Beautiful Human

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a panel discussion of the Beautiful Human show at Haverford College. Our very own Laura Graham is one of the six talented artists who were invited to include their work in the lovely show, along with Donald Camp, Matthew Fisher, Rob Matthews, Joshua Mosley, and James Mundie. There were several works exhibited by each artist, which gave the feeling, as curator Shelley Spector mentioned during the discussion, of six mini- solo shows.

In looking at the show, I personally was more interested in the way each artists' work defined portraiture rather than beauty. Formally, there were a lot of common threads - working in black and white, varying-but-all-on-the-high-side degrees of representationalism, obvious attention to detail, relatively minimal/clean technical execution, etc. But, each of the artists really approached portraiture in very different ways.

To start with the lone woman represented in the show, Laura's use of masks and archetypes serve to remove the individual and transform the models into specifically articulated, albeit anonymous, characters. Matthew Fisher's soldiers are similarly reduced to any/every-man status through their uniforms and stylized faces.

At the other end of the spectrum are the small, intimate and painstaking graphite portraits by Rob Matthews. His subjects are rendered with incredible draftsmanship and disciplined, repetitive line work. The care and patience alone taken in the act of this type of drawing suggest a relationship between the artist and sitter. The further inclusion of the symbolic objects held by the people in his drawings invite the viewer to "get to know" them in a humble and personal way.

During the discussion, there was one small comment that really resonated with me. In talking about process, Laura said that none of her photographs ever turn out the way she pictured them in her head. Rob added that the ones that you know exactly how they're going to look are the ones you never bother making anyway. This is something that I've always struggled with -- I've had ideas that will stick with me for years, that I never get around to. It wasn't until I heard him say the words that I realized why, and why I shouldn't worry so much about it.