Gallery exhibition gives intimate look at Ohio

Taylor Smith
Fri, 08 Nov 2019 03:29:57 +0000
Arts & Life, Events, Fine Arts, News, art, brandt-roberts, city, country, exhibit, exhibition, fine art, galleries, gallery, gingerich, heichel, home, landscape, live, live music, live performance, music, Ohio, painting, performance, reception, rural, state, urban

“After the Rain, 5th and High” by Cody Heichel will be displayed as part of the “There’s No Place Like Home” exhibition at the Brandt-Roberts Galleries from Nov. 10 to Dec. 29. Credit: Courtesy of Cody Heichel.

From rural cornfields to bustling cities, artists’ attempts to capture the most picturesque views of Ohio will be on display beginning this weekend.

Ohio’s landscape will be the subject of an exhibition featuring seven artists in Brandt-Roberts Galleries’ “There’s No Place Like Home” exhibition. The gallery — located in the Short North — will kick off the showcase Sunday with a reception and performance by Ohio-native Andy Shaw, frontman of the reggae-infused rock band The Andy Shaw Band, according to the gallery’s Facebook page.

Cody Heichel, an artist featured in the exhibition, said the goal is to spark familiarity in those who call Ohio home.

Heichel said he was trying to create something honest with his work. Having grown up in rural Ohio, he said he is very familiar with the state’s landscape.

Heichel said he wanted to be inclusive of both rural areas and urban spaces while creating his best representations of Ohio.

Inspired by thousands of reference photos he has collected over the years, Heichel said he considers his artwork to be in the realm of realism, his paintings possessing a photographic quality without being completely identical to a photo.

Heichel said he increasingly enjoys showing brushstrokes within his paintings, adding his own artistic flair to familiar Ohio scenes.

One of Heichel’s pieces in the exhibition is a painting of his father’s wood pile, he said.

“I have a balance of pieces that are personally important to me and pieces that are just kind of observational,” he said.

Heichel said he wanted to choose work that best represents the breadth of who he is as an artist.

While Heichel took a more detail-oriented approach to capture Ohio’s landscape, other artists in the exhibition went a different route, such as Mark Gingerich, who said he considers his work to be impressionistic.

“You’ll be able to tell what it is, but if you come up close to the painting, all you’ll see are dabs of paint,” Gingerich said.

By stepping back and looking at the work as a whole and from a distance, he said the viewer can see the subject matter clearly.

While, Gingerich, like Heichel, used reference photos as inspiration for some of his work, he also employed plein air painting, a style in which the artist captures an outdoor scene by experiencing it in real life, often in a short span of time, racing the sun and its changing light, he said.

Gingerich said one of the difficulties he faced while preparing for this exhibition was the number of artists being showcased. While each artist was working toward the same theme, Gingerich said each has a different style, forcing him to select pieces more distinct to his style and talent to stand out.

The Brandt-Roberts Galleries will host “There’s No Place Like Home” from Sunday through Dec. 29. Both Gingerich and Heichel will attend the reception Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m.