Bill Ford Gallery and library gallery, Paducah School of Art and Design, The Mary Ed Meoy Hall Gallery at Murray State University

“Paul Aho, Long Story Short: A Forty Year Journey” at the Bill Ford Gallery, Paducah School of Art and Design reveals Aho as something of a Renaissance Man. Born in 1954, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Aho has lived his life as a painter, printmaker, photographer, sculptor, furniture designer and furniture maker, professor, college administrator and even an accomplished surfer. Digging deeper into his artistic output, you begin to see him as an insatiable adventurer characterized by high energy and searching aesthetics. Elements that appear in everything he makes, as all of his varied media and different genres, overlap in a spiritual realm that often comes through veils of light and color.

        Take for instance When and Where (2020). Here, there are references to open water and receding tides that wash across the surface over precisely painted patterns on the left side. Then there are sweeping bands of blue that periodically pool in small indentations on the right half—a tactile quality that adds depth while enhancing the inner light suggesting the ocean’s hidden spirit—a realization that a surfer from the age of 11 would come to know over a lifetime of marine exposure. In Aho’s art, there is also respect given to what some would see as the darker side of open waters, exemplified in Czar (1991), an enlarged, polychromed fiberglass sculpture of a shark tooth. Painted to suggest the deep blue sea, Aho presents a view looking up through the silhouettes of seaweed at the faint haze of cooled sunlight filtering through, placing the source of his subject in its predatory environment.

        I always think of Lou Reed’s Perfect Day when I hear that title, a song covered by many musicians since its debut in 1972. Alternatively, Aho’s Perfect Day (2013) is one of the more complex works in the exhibition. Beginning with the crackled base coat of acrylic, which brings in intense organic detail across the surface in reds, yellows and orange, the artist forms a strong reference to the baking sun. A blistering contrast to the cold oceans Aho has experienced thousands of times. The imposing, shadowy surfboard-like forms entering the picture plane from all sides are glazed in with thinned oils, suggesting the camaraderie formed naturally by adventure seeking surfers in conversation. Taken purely as an abstraction, Perfect Day becomes more about time and timelessness than a tightly formed scene.

        In his photography and his printmaking, Aho always expresses that space between permanence and impermanence, a take on futility versus fulfillment, which in the end leads to accepting and utilizing challenges to create one’s own path.

        In the library gallery, in the same building that houses Paul Aho’s exhibition is “The Life and Art of Helen LaFrance.” Presented by the Paducah Historical Preservation Group, Inc., this exhibition brings together some of the artist’s most compelling domestic scenes. LaFrance passed in 2020 at the age of 101. A self-taught, Black-American daughter of a tobacco and vegetable farmer, she began painting full time in 1986 after a string of all-consuming jobs. All the work in this exhibition, which does not include her more visionary paintings, focus on daily life via notable daily events.

        One of the more alluring works is Children Sleeping #2. The title card states the artist “may have been remembering how she and her sisters and cousins slept together growing up.” A cozy setting warmed by festive flowery wallpaper, a few scattered toys and lots of uncharacteristic, limitless space. Coincidentally, an abundance of space is portrayed in all of her interior settings, which is very different from some of the more closely cropped landscapes by the artist. Perhaps LaFrance was far more comfortable at home at a time when African Americans were often oppressed and vulnerable.

        Then there are the technical aspects of this accomplished outsider artist. Her approach, beginning with thinned brown oil paints to establish the base shapes, defining open areas and laying out the general composition, is very much a classic approach. After setting everything in place, LaFrance thickened her oils just enough to incorporate various colors, larger physical elements, and characters to create her captivating narrative. In the instance of Country Fair, we see her first exposure as an adult to such an event, as her father never “allowed her to attend parties, dances and carnivals” as a child. Also on the title card, when asked about the experience riding the Ferris Wheel, LaFrance is quoted as saying “Well, I never got so scared in my life.”

        About an hour southeast of Paducah is Murray, Kentucky, where the exhibition “Hands of Time—Cento Anni” features the photographs of Fred DiGiovanni at the The Mary Ed Mecoy Hall Gallery at Murray State University. The black and white gelatine silver prints all feature portraits of the hands of centenarians. The focal image of the exhibition is of the artist’s aunt, Maria DiGiovanni (age 102), (2016) where the subject’s hands and bedangled charm bracelet tell the story of a long life. There is more than a hint of shyness in immortalizing the state of one’s hands at such an advanced age—that’s clear. However, the pride the subject shows through her brassy bracelet bestows memories of a life lived fully more than counteracts any gloominess a viewer may have in viewing the image. In reality, it’s only the shallow skin that tells us anything about this person’s age, otherwise there is this unmistakable positivity and strength present here.

        Mary Ballard (2029) features the highly textured arthritic hands of the subject, one atop the other, as another self-conscious gesture. According to the title card, Ballard was a “First Lieutenant in the US Army Nurse Corps 811th Air Division Evacuation Squadron, (where) she served in Europe following D-Day…stationed behind enemy lines at the battle of the Bulge.” This notation, and all the subject’s brief bios in this exhibition, presents each individual in a heroic light, while the highly contrasted black and white tones emphasize the burden of the hands of time. They all have endured great loss and experienced tremendous joy, and now, at an intimate and quiet moment, we can reflect upon lives well lived.

        These three solo exhibitions exemplify a level of art that moves beyond the regional to a place of liberation and even enlightenment.

D. Dominick Lombardi is a visual artist, art writer, and curator. A 45-year retrospective of his art recently traveled to galleries at Murray State University, Kentucky in 2019; to University of Colorado, Colorado Springs in 2021; and the State University of New York at Cortland in 2022.