Exploring new ways to interpret life and communicate it to others is one of the great challenges of art. That it is also one of art’s most fulfilling aspects is evident in two new career retrospectives opening at the Frye Art Museum, where two artists display not only isolated virtuosity but also evolving toolboxes of skills and techniques at their commands.

The exhibits, David C. Kane: Fiat Mambo and Anxious Objects: Willie Cole’s Favorite Brands both showcase nearly 30 years of work by two artists who maintain close ties to a specific region while also transcending those boundaries. Kane is a Pacific Northwest artist and Cole comes from New Jersey.

“I’m curious about art,” Kane said, explaining his changing and expanding work. “If I wanted to do the same thing over and over again, I’d be making a lot more money in a Chrysler factory.”

This curiosity has led to experimentation with a variety of artistic media, including limited color palates, unique surfaces such as burlap and monoprinting, a technique in which an image is transferred from an inked plate to paper, resulting in a unique and irreproducible painting each time.

The latter technique resulted in “Kane’s Book of Physiognomy,” a series of 108 tiny faces inspired by the perhaps superstitious theory that there is a reconnection between a person’s facial features and character traits. The result is eerily reminiscent of images one might find in an 18th-century medical text.

Cole, while no less adventurous, works primarily with found objects, particularly blow-dryers, clothes irons and high-heeled shoes. The evolution of his work appears quite clear when one compares “Dog Eat Dog,” a piece he created in 1988 primarily from rusted nails and countless repetitions of the phrase “dog eat dog,” or “Air In Remission” (1990), which is essentially an enormous ring of interlocking blow dryers, with more recent robotic-looking creations such as “Water Window Female Iron Figure” (1998) and “Home Hero” (2003).

Whereas the former images, as well as the bulk of Cole’s work, are created primarily from the repetition of discrete objects, the latter two find him disassembling and rearranging clothes irons to the point that the original object is barely recognizable.

Thematic consistency

Kane, who earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the UW and has taught at Cornish College of the Arts, was born in Bellingham. This is perhaps unsurprising when one examines his work from the 1990s. Western Washington comes through loud and clear in “Mare Nostrum’s” drizzly, grey beach setting, disturbed only by waves and a serpentine sea creature.

The landscapes almost take on a life of their own, with the skies congealing and enveloping other figures on the canvas, said Frye Chief Curaor Rovin Held director of exhibitions and collections.

“Evening Glory’s” ultra-bright cumulus clouds, for example, are so eye-catching that it takes a moment to notice the large UFO enmeshed in them.

These flying objects are one of Kane’s many fascinations that verge upon obsession. The museumgoer is just as likely to find the saucers flying over a pastoral setting as in a slightly Romanesque cityscape. Evocations of ancient imagery meld seamlessly with stereotypical 19th-century picnic scenes. One would not be surprised to see a multi-colored parasol alight the steps of a Mayan temple in Kane’s world.

The ability to become lost in a particular theme is perhaps a prerequisite for all artists, but is certainly evident in much of the work of both Kane and Cole. Kane’s “Book of Physiognomy,” for example, is not just amazing for its individual results — each tiny, detailed face — but for the collective impression and massive variety within it. Likewise, Cole’s ability to see much more than fashion potential in a pair of high heels takes more than a mere stroll down the imaginative runway.

Like Kane’s work, Cole’s art is highly reflective of his surroundings, though perhaps more intentionally so. His employment and ritualizing of urban tools are intended to be a metaphorical expression of the black experience in America. Rosa Parks, for example, can be examined from any number of historical, political or anthropological angles. Looking at this fierce lion’s head, created from numerous interlocking high heels, a viewer could form many different impressions of it before even reading the label, which ascribes its inspiration as the “African Gela Mask of the Wee people, traditionally used to resolve community problems.”

Cole’s technique does result in a few groaners, such as the “Sole Protector,” which represents Mahakala, “Buddhist lord of the wind and conqueror of all negative elements” (with the exception, perhaps, of metatarsalgia). For the most part, however, Cole’s projects are interesting and thought provoking. His “Domestic Shields” series, in which ironing boards are scorched with patterns to evoke tiki masks, bring the right kind of smiles — admiring and wondrous rather than scornful.

Searching in the night

In addition to their close ties to specific regions of the country, both Kane and Cole share deep commitments to figuration as a means of exploring fear and ambivalence about modernism that advocates art stemming from color and form and not from depiction of the natural world, Held said.

Kane’s work, which is replete with landscapes and portraiture, is almost exclusively figurative, not literal. The “Suburban Souls” series, in which the modern poolside and patio is transported back in time to ancient Rome, implies the extravagance of wealth and the cold solitude of the modern American life.

These attitudes and tendencies are also evident in much of Cole’s work, such as “Gas Snake,” which features a sinisterly coiled gas hose and its attendant handle poised ready to strike, and “Home Hero,” another idyllic icon that, according to its label, is meant to “counter terrorism and warfare,” as well as “empower Cole and bring tranquility and safety to his home.”

“I’m trying to get art school out of my system,” Kane said. “While I was attending school, professors were all over the board with regards to their own art and what they taught, but there was certainly an expressionist slant.”

Kane takes a very playful approach to all elements of his projects, including the titles.

“I want things to be a bit ambiguous, to elicit varied reactions so that something might dawn on you later,” Kane said. “Take ‘Fiat Mambo’: Am I referring to Fiat, the car, or does it mean let there be mambo?”

Kane may not always be pulling the viewer’s leg, but if so, it’s clear that he takes his jokes very seriously.

David C. Kane: Fiat Mambo will be on display at The Frye Art Museum through Oct. 7. Anxious Objects: Willie Cole’s Favorite Brands will be on display through Sept. 3.

Cole will speak at the Frye at 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 10. Kane is also offering a workshop, “Painting with David C. Kane,” Aug. 14-17. Visit www.fryemuseum.org for more information.