"Wick's Trawler 3" (painting)
|
January 26, 2013 - A week ago Friday, over 30 Cedar Key friends and neighbors journeyed to Ocala to celebrate Chick Schwartz and the Appleton Museum of Art`s major retrospective of Chick`s works in many media. The exhibition, "Chick Schwartz, Cedar Key Artist," will be on view at the Appleton Museum through March 17. The impressive show of some 55 works, created over the 35 years since Chick gave up a career in engineering to follow the risky path of full-time artist, was hung and lit under the direction of the Appleton`s Curator of Exhibitions Ruth Grim. Chick`s sculptures in polished bronze, found art, and combinations of the two (or more) are exhibited next to oil paintings, collages, and ceramic murals hung along the Appleton Museum`s semi-circular balcony as well as in the adjacent second-floor gallery. (The selection of works shown here are published with Chick`s permission.) In brief remarks at the preview reception, Chick suggested that viewers look for the negative space in a number of his sculptures (the mind adds what isn`t solidly represented in, say, a ballet pas de deux in polished bronze) and that they let themselves fall into the urban canyons of his perspective "paintings" (in fact, ceramic murals). 
"Nudist Tubist" (mixed media sculpture)
|
(By the way, closer to home, another of Chick`s perspective pieces is hanging in Cedar Key, in the Island Hotel dining room.) Representing what might be called the artist`s "Cedar Key Period" (the Schwartzes moved to Cedar Key in 2002) are redfish, both painted and sculpted, and several of Chick`s 2010 series of vivid oil paintings of "Wick`s boat." The Appleton Museum of Arts has much to recommend it - not the least, though March 17, Chick`s show. (Couch potatoes can opt instead for Chick`s website, http://www.chickschwartz.com .) The museum, built by Chicago and Ocala collector Arthur Appleton to house his collection of antiquities and art - all a gift to the City of Ocala - opened in 1987. Subsequently expanded and now overseen by The College of Central Florida, the Appleton rotates exhibitions from its permanent collection in bite-size galleries. Currently - though soon to go on the road - is an exhibition of medieval Persian ceramics collected by Arthur Appleton. Exquisite. Go. Before March 17. 
"Woman Chair" (mixed media; Marsha and Chick Schwartz collaboration)
|
"How It Is 2012" (ceramic mural)
|
"Redfish" (painting)
|
"Wick's Trawler 5" (painting)
|
| 