Rodger That

The exhibit opened July 26 as part of Cazenovia Counterpoint, a festival that also celebrated poetry and music. The opening saw the premiere of A Resonant Chord: Rodger Mack and the Creative Process, a film by Linda Herbert. In the roughly hour-long movie, Mack and a handful of peers expound on what makes artists tick. Lingering looks at works of art and footage of sparks flying in the studio spice up the talking heads. Marc Mellits and Ed Ruchalski composed music for the soundtrack, commissioned by the Society for New Music. The movie plays continuously on a loop amid the works on display in the gallery. 

The film provides helpful insight and context in bits and pieces. Early on Mack identifies the dominant theme of his work: the interpretation of music. Painter Ludwig Stein recalls Mack’s fondness for jazz: “In early Miles Davis, he would play a note then pause. That pause would cause you to do two things: you’d anticipate the next note but it would also cause you to reflect on the last note. You had that space in between.”

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Spinning into control: This small untitled bronze created by Rodger Mack in the late 1990s manages to balance calm and calamity.  JON DUFORT PHOTO

To echo the staccato energy of jazz improvisation in metal takes careful planning. Much of Mack’s production was cast in bronze using intricate sand molds and wax maquettes. The process demands an engineer’s imagination. The artist must visualize the final product from its inverse while taking into account molten metal’s flow, providing flues for the excess to escape. Mack maintained that these challenges form part of the attraction. “{Bronze} can be obstinate, it can fight you all the way, it can dare you to do certain things. That’s why I appreciate working with it. It has been my most favorite material for several years.”

 Great expertise went into generating the sculptures on display, but that becomes beside the point. It’s more interesting to ponder the ideas behind the work. Mack mobilizes smooth geometric forms and undulating organic ones in a war between stability and chaos, between wild nature and civilized order. Miniature pillars warp and morph into curling ribbons; perfectly smooth rods blossom into arabesques; blades swirl like spades in a cyclone—the cold metal becomes vibrantly alive. 

Long steel arcs trace the perimeter of the largest sculpture displayed inside (seven can be found along nearby trails). The circa 1995 untitled piece rests on curved bars like a rocking chair or a sleigh. The outer tubes meet at oblique angles, flatten into smaller slats that snake in and out, before ultimately rejoining the main form. It’s quite a challenge for the eye, like following the flight path of a darting housefly. 

A dozen colorful works on paper round out the show. Garish reds, yellows and turquoise pump up the volume of flimsy line drawings. They aren’t blueprints by any means, more like sketches—feeling out forms, testing relationships. In a statement prepared for a much earlier show, Mack described his sculpture as drawings come to life. Bronze is often deployed to commemorate the famous dead, but here the material celebrates and reaffirms life. 

Visit the Rodger Mack exhibition at the Winner Gallery at Stone Quarry Hill Art Park, 3883 Stone Quarry Road, Cazenovia, between Aug. 19 and Sept. 28, from noon to 5 p.m. every day. There will be a brief interruption from Aug. 9 to 18 when a pottery fair occupies the gallery. For more information, call 655-3196 or browse to www.stonequarryhillartpark.org.               

      —Jon Dufort