PAINT AND PASTRIES

Stephill's work at MaMa Pirogi's represents a new life for the artist.

A friend once told me that art should only be attempted when one is inspired. While this is a neat idea, I'm not sure it's especially practical. There are times when the white lightning of a great idea strikes out of the blue, sparking a howling brush fire across the dreary steppe of the brainpan. But it's best to have diligence, expertise and talent at the ready when inspiration pays a visit-- from across the street perhaps.

Stephanie Hill was ready to apply her skills on her new collection of mixed media work at MaMa Pirogi's Bakery. The display is to Hill a confluence of several circumstances in her life. The cafe had just expanded with a new seating section and Hill, who lives within a stone's throw of the establishment, was asked by owner Steve Trusus to outfit the freshly painted white walls.

"These just came to me," Hill said of her collection, "especially after Steve said, 'I need some artwork to hang in here. '"

"I have three different styles and this is kind of my experimental style for leaving the corporate world, which was where I was before," explained Hill, who edited Law Enforcement Product News through last October. The contrast between doing ad copy for web belts and battering rams and her true vocation is not lost on Hill, who wanted her collection to be an affirmation of her transition in life.

"The theme is primarily Out of the Woodwork," Hill said, "coming out of the woodwork as an artist." The pieces do indeed use squares and slats of wood, with many painted in oil, Hill's favorite medium.

Like most of the pieces, the 12-inch-by-12 inch Woodwork One is centered over an oil backdrop of murky greens. A wooden square and vertical strips, all looking of burnished copper, a prevalent color in the collection, accompany an unfurling map of the Italian mainland and a piece of pitted white stone. A verse, Hill's own, reads, "Weathering Rome's ruins to an elemental masterpiece."

"I wanted to get this little piece in here to signify the deterioration of Rome's masterpieces," Hill said of the solitary stone, "and how they're eventually going to go back to looking like something the ocean created as opposed to what man created."

Woodwork Three features a pair of disproportionate black hearts. They seem to bleed a dark cloud over a coppery wooden square studded with fossil-like outcrops. A line reads, "to polish my copper soul," referring both to the malleable and conductive metal as well as a spiritual aspect of the pieces, which also include clasped hands and a cross. Hill is of an assured faith in both a god and the natural world.

Vivid oranges and yellows over sky blues in Woodwork Four are "my interpretation of the Colorado sunset, especially in fall," Hill said. The fiery, autumn colors are painted on a rough glazed ceramic reminiscent of a topographical map of the state. Lashes of the same colors frame Woodwork Eight, "The Final Touch," with a hand holding lipstick. Hill said it is about the "more materialistic, carnal level of human nature."

Hill calls the pieces experimental or contemporary threedimensional. Out of the Woodwork allows Hill to incorporate aspects of interpretive portraiture, which is her primary artistic focus, into pieces for the local market. Of her three styles-- experimental, interpretive and representational-- she finds that interpretive, emphasizing an overall impression of subject matter over a visual duplication, is least popular here in Colorado.

"I'm looking for my audience and finding this kind of work [interpretive] is not really well received in Denver," Hill said. It's our loss, because in her interpretive work are some of her most compelling pieces-- bold works with heavy strains of Picasso running through them. Hill is also influenced by such oldworld masters as Da Vinci and Botticelli. The works are all painted in oil, many of them portraits of contemplative individuals and couples intent on each other. The colors and textures that catch the eye in Woodwork can be traced to such portraits as evetaerc and pearl of wisdom. They are inspired by her experiences that include her travels in Taos and New York City, as well as the people she has met.

While she continues to do commissions and work in web and graphic design to make ends meet, she feels a new focus with her emphasis on interpretive expression. Hill said, "What I really try to emulate in a lot of my work are enlightening moments that people capture, and giving the community or the viewer something that can look at and go, 'I've felt that way before. '"

--Andrew Wells

Stephill's mixed media woodwork can currently be seen at MaMa Pirogi's Bakery on 2033 E. 13th Ave. For more information, visit the artist's website at www.stephill.com.

