Albeit small, Savannah rivals bigger cities -- looking at you, Denver -- for the caliber of art offerings

A few years ago I had the opportunity to attend the First Friday Art Walk in Denver, Colorado’s “Art District on Santa Fe.” At the time, I was co-hosting the radio show Art on the Air on WRUU 107.5 FM with fellow artist David Laughlin, and upon returning noted live on-air that I felt that, while Savannah’s visual art community isn’t ever going to be on par with New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago, it had the chance to compare to a place like the Mile High City, if things continued in the direction they were going.

Well, sorry to tell you, Denver, but Savannah has officially passed you on my personal artistic rankings.

In quantity, of course, Savannah will always come up short in comparison to larger cities, simply because they’re counting in the millions and we’ve yet to reach even 200,000 total residents. But who cares how many artists we have in total when the quality of the work coming out by local creators is at such a high level?

Doubt my assessment? Have a look at these three current exhibitions, and I promise you’ll be forced to at least consider that the Hostess City of the South is ready to stand alongside cities whose population dwarfs our own.

“Chromatopia" at Location Gallery, 251 Bull St., though Oct. 9

The opening reception for “Chromatopia” was packed, a testament to the ever-expanding influence of the two featured artists, Maxx Feist and Rubi McGrory, as well as to Gallery Director Peter Roberts’ marketing savvy. By my count, I was at best the third most accomplished writer to attend, given that my editor Amy Paige Condon and “Savannah Sideways" blogger and fellow Savannah Morning News scribe Jessica Leigh Lebos were milling about. And if I were to list the collection of local art luminaries standing shoulder to shoulder to gaze at the collected works in the show, it would feel like an egregious use of name-dropping.

As the title implies, the pieces featured in the show are full of color, and that, combined with the sheer volume of work, had me feeling transported from what usually serves as the offices of Corcoran Austin Hill Realty into a prismatic wonderland.

Feist, who moved to Savannah from Asheville, North Carolina, only a few years ago, has been making their mark on the local art scene from the moment they arrived. Their explosive eyeball and mouth-filled paintings have been a regular presence at the popular semi-annual SLAM art fairs, as well as on the walls at ART Southeast’s rotating group shows and in their storefront. They recently had a show at the Sentient Bean that would have easily felt at home in your typical big-city Avantgarde art gallery, except that the artist chose to display them in a coffee shop to make them more affordable and accessible.

For “Chromatopia,” Feist has expanded their visual language to include three-dimensional elements, where oddly-shaped protrusions push outwards from oddly-shaped painted panels, further confronting the viewer with their already somewhat disquieting imagery. In this humble columnist’s opinion, it’s their best work to date.

Their artistic partner for the show Rubi McGrory, meanwhile, has a completely different take on the theme, choosing instead to create a series of circular pieces that, unlike Feist’s work, act as a calming presence. To do so, she vacillates between embroidering words like “focus” and “calm,” and painted “Meditations” of a more abstract nature.

Like Feist, McGrory is continuing to push themes that followers of her work are likely familiar with, such as the notion that wisdom is gained through repetition, and that artists don’t necessarily need to take themselves overly seriously to make impactful work.

Taken together, Feist and McGrory are on the one hand dynamically contrasted by the themes they present, but on the other hand visually tenable due to the duos equally dynamic use of color. It’s one of those exhibitions where I find myself highly desirous of a return visit, simply to be able to enter the artists’ shared world outside of the hustle and bustle of an opening reception.

As an added bonus, a portion of each art purchase benefits the Maui Strong Fund, continuing the gallery’s long-standing tradition of partnering with a non-profit for each of their exhibitions.

“Paper Cuts” at ARTS Southeast’s Sulfur Studios, 2301 Bull St., through Oct. 21

French-born, Savannah-local multidisciplinary artist Axelle Kieffer has established herself as the pre-eminent collage artist in town, having displayed her ever-increasing mastery of the technique in exhibitions at galleries across the Southeast. With “Paper Cuts,” however, she’s taking on the form from a different angle, through a series of collaborative collages with artists from literally all over the globe.

