Ona Kalstein by her three entries in the Envisioning Henry IV, Part 1  in the Black Box Gallery @ St. Stevens Theater @ 10th & Ludlow Sts, Lantern Theater Company.  Ona designed images signified with memes, language and typography in a trio of drawings; child-like blood drops spurt from the cracked crown, a “garment made of blood” is saturated with droplets while the King wails and blood soaks the pea fields of the Battle of Shrewsbury with red tear-drops, the simple shapes communicating on multiple levels.  Ona designs hippy-style typography into the image as if they are pages in a coloring book for kids with sophisticated adult language.

June Blumberg‘s exuberant composition of the hard partying gang hanging around Prince Hal are a buffoonish bunch of clowns – thuggish, scary clowns with swords and big smiles.  Blumberg won an honorable mention for her painting from the jury committee…the naive primitivism & quirky composition is fun but not jokey.

Alden Cole attended Lantern Theater Company‘s Art Director, Charles McMann‘s, lecture @ Da Vinci Art Alliance in late February since the play had everyone scratching their heads, Henry IV, Part 1 is not one of Shakespeare‘s better known plays, and the lecture sent Cole into an exploration of the Seven Deadly Sins and how they relate to the characters in the play – Hal is slovenly, Falstaff is corpulent and Hotspur is haughty – all based on self-portraits.  To develop the composition Alden acts out the facial expressions, photographs himself, composes the scene in Photoshop then paints in oils on an enormous canvas.  Acedia Luxuria Superbia.

Lilliana Didovic, Lilliana Didovic & David Foss @ Envisioning Henry IV, Part 1.  Didovic painted abstract weapons and Foss layered and destroyed paint to visualize wounded flesh, the metaphors and significations are not forced but real.  The exhibition is loosely divided between “abstract” and “representational” art, like a battle of the art styles, David’s painting is visceral and scarred like a mutilated warrior and Lilliana’s gentle coloration is a contradiction in terms – beautiful weapons.

Mina Smith-Segal with her award winning painting, the brutalist watercolor truly captures the tension & fear of battle.

Hal by DoN, oil on canvas.  Photo by Morris Klein.  DoN Brewer used a variety of media to draw from such as fitness magazines, hairy bear blogs and Google to find inspiration for a new painting based on the play, after being creatively blocked around painting, having a theme to work inspired DoN to paint again.  DoN saw Hal through Jersey Shore eyes with “the situation” and “GTL” representing the young prince, the hairy bear as Falstaff and a leather bar of conspirators based on a painting by John Cawse.

Envisioning Henry IV, Part 1 in the Black Box Theater in the Saint Steven’s Theater is running in conjunction with the Lantern Theater Company’s production of the Shakespeare historical play.