LANNY DEVUONO: PARALLELVIEWSJUNDT ART MUSEUM

DECEMBER 2,2005 - MARCH 11,2006 . GONZAGA UNIVERSITY· SPOKANE· WASHINGTON

LANNY DEVUONO: PARALLEL VIEWS

During a recent drive to Newport Beach, California, and back again to Portland, I was more attentive

than usual to the ever changing appearance of the towns and open land along Interstate 5. As the result

of an earlier studio visit and conversation with Lanny DeVuono, I watched with particular interest the flow

of heavily populated beach towns along the southern California coast and the many suburbs reaching out

from Los Angeles, then through the dry but irrigated agricultural expanses of the SanJoaquin Valley, to the

huge reservoir called Shasta Lake, up and down the Siskiyou mountains of northern California and southern

Oregon, and finally up the length of the fertile Willamette Valley leading to Portland. For travelers focusing

on traffic and speed, 1-5.represents nothing more than mileage to be covered as quickly as possible. But

features in the landscape and towns observed with Lanny DeVuono's sensibility represent something

quite different. They embody the history of a land that once was a wilderness area inhabited solely by

Native Americans and considered by them as the gift of the Great Spirit, to be used and respected by the

humans who were dependent upon it. With the coming of new settlers, very different beliefs came into

play. Those beliefs, based on proprietary rights and which continue to evolve according to the demands

of increasing population and changes in political power, are addressed in the work of this thoughtful and

observant artist.

Her paintings of rural and wilderness areas, although beautiful, are not merely scenic. Through the

ambiguity introduced by the single word that floats freely over the pictorial space, the paintings signify

the issues that determine our uses, our politics, and our proprietary attitudes concerning the land we live in.

They are poetic references to human relationships, personal, social, and political not only to the land, but

also, to ourselves. In DeVuono's own words, they are "visual metaphors for social interactions."

This exhibition, Parallel Views, consists of two recent and on-going series of work: American ShortStories, based on landscapes within the United States and the Kerala Series, based on landscapes

observed while on a residency in the southern India state of the same name.

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In American Short Stories, DeVuono focuses on inhabited areas. Very small pictures, all untitled and

painted on box structures, extend their imagery to the sides of the boxes in representations of evidence

of habitation and its effects. Structures and cultivated land comprise most of the images. An exception

is a picture that makes its point with a rural scene that features a layer of orange smog just above a row

of trees and the word "RIGHTS" spelled out across the surface. Does the word refer to environmental

rights or to the rights of the polluters? The question comes up again in a painting of an airliner as it soars

across the sky. Which is more important, the rights of airline companies to use fossil fuels or the rights

of all people to a clean environment? Each painting in the series provokes similar questions. When

viewed in its entirety, the series becomes a grand narrative conveying the complex issues inherent in

the uses of land and natural resources, but at the same time, capturing the colorful diversity of cities and

the quiet atmosphere ot" small towns. Typical of ordinary sites-and sights-they reflect the richness of

the American experience, or, again as DeVuono puts it, "homage to American life in all its splendor and

pleasure, its foolishness and pathos."

In 2004 a Fulbright scholarship took her to India for a four month residency at the College of Fine

Arts in Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala, a long narrow state stretched along the country's southwestern

edge. The culture, the tropical climate, the people and their way of life, their values and also, their

politics, so different from those of her own country, were both observed and reflected in the many

watercolor sketches she made during her stay. They have provided a rich resource for the paintings she

began to produce after her return to her home in Spokane. As in American Short Stories, the Kerala

subjects continue to reflect the social actions that result in both the physical and social environment that

characterize a place, as well as the visual ordinariness of an Indian town.

Because she considered herself a traveler rather than a resident, even a temporary one, DeVuono

refrained from an ethnographic approach; instead she drew solely on her observations, mainly of

commonplace structures in and near Trivandrum. Using unusual perspectives, she pictures small sections

of structures-their corners, poles and wires, antennae-and always, somewhere among them, a snippet

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of a red flag. The subjects stand out against large areas of blue sky. When a colleague at the college in

Kerala asked her why the sky occupied so much of the composition, she replied with a reference to the

interest that dominates her art, "It's something we all share."

The red flag, however, is much more specific to the place. India, as a country, is a multi-party

democracy, in which Kerala has the distinction of being the first state to elect (in 1952) a communist

government. Since that time the CPI (M) (Communist Party India [Marxist]) has gone in and out of power,

often alternating with Congress party governance. Although very poor, Kerala has a relatively high rate

of literacy and a low rate of mortality. When the state in August 2004 cited Coca-Cola for its local plant's

pollution of the water table (leeching cadmium and other polluting effluents from the plant) because it was

effectively shutting off m~ch needed development, DeVuono was impressed by their courage in deciding

to maintain a shared public sphere for the common good in the face of an acute need for economic

improvement. Her references to the CPI (M) flag are her homage to a state that against great odds, has

attempted to maintain a society that privileges public space over a corporation's profits. Whether it can

succeed in the long run is problematic. In this sense the CPI (M) becomes almost nostalgic, a symbol for

a public sphere that may be irremediably eroded.

This exhibition allows us to note the differences in the appearance between the Indian town and

American towns as if we were travelers ourselves. It also allows us to witness similarities-the advertising,

the power poles, the use of the flag-that are ubiquitous in almost all countries. In most of the paintings

in the Kerala Series the reference is subtle, as in Kerala Series #7, where the flag is barely visible at the

top of an antennae tower. Occasionally, however, it becomes prominent; in Kerala Series # I , it is featured

hanging limply from its mount on a tall pole. Throughout the series the flag more pointedly represents

the values and politics affecting private lives than American Short Stories where the same issues are also

addressed, although ambiguously.

