With all the joy taken in viewing McCroskey-Hrehov’s new ceramic mosaic
wall sculptures, we can only imagine great joy in the making. Notions of beauty, too, inform the work, a beauty as hale, even as sanguine, as it is,
subtly, sublime.
Leaves - specifically, oaks leaves - have long occupied McCroskey-Hrehov’s
imagination, leaves being, perhaps, emblematic of the dual identity of so much
nature - delicate, but durable, soft, but becoming brittle, spindly and smooth.
In a piece like the 18-by 36- by 2-inch Oak Leaf Diptych, dualities are almost wildly
manifest.
The piece comes in two parts; the leaves are divided in two down their middles by thinner than air “spinal cords”. Two tiles support one leaf apiece - one green leaf against a high-sheen, autumn-orange, the other orange leaf against a plain green. Both tiles-cum-leaves are seen against vestiges of a formally quirky, black and white grid
perfect for the geometrically abandoned occasion. There is, to paraphrase William Blake, “a cheerful symmetry.
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This is not to say that Mc-Croskey-Hrehov is using any particular formula in her work.
The tour de force of this exhibition comes, in fact in nine  parts rather than two.
Red Leaf Field
comprises nine tiles, arranged three by three, horizontally and vertically,
sporting oak leaves of a dusky red cast, the reliefs measuring an impressive 4 by 6 feet
by 1.5 inches. The leaves are seen against very American-Arts-and Crafts-movement
sorts of abstract floral grounds of the same color, grounds which also, as the piece’s title indicates, bring to mind the richly monotone serializings of much American color field
painting of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.
Whatever the influences, McCroskey-Hrehov is on surer ground here - technically as
well as conceptually - than she has ever been before. Tensions do abide. But unity is
sought and achieved through the artist’s special vision - a Matissean joy at the prospect
of making, and even seeing, a heady formal beauty.
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