MORE ABOUT MAURA BENDETT

Art in America, Dec, 1997 by Michael Duncan

 Like portholes that reveal candy-colored, fairytale worlds, Maura

Bendett's new tondo reliefs emphasize the fantasy element of

decoration. Bendett arranges cutout drawings of flowers in 5-foot,

allover compositions. She draws on dear and colored sheets of acetate.

adding hues to her images with tinted glues. The drawings are then cut

out and sewn together with fishing line to create weblike circles

which are attached to the wall with nails, leaving a 1-inch gap so

that light can shine through the translucent acetate to the wall. The

result is an effect reminiscent of stained glass.

 Bendett's loose drawing style references both doodles and the bold

forms of Matisse's cutouts, giving her works a casual, free-from

grace. Glued-on seeds and pod fragments add texture, along with the

varied thickness of the colored glues. In Disintegrating Flowers, a

border of red, fuzzy-felt flowers sets off the busy bouquet. Green,

plastic-coated wire spirals out from the edges of East of the Sun and

West of the Moon, recalling one of the fanciful frames of Florine

Stettheimer. The extenuated tendrils and languishing fronds of this

work, along with its loopy sense of color, also seem indebted to

Stettheimer's flower paintings. Bendett's are sexy, fanciful still

lifes that assert an elegant outlandishness. With its palette of blues

and greens. Sea Breeze integrates underwater plants and creatures into

a vivid mix. A gaggle of blue and yellow lobster are arranged Busby

Berkley-style around a central blue flower, giving the piece a feeling

of wafty aqueous growth. The elevator shaft of Post--a gallery in the

downtown loft of artist Habid Kheradyar--has been the site of some of

the most imaginative installations of the past year. Visible from the

elevator's open, roofless cab, Bendett's 21-foot-high papier-mache

relief in the form of a plant. Object Resemblance, makes the ride to

the second floor an updated version of Jack's excursion up the

beanstalk. In Day-Glo and fluorescent limes and greens, stalky

tendrils flow up the wall, blossoming with autumnally shaded pods and

reddish fruits that dangle on wires like vegetal earrings. Purple

papier-mache pods on stems resemble half-sucked Tootsie Roll Pops. The

curvaceous splendor, luminous colors and cartoony humor of this work

make it the best example to date of Bendett's quirky literalization of

organic abstraction.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Brant Publications, Inc._COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

MORE ABOUT ROLAND REISS

 ROLAND REISS is a painter and sculptor from Southern California who

has exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad. His work

has been seen at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Documenta in

Kassel, Germany. Exhibitions include museums in Brazil, Mexico, China,

Canada, Italy, Germany, Japan and Taiwan. He is the recipient of four

NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) grants and of more than forty

prizes and awards. His work is located in many public, corporate and

private collections.

 Since 1992, Reiss has concentrated exclusively on abstract painting.

He studied at the American Academy of Art and UCLA, and later taught

painting and drawing at UCLA and at the University of Colorado. He

later joined the faculty at Claremont Graduate College, where he was

Chair of the Art Department for 29 years and Benezet Professor of the

Humanities. He has served as Director of the Center for the Arts, and

is currently the Director of "Paintings Edge," an advanced program in

painting for Idyllwild Arts.

Oral History Interview

http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/reiss97.htm

Article