"The paintings in Carolee Jakes’s “Time and Distance” look fine at Studio Gallery, but some of them would also fit nicely around the corner at the Phillips Collection. Like some of the artists whose work Duncan Phillips collected in the mid-20th century, the McLean artist makes abstracted landscapes in lush, complex hues of earth and sky.
The show also includes screen prints that incorporate photographic imagery and a few paintings whose style turns more direct, whether to portray a rural highway or a reclining mountain lion. The pictures that conjure the greatest sense of depth, though, depict more fluid things: water, sky and moonlight. Exactly what’s under the transparent domes in the alluring “Wherever You Go” is unclear. But the richly mottled colors pull the eye into the mysterious blue and brown depths.
Also at Studio is “Being Human,” a selection of Chris Corson’s pit-fired ceramic sculptures of nude male torsos. These charred, earthy figures are similar to the ones he exhibited at the same venue a year ago, but with a twist. As before, the Maryland sculptor’s statues are mostly headless. This time, though, Corson provides supplemental objects that can be inserted into the main statue’s open neck holes. One statue is outfitted with five small figural sculptures to be added at the viewer’s whim; another offers rocklike forms with transferred-photo faces of the artist as a boy. These mix-and-match pieces have a primal humanity, but their interactivity doesn’t make them any less personal."
- Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post, September 2018
Carolee Jakes, Timey-wimey, Inquire.