One more aspect of DeVuono's paintings must be considered. Clearly, they are based on a strong

idea, but at their core is the artist's ability to use her medium to create a compelling picture.

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We are attracted by her clearly delineated images and superb coloration. The expertise so evident

in drawing, brushwork, and handling of color began with her training in the long established traditions in

European and American painting. Her representational style has its roots in Italian Renaissance painting,

but it reflects other traditions as well. The carefully observed details, the small format, the wide range

of nuanced colors, the unusual perspectives, and the smoothness of the brushwork recall the Mughal

miniature paintings of India.

Ultimately, however, DeVuono's work is of her own time, completely within the paradigm of

contemporary art, which is prominently exemplified by the extension of the imagery on the surface

of the boxes to their four sides. The strategy not only undermines the usual expectations of a painting

but also distorts space by angling it. Placing words within the composition, especially when they curve

through space, is an innovation of modernity in composition. The singularity of perspectives is related

to the influence of photography. Most importantly, these small paintings demonstrate a return to beauty

in a time when anti-art projects and conceptualism seemed poised to make it obsolete. Fortunately,

the current dominance of eclecticism makes possible freedom of choice for DeVuono as for all artists.

Her love of painting itself-the process and its aesthetics-and her commitment to her thematic ideas

distinguish her unique niche in contemporary painting.

Lois AllanArt Writer, Portland, Oregon

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LANNY FRANCES DEVUONO

EDUCATION1993 Columbia University: TeachersCollege, Master of Arts in Teaching1987 Mills College: Painting, M.F.A.1985 SanFranciscoArt Institute: Graduate Painting1980 Antioch University: Art, B.A.

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS2005 Lanny DeVuono: Parallel Views, Jundt Art Museum, Spokane,WA

American Short Stories, CIRCA Gallery, Minneapolis, MNAmerican Short Stories, Charles Froelick Gallery, Portland, ORIn Focus, NW Museum of Art & Culture; Spokane,WALanny DeVuono, Esther Claypool Gallery, Seattle, WANature & Other Objects, Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, MT

2000 Nature/Nurture, Esther Claypool Gallery, Seattle, WA1999 Domestication, Lorinda Knight Gallery, Spokane,WA

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS2005 Landscape: Theme & Variation, Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR2004 Shakespeare as Muse, Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR2003 A Sense of Place in the Northwest, Pritchard Art Gallery, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID2002 Fair Skies, Fair Play (w/ Beth Lo), Lorinda Knight Gallery, Spokane,WA200 I TEXTures, Seattle Art Museum Sales& RentalGallery, Seattle, WA

Northwest Visions, SeattleArts Commission, Seattle, WAJust Painting, Spokane FallsCommunity College, Spokane,WAThe End, Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WAFrom Here to the Horizon, Whatcom Museum, Bellingham,WA

200420042002

1999

SELECTEDAWARDS2004-05 Fulbright Fellowship, Kerala, India2003 EWU Faculty ResearchGrant, Cheney, WA2000 EWU Faculty ResearchGrant, Cheney, WA1998 Artist Trust Grant, Seattle, WA1998 Centrum. Artist residency; (Stipend Poncho), Port Townsend, WA1996 Artist Trust GAP Award, Seattle, WA

SELECTEDTEACHING EXPERIENCE2004-05 College of FineArts, Thirvanathapuram, Kerala, India, Fulbright Scholar2003 Vermont College MFA Program, Mentor Teacher,Montpelier, VT1998 RangsitUniversity, Visiting Lecturer, Bangkok, Thailand1991- Eastern Washington University, Professor of Art, Cheney, WA

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY2005 "Artists Take Different Routes...," Medford Mail, Oct.23, 20052004 "Big Sky," M. Demarest, The Inlander, May 27, 20042002 "Lanny DeVuono's Not-So-Innocent Landscapes;"E. Hall, The Stranger, Oct. 24, 2002

Nature & Other Objects: New Paintings by Lanny DeVuono; NW Projects, Yellowstone Art Museum,essayby Ben Mitchell, 2002 (catalogue)

"Pretty isn't the point ..." J.Crane, The Spokesman Review, Jan. 15,2002200 I "Portable works art: What standards..." S. Farr, The Seattle Times, Apr.19, 200 I; pE2

"Auction 200 I to Benefit YAM," C. Meyers, Billings Gazette, Feb.2, 200 I

SELECTED PULIC COLLECTIONSJustice Center, Kent, WASeattle Arts Commission, Seattle, WASeattle University, School of Law, Seattle, WASwedish Medical Center, Seattle, WAUniversity of Washington Medical Center, Seattle, WAWashington Medical Center, Seattle, WAWashington StateArts Commission, PascoHigh School, Pasco,WA

IMAGESCover:(top) American Short Stories #36, 2004, 6"x 6"x 3 1/2", oil on wood.(bottom) Kerala Series # 1,2005, 9"x 15"x 2", oil on wood.

I. American Short Stories #7, 2002, 6"x 6"x 3", oil on wood.2. Kerala Series #3, 2005, Is"x 9"x 2", oil on wood.3. American Short Stories #39, 2004, 6"x 6"x 5", oil on wood.4. Kerala Series #9, 2005, l S?x9"x 2", oil on wood.5. American Short Stories #8, 2002, 6"x 6"x 4", oil on wood.6. Kerala Series #4, 2005, 15"x 9"x 2", oil on wood.7. American Short Stories #57, 2004, 6"x 6"x 3", oil on wood.8. Kerala Series #7, 2005, Is"x 9"x 2", oil on wood.

This publication was funded by the Jundt Art Museum's Annual Campaign 2005-2006. © Jundt Art Museum, Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA 99258-000 I