While I perused the exhibition, I was amazed at the variety of themes that Kieffer’s collage work explored, undoubtedly the result of interjecting artistic partnerships into her process.

On one wall, for example, the project’s mastermind displayed a series of three works she completed with the Mexico-based Jose Ernesto Muniz Apango. Titled Collaboration I: Machine Macabre 01-03, the imagery is both disturbing and relevant to today’s unease over the increasing influence of technology on our lives. Those well-versed in Kieffer’s style will no doubt find them in line with what one might normally expect from the artist, aside, perhaps, from the addition of technological elements.

In contrast, however, is her collaboration with Canadian artist Geoff Wonnacott, a spacey collection of astral bodies and molecules. The visuals chosen expand Kieffer’s artistic milieu, while the juxtaposition of micro and macro invites further intellectual investigation.

According to the press release, Kieffer has partnered to create over 200 such collage collaborations, a fair number of which are on display in the main gallery at Sulfur Studios. Out of the 30-plus artists in the show, I counted at least 21 of them as being from outside of the United States, making it a truly international show right in the heart of the Starland District.

Moreover, ARTS Southeast has created an exquisite exhibition catalogue to accompany the collection, a book which also features three essays on the subject of collage and collaboration, including one by rising star local and regional curator Jon Witzky, the non-profit’s director of exhibitions. There’s also a special edition of the volume limited to just 10 copies, each featuring an exclusive hand-cut collage by Axelle Kieffer herself.

“Goose” at Laney Contemporary, 1810 Mills B Lane Blvd., through Oct. 28

Stepping through the chartreuse double doors that serve as entryway into the beautiful Brutalist building that houses Laney Contemporary, Savannah’s premiere high art gallery, the first thing visitors will see is The Future. The piece, representative of much of the work in New York artist Michael Scoggins’ excellent show “Goose,” features two massive handwritten notebook-style pages side by side, across which the artist has “doodled” the piece’s title, an exploding cloud, a rainbow, the name “Michael S.” and the date “Tuesday, August 8th” in a style reminiscent of the types of drawings many of us did at 10 years old.

It’s juvenile in the best sense of the word, full of youthful energy and spirit, while simultaneously displaying craftsmanship so masterful that I found myself consumed with uncovering his methods though much closer inspection.

The remainder of the drawings in the exhibition bounce between similar, bold pronouncements, like in the case of Worst Summer Ever!, and truly touching artistic reflections, as with Without You, which features a Simpson’s chalkboard-style repetition of “I could not do this without you.”

But the show isn’t just drawings.

With every exhibition at Laney Contemporary, artists are challenged to contend with the mirrored room at the back of the gallery, a reflective space that shows work in ways that creatives rarely have the chance to play with. And play Scoggins does, displaying a number of massive paper airplanes hanging in states of perpetual potential energy in a piece appropriately titled Dog Fight. They’re even weathered properly, and I’ll admit to having chuckled out loud, alone in the gallery, upon seeing the dirty, squished tip of one of the planes, just the kind of thing you’d expect if some giant human had actually thrown the thing.

It’s another museum quality exhibition curated by the brilliant Susan Laney, who has built a reputation as not only one of the top curators in Savannah, but in all of the South. And yet, as usual, the space felt entirely inviting, and this in spite of the Neighborhood Comics t-shirt, pink Party Animals baseball cap, and flip-flops I wore for my visit . The art on the walls might be world class, but Laney Contemporary is always free to visit, and it never feels like I don’t belong, even if I look like some nerd who wandered in off the street.

Find Location Gallery, Sulfur Studios/ARTS Southeast, and Laney Contemporary at locationgallery.net, artssoutheast.org, and www.laneycontemporary.com respectively. Art on the Air continues to broadcast on WRUU 107.5 FM every other Wednesday from 3-4 p.m. with it’s current host, the talented painter and illustrator Tamara Garvey.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Three current exhibitions prove Savannah's art happenings rival larger cities