Making a House a Home Student Exhibition

Making a House a Home was a Sacramento State student exhibition that ran in the Witt Gallery from February 8 - 11, 2016.  The exhibition featured the work of artist Helen Grandy.  Fifteen works appeared in the show, ranging from approximately letter-size paintings to ones larger in scale, all of them united by Grandy's choice of color, expressive brushstrokes, and tactile quality of the applied paint.  Upon entering the Witt Gallery, the viewer is met by the smallest paintings in the show on the left wall.  Each of these five pieces is oil on paper mounted in framed glass, and they appear to be a sampling or preview of the larger works or paintings that are placed in the more interior spaces of the gallery.  The presentation of the five has a meticulous, delicate, and fragile quality to it, perhaps due to the glass framing. 

The presentation of the five complements the whole atmosphere and quality of the show as suggested by the show's title, Making a House a Home.  Upon reading the title of the show, one of my first impressions of the paintings was that they were "homey," personal, and intimate.  The colors of each of the paintings (including the framed ones, which somehow seem like both an offset and a part of the show) suggest an outdoor garden, with their rainbow of pinks, blues, greens, violets, and oranges, just to name a few.  The colors are evocative of those found in flowers, vegetables, and other plant-life (one of the 11" x 11" oil on panel pieces, titled Something about Beets, appears to give a nod to the beet-like red-violet that is included in several of the paintings).  Darker shades and tones further convey an impressionistic appearance of a garden with shifting light and shaded areas.  This is one of the qualities of the paintings that stood out to me; there is no figuration within the framework of the painting, yet each is very expressive and conveys a homelike feeling and even a suggestion of outdoor scenery.  

Another interesting feature of Grandy's work, especially with the large-scale paintings, is the use of impasto, which is a technique where paint is applied thickly and has an almost frosting-like appearance.  With the impasto, it felt like I knew the actual texture of the paint, simply by looking at it.  These paintings, like most if not all, have an interesting quality where if the viewer stands back, the viewer is greeted by a large-scale scene.  However, if the viewer walks closer to the painting, it seems to take on another life (almost like it is a separate work) with an up-close view of the brushwork.  The dual experience of standing up-close and farther back from the paintings was like that of viewing a garden.  From far away, one sees the entire panoramic view of the garden.  However, once one walks closer and actually steps within the garden, he or she might look down or around and see the smaller parts of the scene, such as the individual flowers or plant life that were invisible from far away.  The gestural brushwork and choice of color, are two prominent formal qualities of Grandy's paintings, and together, they help convey a complex and personal representation of what makes a house a home.

 Making a House a Home show title.

 Helen Grandy, each of five paintings, Untitled, oil on canvas, 2015.  These were on the left wall upon entering the front of the Witt Gallery.

 

 Grandy, each of five paintings, 11" x 11" oil on panel.

 Grandy, one of the large-scale oil paintings.