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"Wicked" Art Show

To local artist Robin Grass, creating a show based on the 1995 book, "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West," was just his cup of tea. The book, and the smash Broadway play adapted from it, took Frank Baum's tale of the Wizard of Oz and turned it on its ear. The modern version presented the more complex world of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West who, it's proposed in "Wicked," is actually a sympathetic figure.     Grass, 60, and former art student and Bedford High School graduate Amandalynn Grazier, 27, now living in California, will both give their different views of characters and the world of Oz in their show, based on "Wicked." In the show, Elphaba is portrayed as a pleasantly smiling young woman, the wizard as a madman, the cowardly lion as a dozing drunk and Dorothy as a brooding young girl. A couple of years ago, after Grass had finished the book, he had the idea to do a show based on its different view of Baum's book and the well-known movie. "I think it's a riot," Grass said of the book. He liked the book's different vantage point of this mythical world and how he could meld those different scenarios and ideas into his work. "I was thinking it could be a disparate kind of show," Grass said. A little over a year ago, Grazier approached Grass about combining their efforts for a show. When she pitched the idea, he told her about the idea for the Oz-based show. "I felt like maybe it'd be fun to do a show with someone like Robin who has a similar style," said Grazier, 27. As a commercial artist, she works as a custom painter and restorer of motorcycles, bicycles, helmets, cars and toys and is also a sculptor. She a lso worked with a group of painters who paint murals and backdrops for rock concerts, television shows and theaters. Grass calls his work "fantasy surrealism," and Grazier said her own work is reflective of Grass' influence. "Mine is definitely fantasy. I don't aspire to photorealism," she said. "I feel that my painting technique is completely inspired by him and his teachings." It will be Grazier's first show in her native Bedford. After doing some undergraduate work at the University of Delaware, she attended the Academy of Art in San Francisco where she earned a bachelor of fine arts in 2003. It will be Grass's first show since 2000 although he has submitted individual pieces for other shows at the arts center. He and his wife, Melinda Myers "Mouse" Grass, own the Foundry Art School on Juniata Street, Everett. Grass grew up in York but graduated from a Wilmington, Del., high school. He then attended and graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He won a Cresson European Traveling Scholarship that gave him 90 days of travel in Europe, England and Scotland. After he returned  home, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and entered graduate school at the University of Delaware on a scholarship. There he completed his masters of fine arts degree. Grass' art, done mostly in acrylic paint, is distinct and recognizable for its clean lines and its subject matter; some of it ironic, some of it amusing and most all of it using his "free-fall imagination," according to a press release on the show. Although he didn't see the Broadway play, the 1939 movie starring Judy Garland did influence his work for the show. "I like the idea of relating it to and what I remembered from the ŒWizard of Oz' but just painting it from a different point of view," Grass said. The show is also scheduled to travel on to San Francisco and Los Angeles in the coming year. The Bedford show opened Aug. 29 and runs through Sept. 21. The Foundry can be contacted by calling 652-5066. Grazier's Web site is www.Amandalynn.biz.