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Art: Elizabeth Ann James, Columnist
June 2006

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JungHaus Dances with Art
Pastime is dreamtime for Tom and Deb Baillieul

A dynamic exhibit, “The Dreamtime,” with Tom and Deb Baillieul, will show at JungHaus Gallery through June 24, 2006. At JungHaus in July and August Stephanie Matthews will show marvelous photographs of dancers in “A Life Cycle in Movements: Tribute to Dance & Expressionism.” Matthews, who recently spent five months photographing New York dancers, is now busy photographing BalletMet and Ohio State University dancers.

Tom Baillieul, a former Peace Corps member, now a geologist, and Deb Baillieul a preschool teacher, are married to each other, live in Beechwold, and spend every moment possible making art.

Deb and Tom Baillieul with Deb's fabric artpiece
A Flamboyance of Flamingoes. Photo Gus Brunsman III ©

The Dreamtime: Deb Baillieul
Deb Baillieul creates original fabric art. Her wall hangings present a charming first impression, yet, the longer you look, the more you’ll notice subtle color-melds and intricate stitchery. Her art is neither “fussy” nor sentimental, but it is sensitive and finely wrought.

Deb is an impressionist. Her strips and overlays resemble brushstrokes, and she thinks of her fabric as poetry. She loves warm, not loud, colors, and she employs exacting stitches and many attachments. “I’ll use anything,” she said pointing to some tiny wrapped cowrie shells. “I’m always looking and thinking. Luckily my preschool job allows me to be in my studio every day.” Of her young students she says, “they’re so young they’re kind of in a dreamtime, before everything has been taught and programmed.”

Some years ago Deb married Tom in Botswana in an Anglican church with a thatched roof. She wore a white dress, very short, “too short.” But she had also made a long dress from polished Chinese cotton and wore that for a tea reception at which “everyone had a very good time.”

“I haven’t gone huge,” she said, pointing to the bright Jamaican Rum-bah, “but this is one of my larger ones.”

Jamaican Rum-bah
Jamaican Rum-bah, 25 x 25 inches, is a lovely wall hanging, a square with out-curves. It has a slightly vintage look. The fabrics are neither tech bright nor shiny.

Baillieul’s signature, a complex mix of cutouts, fine stitchery and found fabric, is a subtle one. Yet, Rum-bah gets our attention. Deep green sections consist of finely stitched variations of rich hues. White and off-white curves resemble wings, flight, yes, “boomerangs.” Red strips tie the composition together. Tiny white orchids peer out. The artist hand dyed and printed the fabric as she does all of her fabric art, and if you come close you’ll see green melts, patterns from sea grapes.

“I’m apt to use anything,” Deb said, “Here I’ve even used hammock line. I do machine and hand stitching and free-hand embroidery. I cut strips into strips. I use authentic fibres whenever I can.”

Jamaican Rum-bah shares memories of a vacation in Belize. Despite its subtlety, the piece remains so light-hearted it might be a sail.

Star Stuff, by Deb Baillieul

Star Stuff
Star Stuff is gorgeous, red, and kind of puffy. You’ll notice bright red beads and a sparkling metallic spiral. You’ll notice a cluster of steel rings that look suspiciously like wedding rings, and some bolts. You’ll see many triangular shapes and white “eyes.” Variations on pinks, oranges and reds dominate. Star Stuff is 18 x 22 inches. The backing of Star Stuff is a vivid, vivid red – I love Star Stuff!

Deb Baillieul says she began her art career by quilting. Later, when she began to work in colored pencils, she felt more free and went on to express her ideas through fabric.

A Flamboyance of Flamingoes, 20 x 56 inches, was a response to a Clintonville Art Guild Challenge, and it will blow you away! One obnoxious flamingo has craned his neck “outside” the “painting” He’s an outsider flamingo! This wall hanging is an adorable riot.

Face Values is a serene and delicate “Dreamtime” piece. Of it Deb has said “This is about the faces . . .The hidden faces and selves walking back and forth around us.” They can be ghosts of the past or people who are very present.

Deb Baillieul’s skill in colored pencil is high, and the subjects she chooses are pleasing. Whether she “paints” water lilies, or a Southwest vase and bouquet, or a ship on the windy shore, Deb is an accomplished and poetical realist.

The Dreamtime: Tom Baillieul
“Each of the artworks on display reflects the artist’s connection to the Earth in its many faces, and to the spirit that lies within all things.” – Tom Baillieul.

