Cedar Rapids art exhibit reveals new layers of lifelong artists

CEDAR RAPIDS — A new exhibit is giving three longtime artists in Cedar Rapids a reintroduction, of sorts.

With portals to their past as younger artists and an entirely new portfolio of work created for the new exhibit, “Pentimento: Layers Revealed” offers a glimpse at each artist’s growth over decades through various mediums.

“We have each been engaged in artistic pursuits and involved in arts and culture our entire professional lives,” said Gail Naughton, whose textile art appears in the exhibit. “Now, we are building on our own layers of ideas, observations and experiences, shaping ourselves as practicing artists.”

The exhibit title’s first operative noun, defined as traces of old paintings visible on reused canvas, also offers an inspiring message: It’s never too late to rekindle creativity.

From sketches to oils

For each artist, one early piece of art hangs in the gallery as a reference point for their journey outlined on adjacent walls.

McClain’s started with a painting in 1971 — an oil portrait of her husband as the newlywed couple lived in Alaska. But the rest of her new works delve even farther into her past.

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Here, the artist gives new dimensions to an old sketchbook from her years in high school and college. Each piece, void of facial detail but rich in the vibrations of each subject’s mood, reconnects the old with the new.

McClain started painting in 1970, and it took her over 50 years to get serious about it. Despite the angst about not getting around to it sooner, she said her new works benefit from hindsight by incorporating the seasoning she earned over her life.

“I started where I left off,” McClain said. “I took those drawings I knew so well and (was challenged) to interpret them on large canvasses.”

Known more for her promotion of other artists at her CornerHouse Gallery over 32 years, she has relished the opportunity to develop herself. The trio of women in the Schwartzkopf Gallery know their experiences are part of a trend that has persisted among artists for a long time.

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“Talking to women, the thing I’d hear is ‘Oh, I used to do art. I was an art major. I did creative things, but I haven’t done it because I’ve gotten sidelined with careers, family, children,’ ” McClain said. “We have all these layers that we knew were there, but we hadn’t really developed it, and no one else knew it.”

They’ve revealed something new for the artist whose signature in Cedar Rapids has been more prominently expressed through sketches focused on the human body.

Blurring the lines

For exhibit artist Lisa Oberreuter, a landscape of the English countryside has evolved into abstracts with an unusual twist. In addition to their blend of cold wax and oil paint, each one incorporates organic elements.

“When I started painting, I’d take a photograph. It was a very specific time, a specific date — recreating that,” she explained. “But what I’ve gone to is, instead of being very specific, I’ve gone more universal.”

Now, instead of going to Salisbury, England, in October 2012, her landscapes have become a portal that takes viewers wherever they’d like to go.

Her incorporation of cold wax, learned from a fellow artist while the Cedar Rapids native lived in North Carolina for 16 years, adds textures applied with a spatula or palette knife. Between them, shades of oil are punctuated by various elements — dirt, flecks of metal, milkweed seed among them.

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Pairing the salt of the earth with the atmosphere above Earth, each tonalist landscape offers an ethereal result that doesn’t elude meaning.

After serving as a training director for 10 plants under a subsidiary of Coca-Cola, she wants everyone to realize that creativity is within them.

“Especially women of a certain age. We’re free, we don’t have to go to work every day, but it gives us a chance to re-explore our background,” Oberreuter said. “There is a call to creativity. We just have to answer.”

Listening to the trees

Naughton’s pieces, inspired by the derecho of 2020, pair a 2004 quilt with textile art in an entirely new category. The largest, titled “Angry Oak,” is a 10-foot bolt of fabric that was dyed while stapled to a damaged tree in her yard.

Blotched with red, black and orange, it interprets a visceral message for the grief felt by Cedar Rapids after the natural disaster.

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“I kept thinking that those oaks have been here 150 to 200 years. How must they feel? I got the idea they were screaming and crying,” Naughton said. “I felt like it gave that tree a way to voice its anger.”

Other pieces, like an old silk blouse imprinted by leaves and sticks, also convey the voices of the earth.

Naughton, who has lived in Cedar Rapids since 2002, previously was director of the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library for 16 years. As she re-engages with a new, freehand growth, she hopes the exhibit instills a new appreciation for less common artistic mediums.

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Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.