Art: Review: Massive/Intrinsic

Can a big idea — actually a massive one — change its location and still carry its weight? That is to say, can the Massive sculpture exhibitions we knew in the great, glorious interiors of SSNOVA/The Mockbee move outdoors and retain the same excitement? And can Mac’s Farm and Sculpture Center, a unique setting if there ever was one, morph its annual exhibition series Without Walls into the seventh of the Massive series, Massive: Intrinsic?

The answer to all these questions is yes, and if you don’t go out to Blue Ash to see this exhibition of sculpture, you’ll miss something special. Curator Chris Daniel, who initiated the Massive series at SSNOVA with Carissa Barnard in 2002, sets out to “create an atmosphere where sculpting professors, students, professionals, as well as outsider artists can come together to exchange ideas and inspire each other.”

Unspoken but implicit is the prospect of a wider audience. If good art is communication on an intuitive level, it can’t just talk to itself.

Daniel was one of the artists in the first Without Walls exhibition when Robert T. McConaughy expanded the family farm into Mac’s Farm and Sculpture Center, also in 2002. McConaughy’s family has owned the land since 1920; its 22 acres are now the last working farm in Blue Ash.

Since 2002, every year has seen a Without Walls exhibition, but McConaughy’s own sculptural career has broadened during this time.

This summer found him working on installations for three different venues. In April he proposed to Daniel that Massive, having lost The Mockbee space, move to the farm. Daniel, plenty busy himself as a member of the environmental installation collaborative Thin Air Studio, a working blacksmith with his own metal design and fabrication shop, and teacher in the Art Academy’s community program, said yes.

“It had been over two years since the last Massive exhibition,” Daniel says. “I couldn’t help but think about the one really personal and important aspect of The Mockbee (closing) that I felt was missing. That one aspect was Massive. There’s something that sticks with you when you bring folks from all walks of life together to create something for everyone to see that hasn’t been seen before. And man, did it leave a crater in my gut to abandon that.”

So he didn’t. Sixteen artists, some with multiple pieces and three of them collaborating on a single installation, are participants in Massive: Intrinsic. Six have been in previous Massive exhibitions, and four of them have also shown at the farm before. But the presence of so much new blood is healthy for the community of artists and the audience for their work.

While The Mockbee provided unusual interior space for sculpture, the farm has its own unique traits. Trees, shrubbery and handsome stands of ironweed make for outdoor “rooms” that set off the works as a series of discoveries. Ceramicist Lisa Merida-Paytes’ “Spirit Markers” lurk among trees like the animals they evoke. Craig Schmidt’s “Saw-tooth Acorn” is centerpiece of a space, framed by a low stone wall, dead tree limbs and shrubbery — almost like a stage set.

The outdoors produces its own unexpected consequences. When I first saw Lisa Hueil Conner’s marvelously crafted ceramic fish sculpture, “Second Chance,” one head was lifted, thrusting out of a little stream. Another fish only had its tail out of water. The next time I saw it the water had receded, leaving the fish in mud. Perhaps Conner’s title is a reference to this ebb and flow?

Ben Mattingly’s “Orange You Glad You Came…” is as playful as its title, a suggested path marked by tall, orange-painted tree limbs thrust into the ground.

Mattingly’s work “renewed my hope,” says Daniel.

“I immediately thought of Pat,” he says, “and how much she would have enjoyed this piece.”

Daniel is speaking of Pat Renick, teacher, mentor and cheerleader for Cincinnati’s sculpture community who died earlier this year. She is remembered in the catalogue as “bringing us together time and time again, and showing us how it should be done, reminding us that we are stronger together than we are alone.”

Massive, outside in the open air, is doing just fine. Grade A-

This article appears in Sep 5-11, 2007.