Ideally, you saw Drawn in a Day on July 22. The dozen artists in this Space Gallery exhibit spent that titular day creating work in public, directly on the big Downtown venue's walls. But if you missed that Gallery Crawl spectacle, it's still worth seeing the larger-scale works so conjured.
Perhaps the loveliest piece is Valerie Lueth and Paul Roden's labyrinth composed of pasted-up woodblock prints assembled from just two images of cornstalks (one green, one brown) that they drew, hand-carved and hand-printed on site. Close behind is David Pohl's "Krishna." The benevolently smiling head of the deity is cunningly composed entirely from circles of blue ink -- though you had to be there to see Pohl executing the image with his vintage Spirograph art-toy.
Some works in this show guest-curated by Robert Raczka (an occasional CP contributor) were complete before most Space patrons arrived. These included Brian Holderman's "I'll Murder You Momentarily," which displays the illustrator's characteristic kick with a femme fatale brandishing snakes, blades and bottles.
Other works were in process. Anne Lopez's lovely design "Eight Striped Shapes" was nonetheless more intriguing in embryo, when it involved multicolored ribbons hanging from the wall. And Brett Yasko was still tracing his wall-sized list of nearly 200 names in block letters, most of them either local media and arts types (me included) or other people named "Yasko." In their midst is tacked a wad of lottery tickets. "If I ever win the proverbial pie," wall-text explains, "these folks are getting a piece." Whew -- at least it's not a list of people who owe him money.
A couple of works were made interactively. Cara Lynn Kleid's "Portrait Mural" depicts the sketched heads of 30 visitors and other artists, plus the Polaroids they're based on. And for "Economic Wonderland (Hydro-fracking Evaporation Pond)," Wendy Osher gave visitors pencils to try copying one square of a gridded image of the fumes wafting from the pond on one gas-drilling site.
Meanwhile, at 10 feet by 25 feet, Paul Santoleri's "Dual Pressure Valve" is the show's biggest work: a black-and-white, half street art, half fantasy comic of a mythic beast -- part maelstrom, part tentacled monster -- engulfing a city sitting alongside a smoking volcano. What impressed most, though, was watching a marker-wielding Santoleri draw the whole thing freehand, with only his eye to guide him.
DRAWN IN A DAY continues through Sept. 4. Space Gallery, 812 Liberty Ave., Downtown. 412-325-7723
