BRINGING ORDER TO DISORDER FOR ART OBJECT GALLERY

Published on August 6, 2000, Page 3G, San Jose Mercury News (CA)

Jack Fischer column continued

"I found that I had so much room I could make a mess and just move on," said Matsumoto, who's responsible for Japantown's East/West Gateway sculpture at the corner of Fifth and Taylor streets in San Jose. Now Matsumoto's solution to (at least a bit of ) his financial and clutter problems has become the city's newest art venue.

Through a combination of sweat equity and the encouragement of local fellow artists, Matsumoto has opened the Art Object Gallery, 1500 square feet of polished-looking white walls to replace all those abandoned piles of stuff.

"The basic idea was, if we showed all the artists we know, and compiled all their mailing lists, it might be pretty substantial," the laid-back Matsumoto said last week. "And that we might sell a little bit of art along the way."

Notwithstanding a slight learning curve to be a gallery owner, that's the way it seems to be turning out.

Even with Matsumoto forgetting to notify the press, about 125 folks turned up for the Art Object Gallery grand opeing this spring, and all four of the artists showing work -- Eileen Hill, Reid Winfrey, Jaap Bongers and Matsumoto -- sold something. It doesn't hurt that the gallery is a short stroll from Japantown's restaurant district, making drop-in traffic a natural.

I didn't have any procedure in place to actually sell a piece," said Matsumoto. "All I had were those little red dots!" When someone came up and said, 'I'd like to buy this,' I really didn't know what I should do.

"But it worked out exactly the way I hoped it would -- everybody bought everybody else's work."

The sculptor from Willow Glen -- who these days makes elegant Eastern-inflected vessels by cutting and smoothing massive pieces of marble, onyx, nephrite and the like -- keeps a smaller commission than a commercial gallery owner would, which he says is appropriate, since he's not doing any promoting beyond providing the space.

Two of the other artists, Hill and Winfrey, are fellow San Jose State  fine arts graduates, and the third, Bongers, originally from the Netherlands, is a visiting lecturer there. Since the opening, they've added another alum, East Bay sculptor David Ogle.

Matsumoto and Hill, who is helping to maintain the gallery, will be perennials, but the sculptor said he is hoping to show work by other artists about four times a year, starting with a solo show of some of Winfrey's new work this fall. He expects that his roster will be mostly friends and acquaintances, and he seems to have a well-justified gallery owner's dread of being deluged with slides from artists wanting in.

"People are telling me I'm going to have to learn to say 'no' a lot," he said, wincing a bit.

For now, the mix of artists works well. Matsumoto's simple and sensual stone cuttings make a fine foreground to Hill's mysterious chine collé monotypes. Hill, who teaches at Mission College in Santa Clara, combines fabric and paper to make collages that she then prints in black and earth tones that are by turns abstract and evocative of real space.

On the other hand, Ogle, head of sculpture and ceramics at West Valley College in Saratoga, makes steel figurative sculptures reminiscent of Swiss expressionist sculpture Albert Giacometti, with a funky and tribal twist.

Winfrey paints on wood, combining simple text and then coating the images with thick layers of resins and varnish to create a dreamworld in works like "We two Fly" of clouds on a blue field.

The four pieces by  Bongers, who mounts multiple abstract photographs in glass and steel wall-hangings, seemed out of sync with the other work there and might be a good candidate for a solo show, or at least a separate room.

I also wouldn't mind seeing more in the way of artists' statements to explain their work, but I guess there's only so much Matsumoto can do before he has spent enough time away from his grinding machine to reach the point of diminishing returns.

And you'd have to say it's not a bad start for a guy just trying to tidy up.