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Cartwright, Gary, "Earth Mass" from the Warren Burnett Collection, 1989 " E A R T H M A S S " 1 9 8 7 I had seen that look in Warren Burnetts eyes before but I couldn't remember just when or where We had been friends for year since the late sixties, and had gone together to Broadway open openings, book parties and a hundred other celebrations of life's mysterious renewal. Now it was April 1988, a Saturday, and we were swimming with an enthusiastic crowd that had jammed the Galveston Arts Center on the Strand to view the work of a Houston artist named Sally Chandler. There’s always a charm about the Strand - it's like a walk through Dickens’s London' but the world of Sally Chandler was older than Dickens, older than Chaucer, older than the record of time. Her work struck me as a fresh, almost child like expression of hope but there was something about it, some another contradiction that people appreciate when they've seen too much corruption and given in to too much cynicism I wasn't sure how Sally's work struck my friend Burnett. My guess was, given a choice of things to do at the moment, he would rather be staked across a bed of red ants and then I heard him say, “Something is happening here," and saw that faraway and long-ago light in his eyes. The exhibition went out of its way to flaunt contradiction: there was live jazz and modern dance right out of the sixties, and there was wine and cheese which contemporary art patrons regard as the bare minimum of civility. Then there was Sally Chandler herself. She seemed too young to be a serious artist, too pretty and vulnerable. The subjects of her seventeen canvases were vegetables Profusion's of happy and healthy vegetables swam in a matrix of brilliant acrylic, a harmony of colors and currents and atavistic impressions. In the center of the room was a piece of art that looked like a banquet table - Sally called it “A Moveable Feast’ also in the vegetables motif. Shadowed by candlelight and strewn with rose petals, grapes frolicked with egg plants, beans embraced tomatoes and carrots frolicked in the sun like teenage angels in space. The show reminded me of that wonderful moment in "The Fantastics” when the two fathers sing about the unparalleled delights of gardening. But this wasn’t a statement about gardening, it was a universal declaration of peace and goodwill, a caring so profound it was almost old fashioned. That a young woman from Houston had captured joy and abundance in the throes of an economic depression seemed so abstract I could barely grasp it but Burnett pointed out something that made it also utterly surreal ‘She grew up in Fort Stockton,” said the lawyer who has lived must of his life in Odessa,“When you grow up in West Texas images of lushness give you hope and keep you from going crazy.” Burnett shook his head in wonder, and then said again “Something is happening here. Later that night Burnett mentioned buying Sally Chandler’s work. I took that to mean one or two paintings. A few days later Iearned that he had bought the entire exhibition. He was even talking about building a home suitable to show it. When Burnett gets that look in his eyes something indeed is happening I still can’t recall where I saw that look before but the yearmust have been about 1968, when the world was young and we a I believed in sappy things like peace, hope and harmony. Goodwill isn't a characteristic peculiar to any generation, and neither is good art. GARY CARTWRIGHT, Senior Editor Texas Monthly |
