O'Sullivan Arts Center -- Deborah Howard Exhibit 1999

Deborah Howard: Labyrinth

October 28 - December 2, 1999

Opening reception: October 28th, 4:30-7:00 p.m.

Artist lecture: November ____, 7:00 p.m.

Labyrinth, the title of this show, and of the painting reproduced on the cover, provides an apt metaphor for artist Deborah Howard's exploration of relationships between body and spirit, life and death. In her art, these dualities merge in forms that reveal continuity. Triple Möbius has, literally, to beginning or end, as the single ribbon-like surface twists around to meet itself, symbolizing infinity. Other paintings depict entwined couples or woven baskets. One's first impression of Labyrinth is of brightly colored chaos, but closer observation reveals strands that intertwine, often changing direction, but almost always moving from one edge of the circle to the other. If these are life paths, then they intersect, dance around one another, and sometimes end abruptly to be replaced by other paths.

Deborah's fascination with such intersecting imagery began with sketch books full of woven forms -- a woven shoe, a pair of wings -- and with two large paintings, Queen and Luxor. She painted the image of a monumental woven basket called Queen after her grandfather died, as a way of working through feelings about his death, and that of her grandmother two years earlier. Both burial ceremonies had an impact on the artist. Her memory of a pregnant female rabbi conducting her grandmother's service may have reinforced her sense of a continuity that makes it difficult to separate life from death. The basket form in Luxor reveals a human shape, like a woven mummy or shroud. Is this vessel/body now empty of life's spirit, or does it represent the spirit? There is a powerful presence in Luxor.

Other paintings, Balance, Nape of her Neck, Pentimento and Embrace weave human figures together in acts of love and life. Most intriguing is the sense, emerging in her most recent work, of being inside the body vessel looking out. Arachne strongly suggests the view from inside Luxor looking out beyond its woven confines.

Deborah Howard is married to artist Robert St. John, and they have a son, Solomon. The intertwining of their three lives, as human spirits and as artists, has had a visible impact on the development of her art. Bob sometimes serves as critic, Solomon often as inspiration. Mother and son share an interest in symbols. Nine-year-old Solomon made his mother a book of what he termed "prehistoric writing." The book contained pages of pictographs, some of which have provided images for Deborah's brightly colored paintings in the form of grids filled with symbols. Others appear in very small-scale paintings.

Trained as a printmaker, Deborah Howard received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1978 and her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison four years later. Today she is an associate professor at the University of Denver's School of Art and Art History, where she teaches painting and drawing. The work in this exhibit reflects her backgrounds in both printmaking and painting, whose materials and techniques she melds. Paper, the principal support for prints, has provided the support for many of her paintings since she learned from New York artist Robert Stackhouse how to stretch wet paper on canvas. She builds her images of watercolor, gesso, graphite, oil pastels and other materials, sometimes scratching through the layers with etching tools to produce a stressed surface effect.

Professional credits include solo exhibits in Chicago, Shreveport, Fort Worth, Duluth, and Denver, as well as group shows in New York City, Los Angeles and Beijing, China, among others. In 1993, she was awarded a residency at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences in Rabun Gap, Georgia. She has lived in Israel and makes an annual trip to Santa Fe and Ghost Ranch. Some of the recent paintings in this exhibit were begun there. After the solemn palette of Queen and Luxor, the bright light and colors of the Southwest landscape emerged in Labyrinth -- life following death to infinity.

-- Annette Stott

I was initially attracted to the physicality of Deborah Howard's painting. Her images are created from strong and deliberate marks that, through their soft wrapping forms, evoke a warm sensuality. In these pictures of vessels, bound spheres, Möbius strips, and depictions of the human figure is an expression of spiritual and emotional journey. Some images describe an obsessive wrapping and maze-like tangle of ribbon or fiber. Others depict baskets or vessels reminiscent of early human articles that served a primitive need to gather food, tools, and ritual objects. These images arouse an ancient sense of sacredness about that which is worth collecting and protecting -- like those things one finds wrapped in a medicine bundle or the magic carried within the human body.

-- William Sutton
Associate Professor
Director, O'Sullivan Arts Center
Regis University
Denver, Colorado

Howard -- Labyrinth