Off the Beaten Path: Three small outsider art shows around Savannah inspire big thoughts

One thing you can say about Savannah's art scene: It is accessible. Coffee shops, cocktail lounges, restaurants, real estate offices and more double as galleries, displaying rotating exhibitions by artists creating thoughtful, provocative works.

Here are three showing now. Be quick, though, there are only a few days to catch some great art.

Elsa Jon Vidal at 208 Wine Bar, 208 E. Bay St., through July 31st

I have never met Elsa Jon Vidal , and I have never met the Facebook friend who recommended that I go see her first art show in Savannah. I also don’t drink, so I’d never been to 208 Wine Bar either. But after spending some time with the rich, well-crafted, two-dimensional mixed media pieces Vidal has placed around the Bay Street tasting room, I’m glad I made the trip.

When I review art happenings, I like to use my phone’s voice recorder to catalog my feelings about the works I’m looking at in real time. As I meandered through Vidal’s exhibition, I used the words “expensive,” “full of flavor,” “dense,” “thick,” and “heavy” to describe what I was seeing, and days later those descriptors have remained with me.

Ostensibly, Vidal is exhibiting paintings, but they’re so much more than just oil or acrylic on canvas. The most effective works incorporate objects that the artist has inserted into or on top of the two dimensional wood panels which serve as the base for the artworks. “Serpentine,” for example, incorporates a raised lattice that implies scales, while “Master healer” and “Origin” have crystals sprouting from bands that climb across the works’ surfaces.

As I’ve been thinking about the show in the time since I visited the space, I’ve kept coming back to the notion that the pieces felt like I was looking down on distant planets spawned from the artist’s imagination. Initially I dismissed such thoughts, attributing them to the fact that I’m currently reading “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir, a sci-fi novel by the author of “The Martian.” But as I sat down to write this, I took a look at Vidal’s statement for the show, and saw that she has described her work as blending “the mystique of alien landscapes with the familiarity of earthly textures.”

It’s refreshing to me when an artist’s message matches what I’m seeing with my own eyes. It feels accessible, like viewers don’t need to go into the exhibition with specialized knowledge to understand what’s going on. Maybe that’s a product of Vidal’s status as an outsider, of sorts, in terms of being a part of the local art scene. But I think it’s more likely that she’s just good at what she does, and I’m looking forward to seeing where she goes from here.

Tamara Isaak-Harrington, “Ephemeral Artery” at Lone Wolf Lounge’s Cobra Room, 2429 Lincoln St., through July 31st

The Cobra Room does Tamara Isaak-Harrington no favors. When I recently stopped by the space to visit her wonderful new exhibition “Ephemeral Artery,” the entire room was filled with chairs, one of which was leaning up against one of her pieces. A door in the back of the room was open, blocking the view of two others. The glass on the pieces was covered in fingerprints, and the lighting was poor.

From all accounts, Lone Wolf Lounge is a great neighborhood bar. But, at least on my recent visit, it wasn’t a great place to see art.

Those who are willing to do the work, however, moving aside obstacles and getting close enough to the art to really see it, will be rewarded. Isaak-Harrington has developed a style that is unique to Savannah, especially her style that represents architectural features in new and fresh ways. It’s gestural, but with a ton of implied detail. Some of the works incorporate metallic paints to makes the buildings pop. And several pieces are painted on cardboard, where the artist has torn away layers to reveal the corrugations beneath, but in a way that feels well crafted rather than haphazard, with the tears becoming integral elements of the artworks.

The subject matter that the artist has chosen for her work also feels relevant. Collectively, the show is a travelogue of sorts, with “Waterfalls of Iceland,” “Arch of Rue Augustas, Lisbon, Portugal,” and “Fountain of Desires - Glory, Sao Paulo, Brazil” among the pieces featured. But there are also several pieces devoted to Savannah’s picturesque nature, like “Broughton Street, Savannah, Georgia” and “Streets of Savannah, GA.” It’s a reminder that the things that you and I probably take for granted because we walk by them everyday are, too, sought out for their beauty, and the reason why we have so many visitors each year.

Isaak-Harrington’s work was recently featured in ArtStryngs Gallery’s inaugural exhibition “HeartStryngs,” a well-lit white cube off of Liberty Street. Seeing the work there and then was the reason why I felt compelled to visit the Cobra Room when I saw she was having a full solo show in the space. “Ephemeral Artery” is definitely worth a view, but knowing the quality of the work that the artist is creating, I’m looking forward to the next time I get to see it in a space better designed to showcase art.

Eric David Wooddell, “Ephemeral Landscapes” at Sentient Bean, 13 E. Park Ave., through September

Eric David Wooddell ’s “Ephemeral Landscapes” is a show featuring 18 collages of various sizes, with torn and cut fragments pulled from city maps, comic books, and Ram Dass’ book “Be Here Now.” Many of the pieces are put together as mandalas, circular geometric designs with roots in Hindu and Buddhist art.

Looking at the collection is an interesting experience. Upon entering Sentient Bean and first glancing at the works, viewers will no doubt get caught up in the shapes Wooddell has created on the two-dimensional planes. But closer inspection reveals that there is a lot more going on in the pieces than simple forms and patterns, most notably in the way that the artist has incorporated words into his compositions.

“Everything is the way it is. It’s that same game,” reads a portion of the larger circle at the center of “Big Ice Cream Cone in the Sky.” Another piece, “Capitol Capers,” includes numerous bits of comic strips relating to activity happening at the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. “One” juxtaposes dialogue on our universal connectivity with text at the center that reads “ONE” in the font you’d find on a dollar bill. And several pieces use Star Wars comics, with an emphasis on the Resistance battling the Empire.

Perhaps it’s because of the current state of affairs in this country, and the fact that I went to visit the show in the days after Donald Trump was grazed by a bullet, but the work feels very political. To be perfectly honest, I feel a little bit sad looking at it. There’s a certain peace that’s inherent in the mandala forms that the artist has created, especially in the pieces where he’s added splashes of color, but the longer I contemplate them, the more I feel like Wooddell is fighting an uphill battle, trying to get us to relax in a world that feels increasingly tense.

Maybe that’s what we need, though. The world has gone crazy. Artists might be the only ones who can save us.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Off the Beaten Path: Three small outsider art shows around Savannah inspire big thoughts