Bonnie Sucec and Maureen O'Hara Ure have been close friends for over 20 years, collaborating on installations and exhibitions in Chicago, Kansas City and Salt Lake City. Their newest venture, "Fever," at Phillips Gallery, will go down as another success.
These accomplished women, while individually and artistically unique, occasionally appear to be squeezed from the same tube of paint: Cadmium Enigma.But where Sucec ushers us into what can only be described as "migraine" country with her convoluted, intricate gouache meanderings, Ure's terra firma beguiles, like molten crayons freezing at a decisive, cryptic moment.
In Utah Painting and Sculpture, Swanson, Olpin and Seifrit refer to both women as new-wave metaphysical artists.
Sucec begins a work by putting down marks or shapes and letting the image suggest to her the next move. "The painting is constantly revised and reworked," she writes in her artist statement. "Frequently I will set up problems or puzzles for myself if I find I am getting in a rut. There are no expected results or preconceived ideas. The work is never done."
One of the exciting moments in "Fever" is experiencing for the first time one of Sucec's new, experimental paintings where she carves into wood and then paints over it.
"My brother is a set maker for photographers and he has this little tool called a Dremel, an automatic drill, that you can slowly cut into wood," Sucec says. "I just draw as I cut." The result is a work of art that is visually more open but still retains the spirit of the artist's claustrophobic, anthropomorphic abstractions.
Ure creates images by digging through an autobiographical storage bin. She reconstructs her experiences into works that have become more three-dimensional since the 1980s.
" 'Come Hell or High Water' is a piece about my dad, who was a pilot," says Ure. "He died, not flying, but on his way to see us a couple of years ago. So the piece was a symbol of him."
A confirmed tinkerer, Ure frequently starts off with a junk store, found object, or with a wood fragment. "I keep layers of acrylic paint, ink and pencil flat with repeated sanding," she writes in her artist statement. "When a wood or paper piece returns from a show, it is likely to be partially or radically repainted or cut up to form part of some new idea." Three of Ure's works in "Fever" have appeared in different guises in earlier shows.
Her piece "Left Handed Compliment" is probably the least autobiographical in the exhibit. "I told the people at Phillips that I am more a pacifist, so this and the other boxing piece, 'Fighting Irish,' are about sparing that takes place in a home (four of Ure's siblings are lawyers)." She considers the two works more of a cartoon than anything else.
In Ure's "Quiverful," a three-dimensional piece that includes (as expected) five painted arrows -- pilfered from a recent installation piece at the Salt Lake Art Center -- stuffed into a wooden quiver. "When my sister came up to my studio and I was painting the arrows, she said 'Oh, I get it -- arrows . . . Eros,' which I had never thought of. Then I put the arrows in the quiver" to represent children. "And then the title is also from the title of a character in a Trollope novel, Reverend Quiverful. That was a literary allusion that would operate for a few individuals."
"Fever," at the Phillips Gallery, 444 E. 200 South, through April 9, reaffirms and also enlarges the reputation of both Sucec and Ure.
It's an exhibit all would enjoy.