'All Things Great and Small' by Guy Church at Good Weather, North Little Rock

I think that sometimes the kind of things they need are some empty spots. When the day is done, it gets dark and you don’t know where it went.

Guy Church (2005)

A bizarre breeze carves through the still air in Guy Church’s trademark graphite, charcoal, ballpoint pen, and colored pencil drawings. The artist invents narratives and cast people as their subject within coming of age scenes. As Guy suggest, his art is about people: “[they] may not always do such magnificent things, but in them is a very special wonder that is an artful thing.” Their positions, the angles of their heads and bodies, their captured motion, their surroundings, all are in frame for the viewer to gain a perspective on their story. In this particular show images of youth participating in serene, and sometimes unsettling, childhood activities are absent. Instead, All Things Great and Small features the home, the vehicle, and the suburban environment, form- ing a space of ennui and tranquility that is present in all of the psychological complexity involved. The people depicted in the drawings live in their moment. In one drawing that depicts a first-person view from inside a bedroom window, looking outward toward the full moon in the night sky, we are coaxed into a dream state, causing a simple feeling of loneliness, camaraderie, and joy that attends the pensiveness of being in this world.