Rosalie Vass: When Sky Meets Earth

Saginaw Art Museum

Saginaw, Michigan

517-754-2491

http://members.xoom.com/SaginawArt/main/index.htm

Rosalie Vass: When Sky Meets Earth

Rosalie Vass, Girl From Ipenema, 1993

Mixed water media and pencil, 43 1/4 x 29 1/2 in.

The Saginaw Art Museum is pleased to present the exhibition When Sky Meets Earth by Rosalie Waranius Vass. The show is comprised of about 15 works in watercolors and mixed media, and will be on display in the First-Floor Center Gallery from September 5 - October 5, 1997.

Though Waranius Vass's art has variously been described as "rich in movement,

geometry and design," as teeming with "pattern and color," as "precisely ordered,

confetti-colored," and as "whimsical," there is power in her production. Her canon

comprises work rich in conception and execution, mature texts that convey the

human connection to the global environment. Though many of Vass's paintings

confound and conflate the usual expectations in landscape paintings, there remains

the sense of curvature, of tilt, of gravity, both physical and intellectual. And that may

be the triumph of Vass's body of work: the interplay of the heavens and the earth,

the connectedness of animal life and human and divine.

To look at Vass's work is to understand the integration of play and high seriousness.

The intense use of color, primaries and purples, pastels and pastiche, communicates

the willingness to play with the viewers' expectations, and yet the art causes us to

want those unexpected delights. Her willingness to play with scenes she has

observed in the physical world and those she has seen only in her mind allows Vass

to produce art that conveys certain truths about a fragile natural ecology. And though

she might not call herself an environmental artist, the fragility comes through the

multi-media representations of the natural and supernatural world. Angels are

juxtaposed to fields of cows; tulips overlay bright skies of red and blue, sun acts as

spotlight on a village nestled in a valley; coyotes function as fence for grazing sheep.

The text on her canvas is meant to be read, where signs and symbols are richly

arrayed for the viewer's pleasure. Rational interpretation and affective response are

both right - those who look at this artist's body of work can employ either approach,

and whether it be gut level or cerebral, there is the pleasure of the text.

Janice Wolff, PhD

Saginaw Valley State University

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Search for more articles and essays on American art in Resource Library. See America's Distinguished Artists for biographical information on historic artists.

This page was originally published in 1997 in Resource Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for more information.