By AMARIS ENCINAS
The Bernal Gallery chronicles the lives and works of: Fred Borcherdt, Bailey Doogan, Tom Philabaum, Barbara Rogers and Jim Waid in the new exhibit “Sustained Visions.”
All five artists have taught at the college level while holding fast to their concepts and quality of craftsmanship. according to Andres. Sustained Visions was created behind the idea that Tucson and Southern Arizona have many successful artists that have an independent an independent vision, but few have sustained their conversion over the decades,” Andres said.
Jim Waid taught painting at Pima Community College at West Campus in the 70’s and 80’s before the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City collected his work. Tom Philabaum founded the Sonoran Glass School and Pima students can take classes through Pima to learn Glass Arts. Bailey Doogan and Barbara Rogers are Professors Emeritus’ at the University of Arizona and have both taught painting and drawing.
Fred Borcherdt taught at several locations before focusing on his sculpture full-time. Fred Borcherdt is a graduate of the University of Arizona and the Chicago Art Institutes. They are all independent and successful artists that have managed to preserve their vision throughout their career, Andres said.
For Fred Borcherdt, with a speciality in sculpture and form says that, “My artwork is a reflection of existence, I’ve been doing this for sixty some years and I started off doing work based in the Tucson desert, from there my work evolved into making sculptures which are relic markers of the geography. The historical background of the area and the impact of it in terms of terms of human significance and I have this fascination with the phenomenon behind the moment when trash becomes an artifact,” Borcherdt said. This exhibit is going to be used as a way of preserving the memory and portraying the timeline in which these artists portrayed their work and the changes that have occurred between the original piece and the final piece.
For Bailey Doogan the process of the art and the art itself will always be personal,” for the past twenty years, my work, both painting and drawing has primarily focused on the body. The specific body marked by time, experience, weight and gravity: the flesh that moves, changes and has infinite variety. The images often explore the charged relationship between the world of discourse and the world of appearance: the body and the words surrounding it. There is a gap between language and experience . . . the rectitude of words, the shiftiness of flesh, the beautiful absurdity of the positions we assume… and hanneling personal experiences, even depression, into art is a creative and healing experience, “ she said.
The Bernal Gallery exhibition, there are four pieces from a series of me manipulating my face with my hand: a small oil painting, Self-Portrait, Fingered I, 2009, and three larger graphite on Duralar drawings: Chin Up, 2011, Four-Fingered Smile, 2011, and Split-Fingered Smile, 2013.
Using a double mirror system to recreate my bathroom portraits, I posed in my studio for the photographer, Jack Kulawik. His photographs are the images from which this on-going series of drawings & paintings derive.
For Barbara Rogers, “My early Ohio childhood and time spent in simple family kitchen gardens; a love for botany and exotic gardens grew. Now gardens are my source material and inspiration for my paintings. I employ the metaphor of the garden to address the essence of time and life cycles. I use photography to record information for my paintings and often incorporate actual plant specimens in the work as well as photographs. Often organic shapes and arabesque elements all combine in atmospherically colorful and spatially complex grounds.I love color and oil paint! Experimenting with the countless ways hundreds I can apply oil paint to paper and canvas keeps me challenged and excited about working and learning the complexities and possibilities of that medium,” she said.
Roger’s work to be exhibited at the Bernal Gallery will feature one large painting along with twelve smaller paintings and the larger painting spans over a period of ten years as compared to the small twelve pieces that were done earlier this summer.
Other artists to be showcased at the Bernal Gallery will be Tom Philabaum and Jim Waid. Philabaum founded the Sonoran Glass School that allows for Pima students to take classes in order to learn glass arts. Philabaum built his first glassblowing studio in 1975 in downtown Tucson. His more current and site-specific art uses a broad array of techniques including kiln casting, fusing, slumping, and dale de verre, according to PCC’s press release.
Jim Waid has live and worked in Tucson for 40 years. He taught painting at Pima Community College in the 1970s and 1980s. Waid’s work is in several public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In 2013 he was awarded the Arizona Governor’s Arts Award, according to PCC’s press release.
For Andres having the “Sustained Visions” exhibited at the Bernal Gallery is an honor, “This has got to be the biggest and most important exhibit of year, at least for Southern Arizona and its artists they come and bring a small body of work to the Bernal Gallery to inform the community of their Sustained Visions,” Andres said.