Conrad Wilde Gallery on south 4th Avenue has established an impeccable reputation for featuring superior contemporary art by both local and national artists at its present location for four years. There they have coupled exquisite exhibits of paintings, sculpture and works on paper with well-attended classes in Miles Conrad's specialty, encaustic, for beginners and experts alike, plus what they call the Master Class Series, giving professionals sessions in critique, how to write an artist's statement, how to create a presentation package to present to galleries.
Now, they plan to leave their high ceilinged, white walled spaciousness to trek a bit west and north, over to where the former Gallery at 6th and 6th hung its metaphorical hat, near such well-established destinations as Davis Dominguez Gallery and Raices Taller. Sixth Street between Fifth and Stone Avenues has become an unlikely mecca for sophisticated connoisseurs in search of traditional elegance and the avant garde, bold experiments and comfortable realism alike. Conrad and his partner, Ryan Wilde, will still have room for the classes, and they promise to continue their goal of providing wall and floor space for the varied treasures they will continue to exhibit for the delight and delectation of their loyal patrons.
For now, until the end of November, what graces the 4th Avenue locale consists of Ellis Crean's mostly sepia toned paintings and the combination prints (etchings) and paintings of Aaron Miller. The theme is "Ashes to Ashes: Demise and Transformation," and although the color palette is subdued and monochromatic, an aura of mystery and evanescence is paramount. Seemingly about to shimmer and vanish, the candle flames anchoring Crean's dusky canvases are caught in the midst of their brief existence easily extinguished if the viewer were but to lean forward and gently exhale. From the gallery publicity: "The Votive Wall series references symbolic, ritualistic, spiritual, secular and philosophical issues associated with the practice of lighting of candles in public, private, individual and collective contexts." With a career stretching back 15 years or more, this masterful painter, an instructor at University of West Georgia in Carrollton, has no need to coax her viewers into anything but the willingness to engage and contemplate. An exercise, I can attest, that is well worth the effort.
Miller's delicate, subtle combination of aquatint and paint juxtaposes, as he puts it in an artist's statement, "Strange objects, mixtures of industrial machinery and elegant antiques." Backgrounds depict industrial remnants and landscapes, and he says, "My work recalls the sights, sounds, and smells of industry through the use of materials such as asphalt and tar." So a Victorian candelabra, for instance, is superimposed upon a scarred and rough surface that suggests some ruined, post-apocalyptic prospect. A social commentary is implied in this contrast of basically useless, upper class decoration (silver ewers, salt shakers, salvers, etc.) with a bleak blue collar setting, suggesting the environmental cost of extractive industry in the West. His background growing up in a western mining town stamped class consciousness onto an artist's sensibility and an academic environment that is far away from gritty origins.
As a couple, Miller and Gwynneth Scally (Dolly Spalding: Forests and Icebergs: Zocalo: Volume 1, No. 1, page 14) well represent the young, dynamic, uber-hip, mega-creative and savvy makers of significant and appealing art the kind that begs to be taken home and embraced, but that also broadcasts a message of concern and intense compassion. Heed the voices of this generation that wants to repair what is broken both literally and figuratively. We can only hope that they can really do it!
