Chas Bowie’s review of Jeffry Mitchell and Roy McMakin’s collaboration in Portland:<\/p>\n
\n“Joy and Reffry,” on view at Pulliam Gallery<\/a>, sounds at first like a curatorial sendup of “The Odd Couple” recast with two of Seattle’s most highly regarded artists. <\/p>\n
Playing the role of neat freak Felix Ungar in our contemporary incarnation is master craftsman Roy McMakin<\/a>
\n–artist, furniture designer and architect, whose impeccable sense of
\nformal restraint and subtle humor have led to international success in
\nboth the art and design communities. McMakin’s free-spirited foil in
\n“Joy and Reffry” –his Oscar Madison, if you will –is genre-twisting
\nceramic artist Jeffry Mitchell<\/a>,
\nwhose showy, neo-Rococo sculptures of pachyderm romance and
\nirrepressible curlicues would seem stylistically antithetical to the
\ndeadpan austerity of McMakin’s furniture-art. <\/p>\nMcMakin and Mitchell’s first collaboration,
\nhowever, finds the unlikely duo’s well-honed voices layered in a rich
\nharmony, with “Joy and Reffry” humming a lovesick tune about long-lost
\nobjects, invented memories, mournful absences and tactile pleasures. (more<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI read it with interest and mounting dismay. To my knowledge, this show attracted only one other review to date – mine<\/a>. Bowie’s reached a deeper level and did it with ease. His Oscar and Felix conceit is on target. I comfort myself with the idea that having one day in Portland, I reviewed the show at the opening, always tricky. But McMakin and Mitchell are Seattle artists. I wasn’t seeing their work for the first time. Maybe I’m posting too many images and not enough text.<\/p>\n
Speaking of good reviews<\/b>, there’s also Douglas Britt’s in the Houston Chronicle, titled, Houston can take cues from Seattle exhibit<\/i>:<\/p>\n
\nThe Seattle Art Museum’s Target Practice: Painting Under Attack 1949-78<\/i>, which closed on Labor Day, was the kind of ambitious show that deserved to spend the next couple years on tour. Maybe in a better economic climate it would have. But other museums — perhaps daunted by the cost of shipping major works borrowed from more than 70 lenders around the world — passed. They missed a chance to present that rarest of birds: a crowd-pleasing survey of some of art history’s most difficult material for audiences to understand, let alone appreciate and enjoy. (more<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chas Bowie’s review of Jeffry Mitchell and Roy McMakin’s collaboration in Portland: “Joy and Reffry,” on view at Pulliam Gallery, sounds at first like a curatorial sendup of “The Odd Couple” recast with two of Seattle’s most highly regarded artists. Playing the role of neat freak Felix Ungar in our contemporary incarnation is master craftsman […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1064","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}