As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry writes in his tale The Little Prince : "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
That assertion notwithstanding, the early 19th-century French writer and aviator would probably still enjoy the new installation at The Gallery at Montalvo, "Visual Response to The Little Prince ." The exhibit, juried by Howard Junker, editor of the literary journal ZYZZYVA, is comprised of drawings and paintings by 23 West Coast artists. All share their favorite images or metaphors from Saint-Exupéry's book, using media as varied as watercolor, acrylics, colored pencil, pastel, chalk, graphite, silkscreening, intaglio and digital imagery.
"The artists are visually recapturing the story and its message on a number of levels: the multiplaned journey, the depiction of the cosmos, as well as the challenging premise that 'what is essential is invisible to the eye,'" explains gallery director Theres Rohan.
"The competition required the artists to translate ideas from an important literary and cultural classic. It [also] offers the audience the opportunity to rediscover this endearing story as interpreted by contemporary artists."
Several artists, such as Judy Gittelsohn and Lisa A. Perez, portray this children's tale as children themselves might. In Little Prince, Gittelsohn uses colored chalk to draw a blond boy standing atop a globe, surrounded by space and various planets. It could almost pass for a child's drawing, as could Perez's Untitled, in which she uses watercolors and ink to sketch a plane, a tree and a few other elements with the smudgy quality of a youthful art project.
In The Darkening Star, one of the artists really is a child. Artist Cassiel Chadwick uses graphite to sketch an engagingly wistful portrait of a young boy with a rose at his feet, while his young son Gregg Chadwick breaks out the felt-tip markers to contribute three scenes from the book, including a detailed diagram of all the places the Little Prince visits.
Viewers can find something completely different from Georgia F. Storti, Karen von Felten and Sandra Starkey-Simon. Storti's A865 is a Cubist canvas whose colors and shapes reveal the prince sitting beside a lamp. He appears to be reading in a cozy little space, around which is abstract dark. In Ephemeral, von Felten uses rich pastels to depict a magnificent purplish-pink robe with a white fur lining; she's even added glitter! The robe appears to levitate, ready to welcome its regal wearer. Desert Sky, Starkey-Simon's silkscreened piece, consists of a sprinkling of glowing constellations--complete with names--backdropped by the dark heavens.
The latter is an appropriate complement to a smaller installation running concurrently with "Visual Responses to The Little Prince." Ten works by artist and astronomer Lynette Cook, collectively titled Envisioning the Cosmos, hang in a separate alcove on walls colored a deep plum and dotted with tiny hand-painted stars, planets, galaxies and constellations.
All but one of Cook's images, which she creates using acrylic paint, gouache and colored pencils, are of planets, stars and moons light years away from our own solar system. Her data comes from the Marcy/Butler Extrasolar Planet Search Project and from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Among the most intriguing is HD177830b and Moon, a large, Jupiter-like planet and its moon, both found within the Vulpecula constellation. The moon, as suggested by the land masses and liquid water in Cook's painting, could hypothetically support life.
Gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 1 to 4 p.m. For more information, call 408.961.5813, or visit www.villamontalvo.org on the Internet.
Los Gatos, California Since 1881
