Figures, myths and Face Plants: four Mobile artists shared a gallery wall downtown
Downtown Mobile’s community gallery has a habit of pairing artists whose work shouldn’t fit together — and then making it work. That was the case with “Figures of Imagination” and “Ethereal,” a pair of contrasting exhibitions mounted at the Mobile Arts Council’s Gallery @ Room 1927 at 6 S. Joachim Street, which filled the gallery through late June 2024 with the work of four Mobile-based artists and drew a reception crowd during LoDa ArtWalk.
Black-and-white realism from a self-taught pencil artist
Eric Achenbach’s solo show, “Figures of Imagination,” dealt with human identity through surrealism and imaginative figure work — an argument, as he put it, for embracing raw identity rather than concealing it to conform to societal norms. His vehicle is the pencil. A self-taught artist who began pursuing the craft seriously during the pandemic, drawing inspiration from South African pencil artist Jono Dry and the surrealist painter René Magritte, Achenbach produces drawings so realistic they are frequently mistaken for photography.
His exhibition was entirely black and white, rendered in painstaking detail — and it has been earning recognition since 2020, with multiple awards in the Mobile Arts Council’s juried Annual Members’ Show. “I want people to feel, not just view,” he said, “and be inspired to express themselves through creativity.”
Three artists define ‘ethereal’
Against that monochrome precision, “Ethereal” answered in vibrant color across multiple mediums. Three artists — Ben Kaiser, Lucy Gafford and Vanessa Quintana — were prompted to execute what “ethereal” meant to them, each researching world religions, pantheons, creatures of myth and folklore.
Kaiser, an oil painter whose work is marked by saturated color, brushless strokes and a fantasy quality, builds his canvases by glazing layers of color one at a time until the saturation itself seems to illuminate. His background in art nouveau styling and stained-glass artistry gave several pieces a religious-art feel. “For something to reach the status of ethereal, it has gone beyond this world’s standards,” he said.
Ceramicist Lucy Gafford took a more playful path toward the same theme. Her contributions included sculptural ceramics, jackalope sculptures, nature-themed acrylic paintings and her trademark “Face Plants” — hanging planters complete with mouths bearing distinctly different expressions. “The closest thing on earth comparable to the heavens is being surrounded by nature’s splendor,” she said, “and that is a constant throughout each piece.”
Vanessa Quintana’s surreal sculptures and watercolors tied the two together, drawing on religion, folklore, philosophy and science. Her pieces posed questions — what is fact, what is unknown, and how is it perceived — while presenting the pantheistic view that all things are divinely and infinitely connected.
The collaborators behind the collaboration
The three “Ethereal” artists had collaborated before, on “The Fantastical Forest” at the Mobile Museum of Art — an installation that Kaiser and Gafford were renovating at the time, slated to reopen to the public later that year. All three studied studio art in college. Kaiser and Quintana worked full time as float builders with Mirth Company, which Kaiser manages. Gafford had stepped down as executive director of the Mobile Arts Council in May 2024 to work as a full-time artist — making the show a homecoming in a gallery she loved and knew well.
The exhibitions ran through June 29, 2024, with regular gallery hours Tuesdays through Fridays and Saturdays, no admission cost, and much of the work available for purchase — a standing reminder that the city’s community gallery keeps world-class, locally made art within reach of anyone walking down Joachim Street.