MEDIA

DOODLE DOES IT BECOMES LIFE

By Roger Eberle

Independent Times

Great art often mimics life, but the greatest art is so fully formed that it becomes life.  An array of messages emanate from among the becoming bliss of bronzes currently viewable at Elliot Lewis Gallery.  Doodle Does It challenges thoughtful observers by crossing traditional lines with art that animates the imagination to blur boundaries between casual culture tastes and eclectic high class aesthetics.  It only takes a quick glance at this exhibit to see that this unassumingly ironic little slogan is a title designed to playfully hint at the rich hue of humility underlying what discerning viewers of the exhibit will at once recognize as a graceful marriage of understated finely-textured elegance and formal complexity carefully orchestrated on an unprecedented scale of noteworthy sophistication.  Piece after marvelous piece splayed out with dexterous precision waves one away from sea to wondrous sea of reverie over the synthesis of subtleties conceived with such warm and resoundingly resonant passion by Cyrus Yavneh and Mary-Ann Liu.  Big Happy, the exhibit’s serenely endearing bright royal to dark blue avatar of artistic vitality, stands as a sleek, larger-than-life symbol of the encompassing worlds of pleasure in pain birthed here to die for in this invigoratingly transfixing display.  Its cross is borne of a center whose firm resolution softly alludes to the living presence of the considerable depths wrought by Ms. Liu with delicate deliberation as she morphed Mr. Yavneh’s visionary doodles into the well-appointed-and-nuanced members of this sussurate body of art sculpted with such extraordinary finesse.   For those of us who like to try to remember what once was through current methods, imagining the multi-dimensional meanings of hieroglyphic life before text has seldom been so fun!  As much as such a pretext may propel you towards this picturesque Journey from Doodles to Bronze, don’t think for a moment that this is merely ‘agit-prop.’  Perhaps you are a ‘never-believer’ as far as the art world goes.  But even if you are as skeptical about the likelihood of art becoming life as you are about the possibility of looking directly at the eye in the middle of a hurricane, you have this critic’s guarantee that by taking the time to look closely at this exhibit, you are sure to experience the rare surprise of seeing how a few simple-seeming artistically-formed doodles can make each of these doubts disappear.  Watch this exhibit carefully, and listen to your thoughts.  Softer, surer noises never sounded so solidly as those that rise from these richly textured bronze figures so welcomingly fit to become life.  Timely truths arise more from what is done than from what is said, and great art lives forever when both words and deeds stand to bear the true stamp of its ardent reflection.  See it to believe it.