Adam Kibbe

From a roughed-out clearing in the scumbled chaos whose colors are of mud and rage, a small, ominous crow lurks inertly. A scrap of aged newsprint bearing headlines of the occupation of Palestine looms up through the same thick, foreboding colors, its words tantalizingly obscured. Even the headline is incomplete, the publication’s dates invisible. Dried rivulets of vermillion are halted in their trickles down from a horizontal row of three widely-spaced wrought-iron nails driven into the canvas. Two cryptic letters hover at either side of the square, unframed piece, and several simple circles are scribed into the almost monochromatic millieu.

There is a new gallery just opened in Sudbury. It is on the second floor of an obscure, faux-Victorian retail building heavy with the ghosts of many failed businesses. But on this sunny November Saturday, Tricia and I find the space generously buoyed by light streaming in from leaded glass windows, the works well displayed in straightforward style without artifice. There is a distinct air of optimism, the owner bounding up and down stairs with cordless drill in hand, affixing yet more works to the walls of the not-quite-open third floor, pausing to greet the few visitors and encourage them to sign the guest book. No hint of sales pressure, just a love for what is on view, the pride evident.

We’ve made the rounds. It is not a large space, though the breadth of work is exciting and engrossing. The pieces include small and large sculpture, but are mostly oils or guaches, with a few quilts and giclee prints thrown in (no photographs, I note with ambiguous lack of reaction). Prices from tempting reaches to humiliatingly unobtainable. Many I like, one or two I quite love, and some, predictably, leave me mystified and unmoved. But I find myself once again standing before this one work and wondering what it is that draws me.

At the moment I can only remember the name of the piece, but not that of the artist. And I find this fitting — my experience of the gallery is certainly not this one artist, even this one piece, and should a reader find their way there, it would interest me to know if they would also find this piece, and find it notable. Thus I’ll leave even its title unannounced. The artist’s other works are less compelling, more contrived. Some of the elements I find powerful in this piece — newsprint, the scribed circles, and random letters — are found less successfully in other pieces, their power diminished by repetition. But this piece works, and it speaks of strong, dark emotion.

I am not alone in singling it out. In a writeup I found afterwards in townonline.com, the reviewer fleetingly describes a few pieces to give some of the flavor of what a visitor might experience, and they passingly refer to this work as “a collage where red paint bleeds from three nails embedded in the canvas”. Perhaps the salient hallmark, but not even a whiff of the whole. There is a cautionary tale here about the consequence of hatred and anger, and the almost monolithic use of excremental color seems to me a sentence of doom, of damnation. The red — perhaps deliberately not realistically the hue of blood — standing in as agony cutting through mute despair. Purest violence.

I don’t know that I seriously considered buying it, as I passed minute after minute thoughtfully before it, though I noticed its price and deemed it almost affordable. Would I want such a weighty, sombre piece malingering about my bright and beautiful home? It is too starkly dull to clash in any constant, superficial way, but its energy would stand out, its evocation of evil unwelcome in the sheltered vantage of denial we arguably foster by surrounding ourselves with our particular senses of beauty. A dangerous guest.

And here we are about to celebrate Thanksgiving in America. A now secular holiday debateably contrived and hyper-marketed, but ostensibly one celebrating nothing more than kinship and gratitude, with little in the way of retail subversion. But celebrated in a land so blinded by its riches that the concept of societal gratitude feels feigned. On a personal level, one does still muster sincere gratitude, though its expression may be scant in our daily lives. And so such a holiday welcomely puts us back in contact with some basic, humane touchstones. But in the scope of what this artwork addresses, it seems such gratitude may have gone missing.

No wonder, in lands where current horrors are wreaked nearly perpetually on brutalized souls as alluded to in the artwork. But here amongst the milk and honey, it’s an absence I find puzzling. And perhaps therein lies the value of such a work, and a reason for inviting it in to stand among the expressions of hope and exaltation. A contrast, but a complement; not in opposition.

It’s still hanging there as far as I know, and I don’t think I’m going back for it. Not that I think my ability to write about its effect on me passes for awareness or prophylaxia. Perhaps it is that age-old hesitance that something so stylized and “intentional” may only grate with time. Or that a second viewing might not find me open to its energy and it be judged more like its companion pieces — or worse, contrived and crude. Or maybe I’m just too attached to my comfy tower and its lambent ivoryness. Who’s to say?

There’s a new gallery in Sudbury. I look forward to the next exhibit — we signed the guest book. Maybe that piece will be waiting. Or maybe another admirer will find meaning or energy in that on which I lingered and buy it, take it home. Or maybe it’ll just get rotated out. Regardless, it’s a good gallery. It’s got heart, and it got to mine.

P.S. No way could I take a picture there, and I couldn’t think of a suitable placeholder, but I apologize for the graphic inadequacy of this entry……… Adam