By KEVIN NANCE
Contributing Writer

When curators Mary Rezny and Marco Logsdon staged their “3x33” exhibit — featuring three self-selected and loosely related works by 33 local artists — at the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center in 2021, I saw it as a snapshot of Central Kentucky’s art community in all its variety. As I wrote in an essay for the show’s catalog at the time, “It’s a homegrown community of autodidacts and iconoclasts, fiercely individualistic, committed to their personal visions and their craft. In many cases here, they’ve been in it for the long haul, as evidenced by the high percentage of artists with signature styles developed over lengthy and productive careers.”

In the show’s second incarnation, now at the LuigART Event Gallery through Dec. 6, many of the same artists are back, and my feelings are the roughly the same. Walking through the show is a stroll with a group of artists who’ve found their story and are sticking to it. Signature styles are everywhere in evidence, with many artists doing pretty much the same thing they’ve done for years if not decades — not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that. If artists have found a groove that works for them, and if that groove is spacious enough to allow for significant exploration and variation over many years or even a career, more power to them. It worked for Monet and Rothko, to name two famous examples, and there are others. There’s a fine line, however, between a groove and a rut. One is a launching pad for ongoing innovation and creativity. The other is a self-guarded fortress that has become a prison.

The nice thing about this edition of “3x33” — the hopeful thing, from my perspective — is that while there’s little evidence of rampant groove-busting, there are plenty of signs that many of our local artists are neither resting on their laurels nor endlessly repeating themselves. They’re either refining their work to new heights or pressing forward toward the Next Thing in their art practice, often with promising results.

There’s real development, for example, in the work of Logsdon, who seems to have moved on from the resin-coated abstract paintings he’s been known for — into collage and, most recently, this show’s bracingly austere “Shadow Pattern” series, in which shadows mass and curl around disc-like elements in an overlapping pattern that recalls fish scales or the petals of a zinnia. It’s a new room in the house Logsdon has been exploring for decades, and I hope he keeps going; it’s high time for artists other than photographers to consider ways to use shadows as part of their compositions.

His co-curator is also striking out in fresh directions. Rezny’s “Clouds Illusion” series here, featuring elements of photography and layered collage, are both consistent with her optical art experimentations of the past few years and a bit of a turn toward a new elegance and simplicity. I found myself wondering, as I looked at these works, whether their title could be echoing the lyrics of Joni Mitchell’s great “Both Sides Now,” and if so, how might the artwork be engaging with the song? I’ve yet to decide, but the fact that Rezny’s new work has me thinking along these lines is a strong hint that she’s onto something. Certainly she and Logsdon are to be commended for suggesting, if only by example, that comfort zones are there to be ventured out from.

I’ve long felt connected to the wonderfully weird work of Crimson DuVall, but her new triptych here — a trio of sculpted stoneware heads named Femella, Creatrix and Sapientaia, each of which seems to be engaged in a war between sanity and its opposite — combines the artist’s signature psychological exploration with a new level of execution. It’s freaky, frightening, fabulous stuff: not everyone’s cup of tea, to be sure, but the right collector will see its depths and treasure it forever.

I was delighted, too, by Michelle Newby Armstrong’s “Mountaintop Meditation,” in which the artist has found the best use so far (to indicate texture in a landscape) for the quilling technique she’s been perfecting for some time; by Michael Wayne’s abstract photography on metal panels, which has become subtler, darker and more fascinating than ever; by Paula Zaglul’s dot paintings, which have now become so controlled and sophisticated that they gleam like lizard skin; and by Christine Stroebel’s slashing ink abstractions, which have some of the gestural confidence and internal logic that I associate with Yves Klein and Helen Frankenthaler. 

It’s a good show, as well, for collectors drawn to the artistic legacy of Joseph Cornell, whose spirit seems to shine with beneficence over works by a number of the artists here. They include Celeste Lewis, whose “Wee Sprite Enchanted by the Moon” dances merrily in his snug shadowbox, and Georgia Henkel, whose “Unnatural Selection,” featuring strange yet strangely familiar creatures in the midst of gunplay, put a smile on my face even as it sent a chill down my spine. You have to see it in person — along with this large show’s 98 other works, most of which there’s no room here to discuss — to understand. I recommend that you do just that.

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“3x33” runs through Dec. 6 at LuigART Event Gallery, 110 Luigart Court. Hours are 1-5 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.