Over the past few years, Tom Baillieul, a geologist, has become increasingly known as a no-nonsense power painter. His work is direct, skilled, and packs a punch on first impact! His palette, an acrylic one, is, on the whole, tech bold and unsullied. The artist was awarded the Jean Hall Lamb Memorial Award in the Ohio Art League’s 2000 juried show, and in 2004 he won the People’s Choice in the Clintonville Art Guild Show. Tom’s knowledge of geology and indigenous people, plus his eco sensitivity, are evident in all of his Dreamtime works.

Crows Wrestling the Hurricane, watercolor by Tom Baillieul

Crows Wrestling the Hurricane
Tom describes his Crows Wrestling the Hurricane, 11 by 14 inches, as “in a sense my most aboriginal as to subject. And its my only watercolor in the show.” In the painting two clay red crows fly against or within, a blue-blaze spiral, a stony gray spiral, a dizzying image, all one spiral. The gray strip has been pocked, dotted, rained upon, lined with white pebbles. The blue strip contains a flowing black line, like the border on a clay bowl. “The Action Crows,” outlined in black, possess white-dot eyes, their red wings and bellies bear white marks, like cave drawings. Tom Baillieul explained how “the aboriginal people believe that the east wind causes hurricanes each year, and the crows have to subdue the winds, confine them in hollow logs. But the winds escape, and the crows have to wrestle them and tie them up again.”

This painting, like many of Tom Baillieul’s, suggests symbols and “marks” It is iconic.

His sophisticated yet simple images convey, instantly, a time beyond time.

Bushman Sunset
Bushman Sunset is a 30 x 40 inches acrylic on canvas. As a geologist, Baillieul paints “flat.” He loves strata, layers, strips of pure color which he builds up “for thickness.” His work is not textural, but it has depth, an offbeat primitive perspective that is exciting. The colors in Sunset are soft yet radiant. The bush, the veldt, the watery plain, whatever, meets the brilliant horizon line, meets the strata that is the sky. The small brown men march heroically toward the gorgeously layered terrain, the purple horizon, and beyond that to the invisible sun. A timeless message is received.

Ancestral Memory, by Tom Beillieul

Life Currents, constructed with wood, hemp, shells, is a stick chart, a three dimensional piece “The people used these as navigational charts in the Marshall Islands,” the artist explained. This irregular raft-like sculpture, 24 x24 inches, can chart islands and deep currents and has become a pleasing irregular sculpture on the wall. “This chart can represent a spiritual journey too,” Baillieiul said.

Casting the Bones, an acrylic on canvas 24 x 30 inches, presents a striking incident in which Tom, a man of science, is caught hands in the air, casting bones in the presence of a shaman. “It cost fifty cents,” Baillieul added laconically. “Our advisor wanted us to have a cultural experience, and here it is.”

For Ancestral Memory, the facile Baillieul has painted his son’s chosen totem, The Lizard, the “Dreamer’s” totem. In this striking canvas The Lizard rides a full bright moon or sun.

In Spirals 2 he has rendered, against a dark background, a whirling galaxy and a chambered nautilus. This five-star painting represents art as science, science as art. Simplicity as grandeur.

A Life Cycle in Movements: Tribute to Dance and Expressionism

Eternity in a Moment, by Stephanie Matthews ©

Opening July 9 at JungHaus, photographer Stephanie Matthews will show at least 20 exciting photos – in color and in black and white – of all kinds of dancers. Ballet, modern, jazz or tap, Matthews is a complete dance photographer. Her efforts, ranging in size from 14 x 14 inches to 20 to 30 inches, show dancers caught in the moment – in action!

During her shoots, Matthews often showed dancers word flash cards, and the dancers expressed words such as “anger, joy, grief” through spontaneous movement. Hence, the “Expressionism” in her show title.

Yards of flying silk, tarleton, and chiffon help to make Matthews’ photos absolutely electric.

Stephanie Matthews has photographed dancers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, and Columbus. Anywhere the choreographic action is. Although she learned photography during an internship, Matthews graduated from the University of Toledo with a degree in Communications in 1995. Since then she has photographed dancers from the Isadora Duncan Foundation, from Columbus’s own BalletMet, and from O.S.U.’s Dance Department. She has taken photos of the noted Dance Theater of Harlem and of West African dancers. As to hobbies, she enjoys ballroom dancing, reading, all kinds of music, and “travel, travel, travel.”

Again: Stephanie Matthews’ “A Life Cycle in Movements: Tribute to Expressionism” will open with a tea reception at 3 p.m. at JungHaus and will run through August 2006.

With “The Dreamtime,” and “A Life Cycle in Movements” exhibitions, JungHaus Gallery continues to ascend in stature. The spacious gallery is located at 59 West Third Avenue. Hours are Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m or by appointment. Call the JungHaus office at 614-291-8050.

© 2006 Short North Gazette, Columbus, Ohio. All rights reserved.