Trio of Missouri artists stands out in Sager Reeves' August Exhibit
Sager Reeves Gallery curates with an eye toward the larger landscape, gathering artists from across the country to Columbia. And each December, the gallery truly stretches across time and place, focusing on the work of oft-overlooked 20th-century artists in its Masters Exhibit.
But the Walnut Street venue has never overlooked its own creative backyard, and often places farther-flung artists in conversation with those closer to home. The gallery's latest monthly exhibit is a Missouri trifecta, uniting area artists with so much to say about who and where we are.
Here's a glance at the trio sharing the August Exhibit.
Chris Dahlquist
Kansas City-based Chris Dahlquist should be recognized as one of the great Missouri artists of our generation. Soulfulness attends her photographic processes, as Dahlquist slips between and stresses elemental layers, treating viewers to the real stuff of life.
One of Dahlquist's cherished subjects, clouds, recurs here. But rather than accentuate their silver and gold linings with metallic prints, the photographer suspends them against gorgeous, inky-black grids, as if they will hover — and perhaps even split open — over David Lynch-ian landscapes.
Shimmering mountain silhouettes — termed "Investigations of Grace" — display the true alive-ness of seemingly fixed natural objects. And Dahlquist's extensive series of "field samples" explores the worlds within worlds. By looking through a magnifying lens, pressing a button for illumination and gazing inside, viewers have the opportunity to be immersed in the details of a root system, old-growth forest or gathering of birds.
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Amy Meyer
A generous, ever-evolving presence on the Columbia art scene, Amy Meyer's painting gradually grows more abstracted — and, in its own way, more sympathetic.
Her "Meditations on Chaos" series will no doubt show viewers something of themselves: the entanglements, chambers of color and internal geometry that comprise us amid current, and ongoing, crises of being.
Indigo shapes, white lines which coil back on each other, seemingly endless swaths of green, and triangles emerging from the composition stand in for the pieces of us which — while inherently promising on their own — twist together, causing tension. In chaos, there's particular beauty to be found, and Meyer presents it masterfully for viewers to absorb.
Nora Othic
If home is truly where the heart is, then Nora Othic's paintings reach something deep inside.
The Brookfield-based artist delivers detail-rich portraits of the animals that make so many lives worth living — rabbits, horses, cows. Sometimes, Othic places these gentle creatures against backdrops that are natural yet feel stylized; at others, she sets them against the same color fields that might frame a human portrait, underlining their dignity.
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This time around, Othic also offers a series of houses that could exist in Anywhere, Missouri — or any neighborhood across the Midwest, for that matter — yet feel beautifully familiar. Relying on color, naturalistic light and deceptively simple geometry, these compositions transcend mere pictures of where we might lay our heads; they truly engender a sense of fondness and belonging.
The August Exhibit is on display through Aug. 27. Visit https://sagerreevesgallery.com/ for more information.
Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731. Find him on Twitter @aarikdanielsen.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Sager Reeves gallery in Columbia features three Missouri artists
