Form’s function is common ground

By Kristen Peterson

Tuesday, April 29, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Andreana Donahue moved to Las Vegas four years ago, took a job at the Wynn Gallery, saved a little money and opened a gallery of her own.

A graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Donahue came west to be with family, but also to chime in on the common mantra among serious gallery owners in town: “Fertile territory. Big fish, small pond.” Or as some might say, “big fish, puddle.”

The splash, of course, was huge in a community that doesn’t have fistfuls of fine art galleries lining quaint corridors.

Donahue’s Main Gallery is a little out of the way — on Main Street just north of Charleston Boulevard — to be noticed by those who haven’t made it their destination, which is a shame because the storefront space has catered to the conversations of serious Las Vegas artists and their evolving ideas in contemporary art. Donahue also incorporates work by artists outside of Las Vegas, but the local lineup has been outstanding.

Among the gallery’s repertoire: Buffalo Yo’s dynamically abstract papier-mache, felt and found-object sculptures; Wendy Kveck’s sensually delicious and richly textured, layered and oozing paintings; and Erin Stellmon’s mixed media approaches to Las Vegas’ transient nature.

For the gallery’s one-year anniversary this month, Donahue pairs artists RC Wonderly and Danielle Kelly in “formality between acquaintances.”

The question that comes to mind when you see the exhibit is: Why hasn’t anyone done this before?

Kelly and Wonderly’s minimalist tendencies, calculated approaches to reconfiguring spaces, love of geometric form and transitions from painting to sculpture seem to make for an ideal pairing, a perfect art love match.

Kelly, a recent graduate of UNLV’s Master of Fine Arts program, works in various media — graphite on paper, yarn, textiles, medium-density fiberboard and cardboard — often incorporating philosophical ideas.

In “Grand Army of the Republic Highway,” an installation in March at the Winchester Cultural Center gallery, Kelly broke away from her refined and detailed works by creating a more narrative sculpture with a cruder construction.

But “inter,” a trapezoidal wedge made from mirrored Plexiglas, medium-density fiberboard, Bondo and acrylic paint, was a minimalist work that drew attention to spatial relationships. It played with the idea of making an object disappear by creating angles that would flatten or appear to transform based on the viewer’s vantage point. The work won first place in sculpture in the Las Vegas Art Museum’s juried “Roundup” last fall.

Wonderly won first place in the “Roundup” the year before with “Untitled,” a three-dimensional piece made from 3-by-5-inch stacked notecards, from which he cut out a cube (think origami box) and placed it next to the recess on the vast plane. At a solo show at the Clark County Government Center, Wonderly used floor tiles to create larger pieces with the same concept.

Their similarities won’t be as visible in “formality between acquaintances.” Kelly’s traditional works are replaced with color, found objects and a compilation of forms. And it works. You’d be surprised at how much crown molding, a ceramic candlestick holder, vibrant stripes and a clay sculpture can “dress up” a vertical pedestal made from medium-density fiberboard. Kelly, whose work focuses on pairing and mirroring, also has six drawings in the show and a piece that includes two live goldfish.

Wonderly has basically moved from the floor to the wall with his works and played with the “skewed cubes” by displacing them from the base in which they were created. In one piece, his cube patterns were removed from a 4-by-8-foot particle board, formed, painted and hung on the adjacent wall. In a three-panel piece, he’s removed cutouts from two panels and placed the cubes on the third uncut panel.

Regarding Kelly and Wonderly, Donahue says, “I really wanted to see what it would be like to see them together.”

Even Kelly says she noticed the “similar thinking” and a relationship between her work and Wonderly’s in terms of formal concerns.