Modern ideas and mythology 

--Maurice Merleau-Ponty

It would be easy to stop by Hodges Taylor Gallery and simply admire the work presently on display for its sparse beauty and quiet mystery, but you'd miss a lot if you left it at this. The work of Tom Stanley and Thomas Sayre requires further investigation because first impressions are not always accurate and appearances can be deceiving. Stanley and Sayre, though working in different mediums and through different traditions, are both driven to make things that require a high level of psychic and physical involvement. And it is the involvement in the process and the experience of making objects that propels both artists to create.Tom Stanley's new series of paintings, entitled Across the River, crafts a haunting visual and personal narrative based on discoveries he made while researching his grandfather's life in New Orleans. Stanley writes that, "This latest work...is based on preliminary research of my grandfather, a decorative arts painter from New Orleans."

In the course of this research, Stanley discovered the following in the Times-Picayune of Friday, June 18, 1920: "Mystery surrounds the manner in which John Thomas Stanley, young painter, living at 1703 Coliseum Street met his death by drowning in the Mississippi River. The youth's body, which was found floating in the river at the head of Harmony Street Thursday afternoon, was identified late Thursday by his wife. According to police, Sunday night just before the heavy downpour of rain, (Stanley's friend) Conrad left his home in company with Stanley. They are said to have visited a saloon located near Conrad's home. Both men it is said left their hats at the saloon and departed after remarking they were going across the river."

At first glance, Stanley's paintings appear to be decoupage layered on wood. This is in part based on the narrative -- reminders that Stanley's grandfather was a decorative arts painter -- and in part on the flatness, the "cut-out" quality of the forms and symbols. These forms also reflect Stanley's fascination with the tools of mechanical drawing -- t-bars, protractors, tape, hand planes, etc. But the work also reflects Stanley's interest in surface. In fact, if you look carefully at these paintings you will see that they are made up of multiple layers -- dark and light, thick and thin. The thin layering, the glazes, evoke at once the immediacy of the artist's hand and a misty window on the past. Wherever there's a fog, there's a mist. Wherever there's a mist, there's a mythology lurking.

Thomas Sayre is a thoroughly modern artist with an affinity for thoroughly modern ideas. He is engaged in many activities -- sculpture, design, collaboration, even music - that on the surface appear unrelated. There are threads, however, that connect all of these seemingly disparate activities. In this exhibit, called Earth, Vessels, and Scribbling, those threads are his passion for making and thinking and process. Sayre is, in his own words, an "inveterate maker." Making and the discoveries tied to making engage Thomas Sayre. He is totally invested in and given over to the manner in which objects come into existence, both the objects that he himself crafts and those that surround him.What moves Sayre out of the realm of pure craft is his psychic involvement with that which prescribes the making -- the process or technique and its capacity for representing the idea. This is not to suggest that the process is pre-determined. In his work, the process is discovered through the physical articulation of ideas. It is serendipity around a core of purpose borne of intention. Seeking the technique leads to other questions and new explorations. The process is about the ongoing self and is itself an act of discovery: The work and the self are a continuum. This is one of the many marks of Sayre's talent and his modernity.

Sayre's objects at Hodges Taylor are vessels that blur boundaries between ceramic and sculpture, sculpture and architecture. Though they are reinforced concrete, these vessels appear as oversized, inverted ceramic cones. This is what I like most about Sayre's work -- his methods always surprise. Even the paintings/drawings/studies in the show are not made as they appear. For the most part they are made not with a brush but with a blowtorch or other sculptural implement that happens to pique Sayre's interest. The objects he creates are visual equivalents of musical inventions.

These vessels are formed with the help of steel and with the earth as an armature. The soil is shaped as a cone, concrete is then layered atop the earth, dirt is then thrown on the concrete for color and texture. The resulting cone is then inverted. The residue of the earth's texture marks the inside of each vessel. Again, we have intention married to chance. Sayre cannot dictate the marks, the textures, or sometimes the pebbles or the roots that nature lends to overall success of the finished work.

The works of Stanley and Sayre presently on view at Hodges Taylor Gallery offer a lot to consider both in terms of their distinct approaches to form, content, and working method. What these artists share is an interest in the notion of the journey -- literally and metaphorically -- that is based on perception and point of view, knowledge and discovery, personal meaning and mythology.

Hodges Taylor Gallery is located in Transamerica Square. The Stanley and Sayre exhibits are on display through April 26. Call 704-334-3799.