Judge for yourself: 'Refuses' on view in annual Salon show

Jennifer Giovannucci s oil painting Sisters, right, is among the works in the annual Salon des Refuses show.

There are frogs and chimps, a green nude and the bitter center of an elegant broken heart.

The Salon des Refuses show opens tonight in the Parkwood Gallery, with 76 pieces by 48 artists whose work was not accepted into the Toledo Area Artists' exhibition. It is varied, nicely displayed, and not as crowded as in some years (in 2006, 65 artists submitted works compared to 80 in 2005).

Just inside the front door are a couple of paintings by Jane Petitjean, including a large green female nude, all round and feline and set off by bright yellow nails and nipples.

Linda Sattler contributed four boxes, each with well-proportioned designs of colorful fused-glass pieces.

A circle of lacy cut-paper against a black background by Mary Gaynier is delicate enough to be a fine lace doily. With tiny eagles at the center, images of President Bush delivering a speech and Vice President Dick Cheney peering and waving through a window, repeat around the circumference.

Jerry Runkle's interesting Recuerdo de Francisco T is seven transparent boxes stuffed with artificial jungle vegetation and yellow, blue, and red frogs.

There are just a few abstract/geometric paintings, including Patrick McDonagh's Simplicity 6, a large canvas on which he's juxtaposed a half-dozen uneven blocks of acrylic color: rich wine-reds and browns.

A soft stunner of a photograph is Michael Walker's golden grasses against a blue wall. And what is an art show without a photos of fighting dinosaurs? Jacki Way provided two, red-drenched images of the toy beasts, including one dubbed T. Wrecks.

Steven Tozer Wipfli slivered beautiful papers, turquoises and browns, into scores of thin rectangles in Ceremony.

And a wonderfully creative series in nine panels, each portraying a character from an unusual household in Buenos Aires, is a lithograph by Janice Dempster. Each segment includes typewritten text in this Letter from Argentina.

In the sculpture category, there's a large Scream-like person, made of white fiber and hung up high, called Stigmata by Rose Letherby. And made from a mix of cement and vermiculite is Darwin, an over-sized head of the 19th century British naturalist. Phil Deckenbach's version of the man known for his theories of evolution and natural selection sports an exaggerated brow and thick fingers against his face, suggesting an ape.

And speaking of primates, The Big Ride puts a quartet of miniature chimpanzees on a merry-go-round fashioned from wheel sprockets, a shovel handle, the base of a chandelier, and an old pencil sharpener. It's by Martha Evans.

Another assemblage is by Buzz Meyers, who hung the show on behalf of Spectrum Friends of Fine Art, organizer of the Salon. His conglomeration began with an abacus that he sliced into sections and set into a large, shallow wooden box. He added things that "count" such as an old adding machine, a barometer, a thermometer, an electricity meter, and a ruler, as well as things you can count on, such as three wooden foosball players (you can count on your teammates), wooden-block letters "ME," and a couple of little sheep (for tallying when sleep eludes).

Opening reception for the Salon des Refuses will be from 7 to 10 tonight. It continues through June 8 from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday at the Parkwood Gallery, 1838 Parkwood Ave. off of Monroe Street across from the Toledo Museum of Art. Parking is in the rear. Information: 419-254-2787.

Contact Tahree Lane at:

tlane@theblade.com

or 419-724-6075.