Stephen Steinmetz at Soma: the man, his life, his art. By Richard Samuelson CAPE MAY - For those of us who sometimes find ourselves hanging out in places where we have to keep one eye on the lookout for artists of true talent falling through the cracks and knocking us cold on their way down, I'm afraid we have something new to worry about. Anyone who takes in the Steve Steinmetz mini-retrospective at the Soma Gallery can only conclude that there are also dangers from below, dangers of being blindsided as artists and their reputations fly by in an upward direction. If one is looking for the most up-to-date word in the postmodernist dialogue about “what is art?” it won't be found here. But if one has a taste for powerful and penetrating images of land and sea, war and peace, and portraits of self and others, this is a show not to be missed. Here they will be found in abundance: life and death painted in all its pleasurable and painful permutations--full of contradictions, but always united by a strong emotional response. Steinmetz seems to have an uncanny ability to find the colors and shapes and just the right materials to capture the essence of both extremes of our moral behavior. We are left, in turn, pleased and amused; occasionally ashamed or embarrassed; but ultimately enlightened and moved. His days as a Marine in Vietnam spawned a series that speak of the horrors, and sometimes the complexities, of war. In one picture, we see combat soldiers, their backs towards us, marching steadily if unenthusiastically into a wall of spike-like elephant grass; their predicament is immediately obvious from their unsighted position: what unseen traps lie ahead? Where to return fire? And indeed, that conundrum of modern warfare—Just who are the people we are trying to win over and who are the ones we are trying to shoot dead? Other images from other wars are more brutal and gruesome. Based on words by the World War 2 writer Ilya Eherenberg, three prisoners lie bound and gagged their inner pain explicit in the tortured and twisted compression of their bodies. The line from the poem reads, the” hostages were lead at dawn to be shot. They alone know all that an April morning can be.” Yet, one only has to move along a few steps in the exhibition to see that the dark side of the human condition has not blinded Steinmetz to what remains sweet and genuine: nor has it made it difficult for him to find the style and medium to say it so it sounds right – a carved box, no larger than 4 x 8 inches, serves as a fond remembrance of shared days from a vacation past. On the top surface lies the Shenandoah Valley, its slopping curves seeming to beckon us forward. Around the sides of the box we see a picture of the apple of his eye in a whimsical cavern, their temporary cabin home and a day’s breakfast. Open the box and a bonfire surges: the warmth of the hearth - the passions of the heart. One senses from the time lovingly invested in the intricate carving, from the bountiful harvest of imagery and the symbolic arrangement of things, a level of feeling deeper than what a few kodachromes can convey. After returning from Vietnam, Steinmetz studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; there he developed his repertoire of skills and tricks, taking something from the old masters, the post-Impressionists, an array of modern masters, primitive art and folk carving; from his teacher, Morris Blackburn, he assimilated an appreciation of whites contrasted with sharp blacks and an affinity for Chinese ink technique; from his own sensibility he absorbed a lifelong love of the German Expressionists, who continue to be one of his primary stylistic inspirations. In the early 1970’s Steinmetz signed on as a hand on oil tanker; it was the beginning of a life on the sea, most of it spent as a government observer for the National Marine Fisheries Administration and as a dredging inspector for the Army Corps of Engineers. It was also the perfect excuse to draw ships and boats to his heart’s content – of all types and sizes, real and make-believe, as for example, in “Fishing Boat on Rough Seas.” This delightful bas relief of painted wood carved with a folkish charm and primitive simplicity strikes one as a sophisticated realization of a boy at play with a boat in his tub. The mock waves threaten, but in these imaginative realms the dangers are only for effect. Sort of like “Where the Wild Things Are” only executed with the sensibility more immediate, more tactile, more necessary. And maybe with a more biting sense of humor: a red stripe on its hull seems to be a smile of youthful conquest dreamed and fulfilled. . . okay, maybe it's a smirk. In "Night Fishing" we move on to man's work – no fun and games here. The style becomes more realistic, but never anything that even remotely approaches the academic; even in two dimensions, the carver's mentality is still present; the artist wants to make something solid. The bright spotlights are tangible like a Van Gogh. The boat is husky and weather-worn; and these are the observations of one who is has been wet and tired late at night far off shore as hard men go about the risky business of commercial fishing. From back on land, we find large black and white ink drawings of home and garden where the lighter side of things find form. Flowerbeds team with growth, benign if often overflowing. We read the rhythms of their growth not so much through leaves and blooms precisely rendered, but through a trained eye and hand which animates the drama more than any photograph could. Yet these paths of wet ink have caught their subject very much to our satisfaction. In a more recent drawing, we see distant houses over the wetlands, starkly etched in black-and-white, the Chinese ink seeming to have magically found its way into their dark interiors till they look out and appear as lost souls on a vast horizon. But from the peace of the garden to war we must return. It is a subject Steinmetz can never leave alone for long. Whether he is drawn back by his own experience previously mentioned, his family heritage which he calls" militaristic," his father's stories from being a chaplain in World War II, or just that inner voice crying out against the senselessness of it all, return to it he must. From the first source surely is the striking and unnerving image of a Vietnamese prostitute. Portrayed in harsh color dissonances not seen elsewhere in the show, her anxiety and resignation are only too palpable. Her nakedness seems to speak more of the humiliation than sexuality. It is a powerful and yet profoundly uncomfortable image. At first glance, his “Ship of State," appears less nuanced, a bold tour de force of overwhelming instant visual impact. Its 18 cannons are aimed point-blank at the viewer. Constructed with the same care and attention a marine painter might lavish on some great sailing ship of old, but executed in short and muscular strokes with water color crayons in hand, it is bound to bring an ear to ear grin to the face of any boy who aspires to be an artist.(Could this be the greatest refrigerator painting of all time?) Yet to adult eyes, the stark cold steel, the monster guns, looming over a sea of blood dotted with tiny dark corpses speak of a world where only might makes right. Somehow the romantic view of battle has come face-to-face with modern warfare. Miraculously the picture seems to live half in each of these worlds, and the tension between the two is relentless as we are drawn in and repulsed all at once. This is an iconic and masterful work. With all this behind us, it can come as no surprise that when he turns to himself as a subject, he will not be telling tales of smooth sailing and blue skies. His wounds, whatever their exact nature and point of origin, are not your garden-variety bumps and bruises. In his self-portraits we sense him carving away in color, bending and contorting the features as the knife gouges at the surface till the outer image lines up with some inner state of feeling. Yet whatever the force of the blows he has sustained or projected, always he is a survivor. Sometimes he seems to grimace at us. More often he stares out offering compassion, and perhaps seeking some in return – a request were un-inclined to reject after a show like this. Taken together this collection of objects of true art sings a common tune: while living life in the flesh inevitably takes its toll on the body and the self, art, at its best – as we have here – revives the spirit of that self and generously lets the rest of us in on the secret visions of someone with powers of expression greater than our own.
