Exhibits
Paint Creek celebrates 20th anniversary with artwork that's on the edge


By Joy Hakanson Colby / Detroit News Art Critic

ROCHESTER -- From the outside, the Paint Creek Center for the Arts looks prim and proper, like the 19th-century Avon Township Hall it once was. Inside, it's a different story, what with the monster Eric Mesko calls "Al Qaeda" in residence and Jim Pallas' "Heart Attack Heart" looming like a huge vascular threat on an upstairs wall.
   These two Metro Detroiters, both wonderful satirists, are among 54 artists invited to participate in the center's 20th-anniversary exhibit. They aren't the whole show by any means. But, as usual, they command attention with their edgy humor and uncanny skill at turning bits and pieces into sculpture bristling with presence.
   For instance, Pallas coated a Valentine-shaped heart with gleaming, blood-red epoxy and covered it with simulated veins, arteries and assorted organic forms. The piece has a macabre humor.
   In his inimitable way, Mesko tackled Al Qaeda, the terrorist organization that has dominated the news since the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The artist presented his subject as an ingeniously engineered creature with six legs, metal eyes, a cavernous mouth, a girdle of rusty chains and a skin of shingles and used wood scraps.
   This Al Qaeda is a silly beast that seems destined to self-destruct. One can only hope the Mesko version is prophetic.
   John Cynar, Paint Creek's exhibition director, selected artists who have exhibited, taught classes, served on the board or volunteered at the Rochester center since it opened in 1982. He estimates that there have been thousands of exhibitors over two decades, considering that he has shown nearly 900 since he signed on 3 1/2 years ago.
   The anniversary show is a mixed bag with an emphasis on quirky works like Peter Hackett's installation inspired by an outsized oak tree and Carol Zak's lamp made with commercial ceramic shards. Paintings in the upstairs gallery range from Stanley Rosenthal's exquisite watercolor of a young woman to Marcia Freedman's free-wheeling abstraction with pigment unfolding in energetic whorls.
   Fourteen winners of the center's "Celebrate Michigan Artists" exhibit -- from 1987 until the annual ended in 2000 -- are showing recent works in the downstairs gallery. Here you'll find such gems as Valerie Mann's textured wall piece with corn husks and Peter Gilleran's tautly brushed painting "Celebration."
   Paint Creek is one of southeastern Michigan's most valued cultural resources. The fact that the center is marking its 20th anniversary is due in large part to Art and Apples, its main fundraiser. So, be advised that the 37th annual art fair will be held Saturday and Sunday in Rochester's municipal park.