Daniel Kany, Art Review: Paintings in the Key of Bob Dylan anchor strong line up at UMMA, Portland Press Herald, Aug. 25, 2013
Signage (Artists in Cars) curated by Joanne Freeman, Vice
President of the American Abstract Artists
IDEELART, Online Exclusive
DOMESTIC DISTURBANCES
490 Atlantic Gallery, Brooklyn
September 16 - October 29, 2017
Curated by Joanne Freeman
Franklin Einspruch, When Hostility Turns into Mannerism. Subtle Simplicity Offers Respite, Art Critical, Dec. 16, 2013
When I was in Provincetown last week I stopped in at Gallery Ehva on Shank Painter Road, where Joanne Freeman was in the middle of a residency. The image above is what I saw when I walked in: A work in progress with many sheets of calligraphic shapes on the floor. The sheets were painted in an ultramarine-ish gouache with a flat brush so that the thickness of the line never wavered. The color was unremarkable, dry and uninflected.
From that scatter of sheets, Freeman would select one and begin to modulate the color. As she dampened the line, then blotted and wiped, gorgeous things started to happen: The ultramarine became richly transparent. It had depth. There were undertones of cobalt. Turquoise emerged. The work was far enough along that the chromatic difference between the sheets on the floor and those on the wall was quite apparent.
Seeing the work in progress--and then a few days later, an emailed image of the finished work--I was struck by the cursive and chromatic symmetry between it and the blue tile niche wall in the newly renovated Middle Eastern wing at The Met, which I'd photographed the previous week. All of the blue tiles and vessels resonated with that symmetry.
"Not a coincidence," says Freeman. "I really like arabic calligraphy. I've spent a lot of time in Morocco."
But a lovely serendipity.
Joanne Mattera, Joanne Mattera's Art Blog, Calligraphic Blue, 5/01/12