Selected from the Allan Stone Collection, the exhibition features works by two unique Pop artists. Although Don Nice is best known for his depictions of contemporary American culture such as candies, soda bottles and branded sneakers, the early watercolor and oil paintings in this exhibition stem from the artist’s upbringing on an open range and his love of nature. Dorothy Grebenak is known for her hooked rug tapestries of readymade everyday iconography such as commercial signs, taxi medallions and manhole covers.
In Nice’s oil and watercolor paintings from the 1960’s and 1970’s, the artist employs more subtle colors and gestures than the hi-sheen approaches of other Pop artists of the time. While rooted in the same everyday iconography and simplified form, Nice’s realism is similar to meticulous 19th century animal and flower illustrations by masters such as John James Audubon or Ernst Haeckel. Merging classical techniques with images of rustic Americana, Nice modernizes the artist-as-naturalist in his playful renditions with striking precision. His choice of humble subjects such as animals and vegetables ironically counteracts the homogeneity and sterility of much Pop art from the same period.
A largely self-taught artist, Grebenak also fuses traditional techniques with modern cultural symbols in her vivid tapestries. She blurs the line between fine, folk and decorative arts by subverting the readymade tendencies of her (mostly) male counterparts through a traditionally female dominated vocation. While Grebenak’s output exists parallel to the Feminist Art dialogue of the late 1960’s and 1970’s, it has much in common with artists like Robert Arneson or H.C. Westermann, who also challenged perceptions of crafts in fine art. Grebenak’s interest in the symmetry and self contained designs of car medallions and manhole covers was a novel approach to seeing the details in everyday objects.