Carol Miller Frost
ARTIST USES SPACE TO CREATE MOTION

Kevin Costello
Herald-Tribune

Carol Miller Frost's drawings have deceptively simple formal arrangements that rely on visual acuity for the viewer to grasp their complexity.

By way of comparison, consider the nuanced arrangement of stones in a Zen Budhist garden.

Frost's exhibition "Notions About Space," a quietly sensuous, abstract series of black pastel drawings, is on display at Desiree Snyder Contemporary Art, a minimalist-inspired gallery on Sarasota's South Pineapple Avenue.

Frost's drawings confront viewers with two forms of dynamic opposition. The first is a fluctuation between the illusionistic, three dimensional space of drawings containing rectangles or circles and the two dimensional plane upon which the images are drawn.

To this, she adds a tension in the use of white space as both infinite illusionistic space and the finite paper surface.

Between these two interpretations of space, she floats here weightless forms. It is an open luminous space rather than a specific, pictorial one.

Frost is aware that, in pictorial art, the presence of an object can render a space emptier than can vacancy: Emptiness needs a reference to be envisioned as such.

Frost's essential interest is in the relationship of internal notions of space to objective ones; our perception of space and our interaction with it.

This is demonstrated in the trail of pastel left after moving one circle ever so slightly, creating a vibration that enhances the impression of both weightlessness and solidity simultaneously.

Frost's art does not deal with issues of science, but like leaves in a breeze, her drawings address the idea that all matter vibrates--and when it is perceived so, it is both a singular and universal pleasure.