Art Review: Jayme Odgers’ show stands as a visual display of coping with unlikely medical diagnosis
Jayme Odgers distilled a bit of wisdom from working in the office of the great graphic designer Paul Rand: The solution to every problem lies within the problem itself. Perhaps without articulating it, Odgers applied the same dictum to his own life-threatening illness.
His current show at Pasadena’s Off Ramp Gallery (through Jan. 3) is a tangible expression of a health crisis that Odgers has come to see as part of his own personal solution. A clutch of self-portraits — varying widely in their handling and portrayal — show bits of a journey through a physical and emotional wilderness. They weren’t made for public viewing and it took more than a little lobbying for him to show them.
After a successful career as graphic designer, teacher and watercolorist, Odgers was diagnosed with lung cancer. “I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life,” the 76-year old revealed from his downtown Los Angeles home. He believes three years of radiation for myasthenia gravis is the root of the problem. “There were burn spots on my lungs and they told me to go home and get my papers in order.”
Odgers began keeping a visual diary in the form of daily self-portraits, a few of which are at the Off Ramp. “Tough Decisions” is a pensive image, carefully rendered in colored pencils. “Searching” is a kinetic ink sketch, and an expressive schematic of the internal organs of a body bring to mind Frida Kahlo’s hallucinogenic medical images.
“I wasn’t trying to make art,” Odgers points out, “I was just trying to document the phase. I was trying to go beyond what I look like and get closer to what I felt.”
At least as far back as the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944), artists have used their media to work through and depict personal trauma. “Robert Rauschenberg,” Odgers volunteers, “once said, ‘I don’t come up with ideas; I merely do what I can no longer ignore.’ Well, I had to do these drawings — I needed their help. I needed the sanity they gave me.”
The 76-year old Odgers grew up in Butte, Mont. before the television era. “To get me out of the way,” he recalls, “my mother gave me a stack of paper and a bunch of crayons.” Montana was, as he says, “eight months of winter and four months of bad weather.” He had no artistic role models. His only examples were Picasso in Life magazine and restaurant place mats with Charles M. Russell’s Old West paintings — neither of which inspired him.
But Odgers always drew. His schools offered virtually no art training; the one high school art class was limited to copying illustrations from magazines like Field & Stream and Argosy. “But it was valuable,” Odgers stresses, “because I got to paint watercolors the whole time.”
He made his way to California, and at junior college in Ventura had the use of his first worthy library — where he discovered the work of Paul Rand. Odgers received a full scholarship to Art College of Design, and while he did his obligatory studies, seriously began painting watercolors. After working on the New York World’s Fair in 1964, he was hired by Rand.
“When I did these drawings,” Odgers says of the Off Ramp work, “they were simply for me. I kept it quiet for about a year. I showed them to my doctor and she broke down and cried. She said I’d drawn the process.”
Quietly, Odgers posted them on his Facebook page. Off Ramp co-owner Jane Chafin saw them and asked to show the work formally. Artist Lisa Adams, his partner, challenged him to make them public. “So if you don’t like them,” he smiles, “blame Lisa.”
“They told me to get my papers in order,” Odgers says, with a note of determination. “I’m out to prove them wrong. The only papers I’m getting in order are art papers.”
--
What: “Jayme Odgers: Where am I Today? Self Portraits”
Where: Off Ramp Gallery, 1702 Lincoln Ave., Pasadena
When: Through Jan. 3, 2016. Gallery hours: 1 to 5 p.m., Friday through Sunday
Contact: (626) 298-6931, offrampgallery.com
--
KIRK SILSBEE writes about jazz and culture for Marquee.