Kathryn Arnold at California State University Stanislaus

The Journal
1999, Fall
“CSUS Art Display: The More You Look, the More You See”
by Joe Brekke

Kathryn Arnold’s search for “visual magic” is now sprawling on the gallery walls at California State University, Stanislaus.
Six of Arnold’s abstract, expressionistic pieces fill the University Art Gallery with her colorful, free form. The swirling blues and browns of the seven-foot-by-seven-foot “I Swear I Heard You in the Wind” seem to flow with the white canvas in contrast to the rich greens, reds and purples of “In The Sierras with Manzanita Trees” right beside it on the walls.
Arnold, a recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Regional Fellowship, has exhibited work all over the country. A Kansas native now living in San Francisco, Arnold said she began, finished or was inspired to paint most of the pieces in the “Vast Valley Experience” exhibit during her sojourn in Turlock as a visiting lecturer/ sabbatical replacementin the CSUS Art Department last spring.
Arnold will be back in Turlock Thursday for the exhibit’s opening reception from 6-7 p.m. in the gallery. At 7 p.m., Arnold will give an informal talk about the work and answer questions from those attending.
During a phone interview Tuesday, Arnold said these paintings are the result of time spent chasing the creative moment, following an impulse with a brush.
“Each viewer is going to take away different things from each of the pieces,” Arnold said. “That immediate response, the color or the shape and forms immediately apparent are what brings the viewer to the piece. Others might sit and gaze at them for a while. If you do, you start to see the way the color fields oscillate back and forth. You have that first response but there are myriads more perceptual responses one can take away.”
Assistant Gallery Director Scott Thomas agrees. He said the more time you spend looking at the pieces, the more you see.
“I think the paintings repay close contemplation,” Thomas said. “The more I look at them the more the colors, shapes and forms come forward. It’s that kind of interaction that starts to bring the form out of chaos.”
One of the most intense pieces is a 10-by-20 foot-, two-part painting called “100! Parts One and Two.” Both pieces are composed of 100 painted squares, each one square foot in size. “Part One,” called “Momentary Connection,” is mounted on Velcro and allows the viewer to rearrange the order of the smaller paintings, reinforcing Arnold’s belief in the “indefinable occurrence of integration.”
“These one hundred things are thoughts, ideas, and images all active within the mind,” she explains in a statement regarding the work. “Not active overtly all at once, but activated in the associations and relationships generated. There is no end even to 100 things when one includes the associational relationships. The parts can be moved by the viewer. Like real life nothing is static, yet still keeps a sense of underlying structure in the realm of pure chance and chaos.”