July Issue 2000
ASU Gallery Director Exhibits at Hayes MacMillan Art in Boone, NC
Concert goers and patrons of An Appalachian Summer Festival's visual arts programs know something of the charm and sensibilities of Hank Foreman. He is the director and chief curator of Appalachian State University's Catherine J. Smith Gallery & Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, and popular host of artist receptions and openings, presenting exhibitions and works by prominent artists year after year. His studio work explores the concepts of male gender construction, ecology, and spirituality, and often combines non-traditional and traditional materials.
Few of Foreman's works have been shown in the Boone area, but a one-person exhibition, now on display at Hayes MacMillan Art in downtown Boone, NC, offers a comprehensive look at the range of Foreman's ouvre. Entitled, Hank If You Love Angels, a reference to Foreman's own keen sense of humor as well as his subject matter, the exhibition showcases Foreman's new paintings as well as a retrospective of paintings and assemblages, as well as an installation. The exhibit opened with a reception, gallery talk, and performance by the artist. An encore performance by the artist is scheduled for July 16, at 5pm. The exhibit will be on display through Aug. 6, 2000.
Terry Suhre, Gallery Director at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, and former Director of the Catherine J. Smith Gallery, has worked closely with Foreman in the past, and pays close attention to the Foreman's elaborate detail. Suhre explains, " Foreman's use of craft (with a small "c") materials and techniques are a feminist strategy. By employing embroidery, sewing and beading the artist validates these " lesser" (read women's) activities in the making of " high" art. The materials used by Foreman are found at flea markets, road side stands and K-Mart. The common, dollar store objects such as plastic babies, toy soldiers and fake flowers that embellish his works stand as symbols. He uses the pre-existing content of these kitsch items as a device to deflate the elitist pretensions of " high" art and as a way of connecting with the viewer. The nature of the ordinary materials forms the visual background of much of our culture."
Foreman's most recent works, which compose, The Duality Series, are centered upon beautiful but potentially dangerous objects such as an orchid with a snake, an octopus, and a jellyfish, and are set in elegantly ornamental painted fabric borders which provide an entire context of references. " These pieces juxtapose beauty and danger, allure and dread," curator Lowell Hayes explains. They are presented with a group of smaller, companion pieces that comprise, The New Shell Series, which encompass elegance without dualism.
The retrospective collections chosen for this exhibit explore angels, shells, landscapes, and altars. " Here are the good-natured angels," Hayes explains, " send-ups of the campy aesthetic of mens' fashions and of paperback novel covers, from which the show takes its humorous title." Foreman's angels are humorous and fun, but they also raise issues that run through most of the artists's work, and challenge the viewer to reconcile how taste is related to beauty, danger, sentimentality and sex.
Almost stark in their visual and thematic contrast are a group of shell paintings and landscapes that evoke rich personal meanings for anyone who relates to coastal Carolina. Foreman relates his shell paintings to a process of exploring and collecting. He talks about searching for natural or found objects that might be considered " damaged," and of noticing how a shell might be "calcified, weathered, or broken down." The relationship between objects when grouped together then deepens their individual context. Foreman likes to consider these pieces poetically, seeking visual rhythms within the collaboration of objects. He says that while a single object might suggest a haiku, its meanings build in relationship to other objects, establishing meditative vignettes.
Foreman also appropriates images and ideas from art history (as in the genre of Dutch, seventeenth-century Vanitas paintings) and from other cultures, (as in the case of Caribbean altarpieces). In referencing these sources, the artist looks to the human proclivity for collecting, and how, through collecting and investing meaning in objects, persons develop and validate their own mythologies. His super-decorated alters of kitsch and sentimentality, replete with symbology and suggested meanings are fun, but they, too, have serious components.
The central alter of the exhibition and the "stage" upon which the performance takes place is an installation that will remain on display throughout the exhibition's run. The performance, entitled, Dualities, brings the profound content of Foreman's paintings to life. Played before one of his iconographic altars, Black Madonna II, the action moves through a green serpent and a red serpent, outlined on the gallery floor, where opposites and complimentaries come together into a newfound harmony. The gallery's curator describes Foreman's performance as " an affirmation of down-home spirit, and of its manifestation in the high art of our own time."
Foreman's work, Hayes continues, " is worldly, sophisticated and aware of the darker side of the human condition, but, rather than obsessing on the frightful darkness of what we know to be true about the world and people, it affirms that the possibility of finding reconciliation and hope in acts of creativity."
Foreman is not only an artist, but also an administrator and educator, and a strong proponent of the visual arts in North Carolina's High Country. He teaches in both the Art Department and Watauga College Interdisciplinary Studies programs at Appalachian State University. Foreman received his BCA in Painting & Sculpture from the UNC-Charlotte and his MA in Art Education from Appalachian State University. The artist's professional activities include designing exhibitions, serving as juror for competitions, lecturing and studio work. Foreman has participated in exhibition programs with many arts professionals, including Richard Anuszkiewicz, Jackie Brookner, Maryrose Carroll, Elliott Daingerfield, Suzi Gablik, Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons, Lucy Lippard, dominique mazeaud, Jesus Moroles, John Perreault, James Surls, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles.
For more info check our NC Commercial Gallery listings or call 828/265-4596 or e-mail at (hayesmacmillan@yahoo.com).
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