Patricia Armato's sculptures in alabaster and wonderstone, now at the Illinois Institute of Art Gallery, Chicago, subtly touch upon what the ancient Chinese Tao Te Ching found embodied beneath material appearances. In it are images, elusive, evading one. In it are things like shadows in twilight. In it are essences, subtle but real, Embedded in truth. In several of Cajandig's works, the essence of motion breaks into dance.
Color confounds contour with exciting results.
It is Cajandig's stylization, and often delicate, gracious harmonies of forms, which release the image from immediate illusionism to the greater power of the images. Anything less would lessen hers, and the viewer's experience. Three Amandas is executed with a thick brushline on a polychrome ground, the brushwork of which recalls paste-paper or a ragging technique. The artist Ben Shahn employed the approach frequently, but Cajandig works it with a richness and grace both decorative and emotive. A unifying feature is the diamond pattern in inked dash-line superimposed discretely within the tiers, but one confesses that the overall, immediate work may be weakened, a bit too busy, and distancing.