“Eddie Palmieri and Four Must-See Art Exhibits: City Lights for Oct. 17–23
Latin jazz artist Eddie Palmieri plays with longtime bandmates, silkscreens from Houston’s Carlos Hernandez, Gary Anthes’ Dust Bowl warning about looming environmental decay, a Morton Fine Arts’ *a pop-up, and Mari Calai’s GENESIS.
Closes Oct. 26: Gary Anthes at Studio Gallery
“Abandoned Farm, Kimball, Nebraska, 2023” by Gary Anthes
A photographer’s road trip through the sparsely populated west is, at this point, something of an American cliche. Gary Anthes’ exhibit “Dust and Destiny on the Great Plains” includes some of the expected subject matter—abandoned general stores, dilapidated farm buildings, boarded-up Main Street shops, dusty vintage cars, cracked and peeling grain elevators—and it offers a Dust Bowl warning about looming environmental decay. Still, the series benefits from its surprisingly sprightly mood, offering a striking contrast between the decay on view and the glorious light that illuminates it. Anthes—whose most notable prior exhibit in D.C. involved placing natural and man-made objects against the backdrop of interiors of an abandoned 200-year-old barn on his property—made his current collection of images during a 1,000-mile, back-road jaunt through seven states. Several of Anthes’ images feature facades with compellingly rhythmic wooden shingling, one of which includes an appealing arrangement of broken windows, in an echo of Minor White’s “The Three Thirds.” Another image, of a row of grain elevators alongside a receding rail line in Yuma, Colorado, conjures the Neoclassicism of Charles Sheeler’s painted depiction of Ford’s River Rouge plant. Anthes’ finest image may be one from eastern Colorado. It features a gently undulating field of grasslands under a mesmerizing sky in shades of blue; against this elemental pairing, a long piece of irrigation equipment jumps and snakes backward into the frame, providing a bracing sense of three dimensionality. Gary Anthes’ Dust and Destiny on the Great Plains runs through Oct. 26 at Studio Gallery, 2108 R St. NW. Wednesday through Friday 1 to 6 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. studiogallerydc.com. Free. —Louis Jacobson”
Review by Louis Jacobson, Washington City Paper, October 2024. Thank you!