work they would either like to see more of in the coming year or own outright.
I had the pleasure of touring the Juried Show on the Saturday of this year’s South End Art Hop. I had no trouble identifying three artists whose work I would like to see more of in the future. As a group, these three works are all a little “post”: post-apocalyptic (DeVarney), post-Cold War (Egan), or post-reality (Heilig). And for the viewer, they all inspire some post-viewing reflection.
Nicholas Heilig
Bigger Than It Really Is
(image above)
One of the first pieces I encountered was Burlington artist Nicholas Heilig’s Bigger Than It Really Is, a pen-and-ink drawing of a fantastical landscape of seas, ships, flying machines and almost-Fujiesque mountains. There is no gray in this drawing: everything is either a deep black or a brilliant white. The images themselves are crisp, the details fine, and the scene worth coming back to to see what else is lurking inside.
www.flatlineink.com
Kei Egan
Lenin Accessorizes
The 1980s Soviet-area studies major in me burst out laughing when I saw Somerville, MA-based Kei Egan’s 2002 collage Lenin Accessorizes. Using the classic Soviet iconography of a smiling Vladimir Lenin striding in front of cheering crowds clutching a 1971 Cadillac convertible in his hands, Lenin has created a “handle” in the Cadillac by breaking his hand through the windshield. Egan’s other work is less humorous, but equally colorful and eyecatching.
www.keiegan.com
Adam DeVarney
Chalk
(image right)
Adam DeVarney is a Burlington artist whose work Chalk presents a large hand and forearm rendered in acrylic and paper on oak panel. The hand is palm up toward the sky. Below and in front of the hand is the detrius of civilization–wrecked cars, part of an elevated highway and a toppled, 60s-style neon sign that says “CHALK”. The top two-thirds of the work are painted a brilliant, sunny yellow.
www.adamdevarney.com
