Riverland Community College

Sheryl McRoberts and Yvonne Klocek update and expand our notions of direct observation as a source for art. Their exploration is particularly significant in an age when artists typically either approach or abandon the representation of visual experience as a problem already solved.  But as artist Robert Henri famously commented, “seeing is not such an easy thing as it is supposed to be”, especially since perception depends on psychological factors of intention, memory and context, and it’s exact mechanism remaining a mystery even to science.
 
Sheryl McRoberts works in pen and ink to discover underlying tensions and connections in spaces where the natural world and the built world interact.  She constructs her drawings through layers and revisions, revealing the trail of her progress, in an unforgiving medium that disallows erasure. Ms. McRoberts echoes John Constable’s statement that everything is reflected, more or less, in everything else.  She reveals underlying patterns, rhythms, and relationships. Her “struggle to discover what [she’s] seeing” serves to comment on the discordant reality and decentered spirituality of our time.  
 
Yvonne Klocek’s digital photographs are infused with the joy of seeing.  This photographer makes pictures instead of simply taking them. In one approach, Klocek carefully selects and composes her subjects, enlivening them expressively through design, textural juxtapositions and the use of dramatic light. In another, she assessed thousands of individual images made during months of European travel. Shuffling and repositioning them, the photographer created a new composite visual environment. The eye migrates through the shifting spaces, transporting us into a fascinating realm where the beauty, mystery and surprises of vision rule.
 
Although the mediums and approaches of the two artists are different, their common commitment to observational inspiration creates a fascinating dialogue.