More is more

“Laid to Rest II,” Andrew Blanchard (cyanotype and silkscreen mounted on board, 11″ x 16″ x 3″).

January is all about thinking big — I will lose 20 pounds! I will become a better person! — and the upstairs (artspace) in Tryon has caught the seasonal bug. Its New Year’s show features 70 works by 16 artists in various media, filling both of its showrooms with works created from clay, tin, dyed rayon, bronze and a host of other materials.

Mana D.C. Hewitt presents multilevel works in etched nickel and copper, while Ann Stoddard adds bright, plaid-painted, pleated canvases to the bottoms of her oil paintings. The tripartite “Laid to Rest” by Andrew Blanchard is a series of cyanotypes, dark-blue prints of blurred battleship masts. Fern Samuels uses Mylar for her lyrical collages of colors mixed with photographs.

Dustin Spagnola exhibits four of his thickly painted canvases, all mimicking walls defaced by graffiti and crumbling plaster. “Culture of Oppression” features a stenciled portrait of George W. Bush in a “Who, me?” pose. But Spagnola’s work loses a little of its authenticity when he adds a shiny finish, as he has in two of these pieces.

The Conte-crayon drawings of Ralph Paquin are stark and finely rendered allegories. His big, dark painting titled “Purging Ignorance,” with its contorted figures hovering over turbulent water, dominates the lower gallery space. It’s a powerful painting, disturbing and irresistibly seductive.

Paul Yanko has an impressive sense of color. He makes paintings with many facets, like those of a precious stone, except that his shapes are opaque and scattered randomly over the surface of the canvas. Yanko uses taping and layering to give the works a quality of low relief. In sharp contrast, Kathryn Rileigh makes small, almost monochromatic, collages in subtle earth tones. Her “Open Book, Illuminated Manuscript” is on two sheets of delicate deckle-edged paper, glued and stitched together. The paper is embellished with stamped tree and fish shapes; a fat, gray oval; and handwritten text.

Mystery is the hallmark of Edward Evans’ works. Exhibit labels identify his materials as acrylic and linen, but the art sparks questions about process and technique. Although they have a perfectly smooth surface, the paintings have areas that look like slightly puckered fabric, while other areas are covered with an indecipherable text that appears raised — a whole new take on trompe l’oeil.

There are small abstract monoprints by Gay Groomes and large abstract paintings by Scott Upton and Laura Spong: Upton’s work is all about light, while Spong plays with movement and ancient symbolism. Symbolism likewise plays a big part in the life-sized female torsos by Paula Smith. Like artifacts from a long-lost civilization, the women have no heads, no arms, no legs. They’re backed against a “wall” of clay holding niches or drawers embedded in the back of the body, and frequently capped with some kind of flimsy cage. Her “Common Keys” covers the torso with black-and-white hands, black-and-white rooster heads, and, at the bottom, silhouettes reminiscent of Kara Walker’s work.

Prize for the most innovative use of materials has to go to Hewitt for her intricately engraved works on metal plates. Her series, based on the concept of intelligent design, are outstanding. They are well executed and thoughtful.

With all the novelty of many of the show’s pieces, it could be that the most memorable work is a plain, old-fashioned oil painting by Kathryn Temple called “Red String.” It poses a wonderful clarity, and is realistically rendered without being stilted.

[Connie Bostic is an Asheville-based painter and writer.]

Group ’07 can be seen at the upstairs (artspace) at 49 South Trade St., Tryon, through Saturday, Feb. 24. (828) 859-2828.