Spaces Gallery Presents Multi-Media Exhibition

Surface Tensions, a multi-media exhibition, is currently showing at Spaces, a non-profit gallery in Cleveland that has shown the work of several Oberlin professors. The show presents the work of nine artists and is on view until Dec. 29. The pieces explore texture and pattern through painting, video and sculpture.

Kate Budd, a professor at the University of Akron, used mainly wax and salt to create her "Current Breeder" series, an impressive collection of sculptures exploring issues of sexuality. Budd's statement that her work "walks the line between abstraction and representation" is evidenced by the suggestive yet elusive quality of the seven carefully molded wax eggs installed into the wall. The molds are about a foot to a foot and a half in diameter, each spiraling in the center like a conch shell. They are all different shapes, sizes and hues and the textures range from glistening, almost iridescent to a subdued creamy haze. Some have deep cuts in the center, filled with hair-like filaments of copper wire and others hold a handful of navy beans.

The white beans are used again in Budd's "Eggs." A succession of translucent wax pockets filled with beans are strung from the ceiling, extending from the wall to the panel of windows. The eggs cluster toward the window, near a pillar where a pile of the beans rests at the base. The installation is inventive and beautiful, reflecting a self-conscious approach to texture and light.

"Cone Fields," an installation by Ithaca College professors Megan Roberts and Raymond Ghirado, relies on video projections, sculpture and sound to create an eerie, charged atmosphere. The two artists have been collaborating for over 24 years and have won several awards, including grand prize at the Tokyo Video Festival.

The work is literally a field of 16 paper cones, ranging from two to four feet high. The cones are grouped on the floor, flanked by hundreds of twigs, each wrapped at the center with tiny scrolls of obscure text. The wispy sound of a composition arranged by Roberts fills the room, complementing the ethereal quality of the visual arrangement. Two video projectors at opposite ends of the darkened room simultaneously light the cones with abstract images.

Roberts and Ghirado explain that the projections are extreme close-ups of natural images, text and computer animated images. The flickering video lifts the cones off the floor, the points rising to the ceiling, while the interplay between geometric shapes and light create a painterly field of pale colors. Barely any projection spills off the cones ‹ only a slight, luminous silhouette is cast on the walls. The artists digitally marked their imagery so that the projection falls only on the cones. They are currently working on a way to project the images from the ceiling in an effort to exaggerate the choppy dimensionality of the piece.

Surface Tensions also includes the work of other artists who employ unusual devices to explore texture. Marrietta Heferer, a German artist working in New York, uses strapping tape in "Unknown" to create gleaming fields of diamond-shaped patterns. The tape is painstakingly managed into a panorama of order that is muted in color but vibrant in texture. The envelope paintings of Shona MacDonald, a Scottish artist who attended the University of Illinois, are equally meticulous. Cutting normal business envelopes into razor-thin strips, she orders them on the canvas in dizzying grids and swirls. Other artists use paint and video to further Surface Tension's examination of texture and meaning.

Spaces is located at 2220 Superior Viaduct on the West Side of the Flats.