Visual Arts
Transcending earthly bounds

By Sheila Farr
Seattle Times art critic

"Airship," charcoal, graphite, collage on paper, 2004.

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Fred Birchman draws like a sculptor. His images never seem content to live in the flat world of paper and picture frames. Layered with graphite, watercolor, charcoal, pastel, maybe a few random coffee stains, they flirt with the third dimension, bulging with bits of tape, pull tabs, plastic cut-outs and rivets.

Some of the drawings evolve, becoming erratically framed mixed-media assemblages, awkward as amphibians in their first crawl from the sea. Eventually, in Birchman's exhibit "A History of Flight," wrapping up its run this weekend at Francine Seders Gallery, the drawings sprout wings and take to the air.

The show stands out for Birchman's facility as a draftsman and the striking integrity of the images; there is a sense of relationship and development that makes the body of work an organic whole. The imagery progresses through various incarnations — a marriage of mechanical illustration and metaphor that suits Birchman, who's long maintained day jobs as a designer and art director, formerly at The Seattle Times and now at MSNBC. In a way Birchman's "The History of Flight" reminds me of Jim Dine's succinct series of tool drawings, one of that artist's strongest achievements. They encapsulate a sense of work as both craft and creativity, driven by the brainstem urges that power human nature.

The evolution starts with a literally rendered airship titled "Top Floor" that details a wooden boat hull as it transforms into wings, caught on a horizon between sea and sky. "Wings, shaped for aerodynamic efficiency, are not unlike the shapes of vessels, shaped for aquatic efficiency," Birchman points out in a written statement at the gallery.

Exhibit review "A History of Flight" drawings by Fred Birchman, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. today-tomorrow, noon-5 p.m. Sunday (ends Oct. 3), Francine Seders Gallery, 6701 Greenwood Ave. N., Seattle (206-782-0355 or www.sedersgallery.com)

The elegant charcoal "Mechanical Support Study," is another rung up the evolutionary ladder, part spaceship, part paper airplane, a drawing that's taped, screwed and strung together.

In Birchman's hands, the theme of flight is always underlined by fragility. Whether drawing a tender flying machine resembling the ventricles, tubes and bones of the human body or gluing together a makeshift sculpture of a warplane, he stresses the vulnerability — and the hubris — behind it. That's where the buoyancy of the work comes in, because Birchman finds plenty of opportunities for Freudian humor in mens' urge to get off the ground. In that punning context, I like the two assemblages "Prop" and "Big Prop" that lean against the wall, part sculpture, part drawing. They serve in the transformation of the drawings from flat renderings into airborne 3-D flying machines, but as individuals, they probably won't survive to pass along their genes.

	A group of suspended sculptures from the "Sortie" series, 2003. Artist Fred Birchman built the "aircraft" from Boeing Surplus odds and ends.

The finale of "The History of Flight" is a group of suspended sculptures from the "Sortie" series. Birchman showed the series at Francine Seders Gallery last year in a small exhibition upstairs, where the slapdash aircraft, built of odds and ends from Boeing Surplus, made a wry commentary on the U.S. show of air power in the invasion of Iraq. The sculptures looked good then, and even better now in the context of the drawings. "The History of Flight" is filled with timely echoes of the myth of Icarus, whose homemade wings gave him the thrill of invincibility — and eventually led to his downfall.

Sheila Farr: sfarr@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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