Wild Lines

Two compelling exhibits open at BAU Gallery

Soon after the opening of Bob Barry’s show The Other World at the Beacon Artist Union (BAU) gallery on June 14, a visitor with a British accent praised the artist’s glazed clay mammals and asked: “How do you get that bumpy texture?”

Expressing thanks, Barry replied that the process involves what is known as “lava, or volcanic glaze,” which imparts a pockmarked quality resembling the moon’s surface. More accolades flowed as the evening unfolded, and pieces began selling like beer at a ball game. At one point, a line formed in front of the desk as buyers claimed around half the items in the collective’s showcase gallery. 

The figures are “about a world we’ve lost and a tribute to animals, which we disregard,” Barry says. “I respect nature and appreciate it.”

It’s easy to identify the species of several sculptures; others are more amorphous. Barry, who studied in Japan, embraces any “happy accidents” that occur when he fires up a beast to create a particular form, yet the result resembles something else. Is that a hedgehog or a porcupine?

“They speak to me and tell me what they want to be, but keeping things open is a good thing,” he says. “People process art on an individual level.”

The show occupies two of BAU’s galleries, with larger works up front and palm-sized creations in the cozy rear room. One visitor said that the figures convey the gravitas of a cave painting. A buyer of one small piece said that the musk ox (or water buffalo’s) expression “is like, ‘What are you looking at?’ ”

Barry creates his own glaze colors, which are mostly muted, although some shimmer. “These are not commercially available — it took a long time mixing and matching,” he says.

Sandwiched between the two rooms with Barry’s totems to the natural world is a show of 13 abstract wall works by Nansi Lent, many of which pay homage to calligraphy and the written word with an alphabet she is developing. A couple of letters resemble a B and a G.

The show, Said, Not Said, reflects Lent’s fascination with words and the process of writing by hand, “an antidote to the digitization of our world,” where “words saturate every medium yet so often fail to convey true meaning,” according to her wall statement.

The flowing lines in “Language is Melting” evoke graffiti. Her layering process, using different paints, some of which include glitter, involved working with one color at a time. 

“I didn’t want to stop and pick up the next day; I had to keep the flow going,” she says. Someone compared it to work by Jasper Johns, the American flag guy from the 1950s, due in part to the prevalent hues of red, white and blue.

Four more digital prints hang in one of the gallery’s picture windows. The psychedelic circles in “Rhapsodic Extrapolated Semiotics” are mesmerizing, and “My Heart Explodes,” which evokes Toulouse-Lautrec’s Belle Epoque prints, features Lent’s creative lettering.

“For years I kept journals, but I didn’t want to read them, and I didn’t want anyone else to read them either,” she says. “I just like the physicality of writing.”

The BAU Gallery, at 506 Main St., is open from 4 to 7 p.m. on Friday and noon to 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, or by appointment. See baugallery.org. Both exhibits continue through July 6.