Opinion: A Miracle Of Order

In a huge open group show like the Guild Hall Artist Members Exhibit, you don't expect surprises. There's going to be quite a few lovely things, a majority of nice, competent work, and a few miserable clangers loved only by the artist's mother.

But this year there is a surprise - the show is quite amazingly well hung. It must be the most formidable task to be faced with nearly 400 works bearing no relationship one to the next and to have to make a coherent arrangement of them.

And, indeed, in many previous years the members' show has been an eyeball-rattling cacophony of paintings that was very hard to focus on, as if someone had upended a jar of jelly beans on the museum. And it always seemed overcrowded, as if far too many works had been crammed into the galleries. Which, of course, they had.

A Silk Purse

But this year, although there are just as many entries, the space doesn't seem shriekingly overstuffed; it seems a miracle of cool, focused order. There are groupings of delicate works that need a little concentration and others that are arranged by subject, predominant color, or medium. The sculptures are carefully placed so as to fit in with what is on the wall behind them. You are never overwhelmed.

So this reviewer's private Best in Show award goes to Lisa Panzera, Guild Hall's new curator, for making a silk purse out of this unwieldy sow's ear of a show.

This year's judge (another thankless task) was Patrick Murphy, the director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania. There was one judge in the last few years whose choices everyone approved of, but it's safe to say that everyone usually howls in disagreement.

Judge's Picks

Readers should now make their way to Guild Hall to decide whether they agree with his choices or not and, if not, mentally award their own prizes.

These are Mr. Murphy's winners: Best in Show was awarded to a tiny landscape by L. Tuthill Green and Honorable Mentions went to Deborah Black's strong black and white landscape sketch, Myron Brenton's photograph of a pond, Anna Falcon-Lane's bronze nude, Thomas La Grassa's abstract painting on wood, Sarah Nightingale's abstract paper collage, and Charles Waller's mixed-media sculpture.

It's impossible to mention even 5 percent of the works in the show, but some must be mentioned and those - what other criterion can one use? - are arbitrarily chosen favorites.

Among the sculpture, Elaine C. Grove's totemic "Eel Rake," is small, black, spiky, and as elegantly satisfying in its simplicity as oysters on the half shell with a glass of champagne.

There is a delicate, cuttlefish-shaped ceramic by Victoria Thurson called "Adege," with a lateral fin of Wedgwood blue and little geometric accents of red, celadon, gamboge, and pink. Monica Banks's "Rue" is a spring shoot of hot-rolled steel ending in playful scribble of blossom.

Ronnie Chalif's exciting "Tsunami" has waves of jagged green marble pierced by a hard iceberg of white stone. And for sheer fun there's Stan Learner's blissful "Word Processor," an oversized wooden typewriter with each piece painted a different color.

Standout Photos

Photographs, which were included in the show for only the second year, had some standouts: Michael Lettera's "Lava," an olive soap bar on a red shelf and a green bar on a leaf; Gary Beeber's deliciously evocative Ci bachrome print called "Yellow Passageway," and Anne Sager's digitized photo, "Transmutation," which shows leaves and ice, or maybe neither.

Betsy Pinover Schiff has a straightforward Cibachrome, "Montauk Fence, Winter." Taken in late afternoon, with long shadows falling across snow, patches of wild grass, and a wintry blue sky, it captures the place and minute so perfectly you can taste it.

You might think that black and white entries would get lost in a show with so much rampaging color, but it's just the reverse.

Keep An Eye Out

Amy Ernst's solar plate etching of a girl wading in a woodland pool, "Coe by the Lake," is maybe the smallest entry here, but it holds its own, as does Thomas Rozakis's exuberant hollyhock study, made by the same process.

And the paintings! There are hundreds and hundreds of them in a dizzying array of styles, and some of the best might not be noticed on a quick tour of the galleries.

To single out just five, June Klug lein has a hand-painted etching, "Trailing Arbutus," that you might miss because it's so small and low-key. You might also miss Frank Wimberley's powerful abstract in reds, inky blues, and grays called "Flux," because it's on a side wall. Keep an eye out for it.

Zippy Collage

David A. Paulsen has a delicious landscape, "Millstone Road - Pink Sky," with a row of black trees dividing a muddy khaki field from a marbled sky the color of gently poached shad roe.

Bernice Taplitz has a zippy little collage called "Sunrise Canyon III" and Dan Welden has an oil, ink, and crayon piece called "Swing." "Swing," with its thin wash of white over brown paper grounded by a swoop of black, brown, and gray, is also tucked away in a corner and may be missed if you're not on the lookout for it.

All in all, it's an interesting show, as much in its failures as in its successes. It is as fascinating to study the near misses and try to analyze what is missing as it is to find your favorites and decide what it is about them that works.