Circle Time at able baker contemporary

The Portland Phoenix
February 22, 2018

“Children are sponges," as the saying goes. The benefits to kids' mental and emotional development that come from an early exposure to art—education, materials, space, the encouragement to make, and language for describing visual culture—is widely accepted.

But the impacts run even deeper when they grow up around working artists. Raised by those who follow the commitment and rigors of a focused practice, who have developed and nurtured aesthetic processes, young people's understanding of art-making expands exponentially. This is undeniable when viewing Circle Time, currently up at Able Baker Contemporary, where 15 pairs of professional artists and their children hang work side by side. The show provides a framework that treats kids' art with the same integrity that their parents’ more refined practices get regularly. This approach not only elevates the viewer's engagement with children’s work, but highlights that when kids and parents make art together, both get something valuable in the exchange. It is also easy to feel a flicker of envy for these children, raised in the studios and homes of some of Maine’s most talented contemporary makers.

Stephen Benenson, artist, father, and Able Baker co-founder, describes the experience as one of “dual directional influence.” The parents, many of whom have spent years immersed in artistic study, get to be around a child’s un-self-conscious creative experimentation. Children’s work doesn’t come from highly sophisticated or polished motives, but fresh and playful ones. There are rapid-fire trials with composition, and often a freedom and vigor in mark-making. Because the art is rarely overwrought or heavy-handed, all traps that can snag established artists preoccupied with audiences, marketplaces, and various art worlds, it holds a natural elegance that's harder for adults to achieve. 

Reverence for the purity and unfettered boldness of children’s work is not a new thing in the art historical canon. Circle Time’s curatorial statement makes reference to leaders in movements like Art Brut and Abstract Expressionism who explicitly credited and sought inspiration in the work of kids. Parallels between the younger generation's Circle Time work and titans of twentieth century painting are fun to call out. Francis Harrity’s drawings vibrate like the energetic scribbles of Cy Twombly.  Wren Wethli’s paintings recall Joan Mitchell’s gestural, lush, loaded brushwork. These similarities underscore how much some of the masters of American painting sought to steer their practices back to more intuitive and primordial impulses.

Some works on view are collaborations between parent and child. Tessa and Hilary Irons’ “Sea Cat Collage” strikes a delightful balance between Hilary’s obvious skill with compositional depth and layering and the playful looseness of Tessa’s drawings. Finding that harmony is no small feat.

Gideon Bok and his daughter Ada both simultaneously drew one another in the studio. This setup created a dependency and equanimity in the creative environment, while they each also maintained their own outcomes. Gideon’s drawings of Ada use light, erased graphite marks to document her motion and various postures in the studio space. The rest of the scene that remained unmoved and unchanged during the process gets darker with the repeated linework. Ada’s multiple drawings show her parent working, sometimes behind a table, sometimes with a funny hat on, but always with googly eyes glued in place. Both artists are concerned with outline and the edges of their subject. Both sets of drawings are also brimming with warmth and affection for the whole endeavor.

Isla Benenson’s “Elmo Truck” is a joyful construction that is hard not to smile at. Isla’s marks are evident on every piece of the sculpture, a cardboard semi toting a homemade Elmo doll, a Sponge Bob, an inflated and happy rubber glove, and a foam mouse behind the wheel. No doubt the finished work involved some skilled parental participation, but the artist’s clear intentionality and play is delightfully evident.

Circle Time is not only an engaging portrait of some of the artist families in the Portland community. It's an avenue to consider the things that we, as adults, can learn from our children, and how art making can shape lives.

Circle Time | Through March 3 | Able Baker Contemporary, 29 Forest Ave., Portland | www.ablebakercontemporary.com