ISLAND ART
@
DENVER ART MUSEUM

100 West 14th Avenue
720-865-5000

One doesn't book a flight to Melanesia. One can travel to the islands that make up Melanesia in the South Pacific: the Vanuatu islands, Fiji, the Solomons, and New Caledonia, among others. Melanesia lies east and north of Australia, south of Micronesia-- places few Coloradans know intimately.

It's perhaps ironic that many pieces of early twentiethcentury art from these archipelagos now rests, landlocked, in the Denver Art Museum. With its new exhibit, Giants of Melanesia: Monumental Art from the South Pacific, the DAM extends its already firm reputation as a repository of Native American art into a new part of the globe. On & Off the Wall, the DAM's members' magazine, says with the gift of more than 1,000 pieces of New Guinea art in 1995, the DAM is now one of the premier keepers of Melanesian art in the United States.

Giants of Melanesia, which is exhibited in the Gates Gallery on the seventh floor, is a collection of large wooden sculpture and bark painting. The DAM wisely directs viewers to consider the artistic aspects of the work: with most viewers lacking previous knowledge about Melanesia, there aren't many other forms of criticism available.

Even the name "Melanesian" is a cipher, referring to people named after their islands, which are in turn named after their people. Broken down, Melanisia refers to "islanders of color," inhabitants related to the Australian aborigines and darker than the Polynesians who predominate in other island chains. The directive to examine the work "artistically"-- in the same fashion as, say, contemporary art-- therefore asks viewers pointedly to consider the sculpture and painting without relegating it to the noman's land of foreign curiosity and historical artifact.

Five imposing male figures are arrayed to face museumgoers as they walk in the front of the gallery. The wooden men have large, expressive faces, which dominate their comparatively smaller bodies. Many of their pectorals are covered with carvings highlighting the curves of shoulders or arms; most have prominent belly buttons and distinctly carved penises. However, the artistic style of each diverges beyond these similarities. For example, the most prominent sculpture-- of a man sitting on a stool-- shows intense detailing on his face and body, pulling the eye away from his own prominent eyes. The TreeFern Figure, immediately to the right, exhibits clean, unadorned lines and a black, fibrous texture not seen elsewhere. The sculpture's face is distilled into curving shapes that entice the eye to follow, and rest.

More unusual is the Hook Figure (left) from New Guinea, a series of hooks resting on a curved piece of wood and pointing toward a central jagged blade. One of the hooks has become a man's head, with pursed lips and a distant expression, and the whole thing is supported by a man's leg. The form would not be out of place in a Tim Burton movie, but the figure's quietness of expression instead alludes to hooking outside elements of the world and pulling them in, satisfying needs. Viewed sideways, the figure has the graceful lines of a boat.

The corners of the gallery hold the most intricate pieces. Fish carrying male figure-- brilliantly and painstakingly patterned in red, black, and yellow-- shows a fish with the face of a baleen whale pushing a man before it. The fish's tongue reaches out to cover its back, its wild eye rolling towards the deeps. Like many of the sculptures, it dates back to the early 1900s, and therefore the crosses on the fish's jaw are tantalizing to a Western viewer: does the sculpture depict entirely indigenous themes, or has it been influenced by Jonah? The man borne by the fish carries a long pole or spear, and seems to not only be in some sort of harness, but to be standing directly on a smaller fish or face.

A boar sculpture, by contrast, uses no paint or geometric design. Instead, the artist constructed it of woven rattan on a wooden frame, and added tusks, cassowary plumes for bits of hair, and cowry shells for eyes. Those slit eyes, combined with the sculpture's lack of legs and tendency to lean to the wall, make it look appallingly, touchingly dead-- as if it had just breathed its last, the viewer left with a massive body that still dominates its surroundings. --Kate Williamson

Giants of Melanesia will be on view at the Denver Art Museum until September 30.