ARTWeek Review: Jane Rosen at Braunstein/Quay Gallery

Jane Rosen's talent is in finding the shadows of things, the soft sepia tones of birds and mammals, the quiet and penetrating turn of a beak or gaze of a feral eye. Her recent show at Braunstein/Quay Gallery was a muted collection of painting and sculptures, evoking both the seen and the hidden of nature.

It is too simple to call her paintings "paintings" -- they are more like sculptural plaques colored by coffee and marble dust, shaped and textured by layers of gypsum stone. They often depict birds or deer, sharing the frame with grids of mesh in gentle, forest-y tones. It is as if the living and the geometric each echo the shadow of the other, an ecru play of liquid and stone, soft-hard textures, shades of rust and gray and black. Dust (Copper's Hawk) is a white-gray shadow of a perched bird - roosting at dusk in coffee and cream, or waiting behind a fog - leading the viewer to reconsider if there is much distinction between the substances humans and nature brew.

Rosen's sculptures are more evocative, less precise rendition of similar subject matter - and she pays as much attention to the material as to the shapes she forms with it. The Gamut series - vaguely animal sculptures in Provencal limestone - is composed rough, raw stone figures on pedestals. Sphinx is the sharply angled idea of a sphinx; Mayo (named for Rosen's dog) is barely chiseled as if the shape of a dog was found in the stone, then sketched in pencil on the surfaces and in the grooves. In Klimt, one can see some of Klimt's reaching lines and lateral segmentations, but the piece is just as evocative of a burned-out tree trunk. Rodin, on the other hand, is the opposite of Rodin's smooth, precise figures. It is a rough, highly textured, largely undefined shape - perhaps the Rodin-esque figure is buried underneath?

Rosen also has a sense of humor, evidenced for example in Oh Deer and Wall Foot. The former is a wall-mounted sculpture, a nearly five-foot high narrow bird's body with a deer head sculpted around a bundle of sticks, producing an organic, witty quality. Wall Foot emerges bony and elongated from the base of a wall, as if it were impishly waiting to trip an innocent passer-by. Rosen captures the private lives of creatures in her works - both the comic and dramatic sides. And because Rosen represents this privacy, we don't quite gain entry into it.

June 6th | First Friday Event: Art, exploration mix in show of paintings

Miller N. Resor | Jackson Hole News & Guide

If Matt Flint had not become an artists, he would have liked to be an explorer. In a way, he is both. "I am constantly experimenting with different ways to get paint on the surface," Flint said of his semi-abstract work. "I like to give myself as much opening as I can to experiment."

At 5:30 p.m. on Friday, the public is invited to the opening of Flint's show, "Lost and Found," and other First Friday festivities at Lyndsay McCandless Contemporary. Flint will attend and plans to speak at 6 p.m.

He sees his work as a "process contained," not just a finished piece. "My paintings are about isolation and transformation," he said. "They have this history underneath," he said. "There is never one that stays the same, if you X-ray them, you would see things moved about. They are always changing."

In his paintings, he mixes layers of earthy oil paint with collages of old maps and pictures of arctic explores. Images of plants, birds, deer and horses emerge from weathered backgrounds. There is an aged, historic feel to his paintings, and a touch of scientific curiosity seen through the blurred surrealism of a dream.

The lone artists in a family of scientists, Flint said he has always had dueling interest between science and art. As a child, on a self-sustaining farm in Missouri, he liked the aesthetics of things under a microscope. "I think a lot of that comes out in the mark making and some of the underlying stuff in my paintings," he said.

In high school, Flint decided to study art. He received his bachelor of fine arts from Central Missouri State in 1994, working after he graduated as a freelance illustrator and continuing to pursue studio work on his own time.

Motivated by a desire for more studio time for his personal projects, he returned to Wichita State University to attain his master of fine arts degree. Flint thinks that in the modern age of digital perfection, there is a demand for evidence of the artist's hand, for intimate connections and personal discoveries.

Flint now lives in Lander, where he explores nature and teaches art at Central Wyoming College.