Even after spending nearly three hours at MICA’s annual ArtWalk, I only got a third of the way through the galleries, hallways, and classrooms. (What a great party! Walkers even got to meet the graduating seniors behind the works on view.)
The most compelling piece I saw was an installation, The Whole Story by Heather Donahue and Ashleigh Wilkinson.
I was intrigued by the title board at the entry. It looked as though the artists had penciled inscriptions across the entire white wall and then formed the letters of the title by painting over the non-lettered areas.
This creation of words using unexpected graphic means should have given me a clue to the depth of the installation within the room. But my first instinct on seeing the words “The Whole Story” was to think, “Oh, this is going to be about the no-privacy, tell-all Facebook generation posting too much personal information.” In fact, it was such a richer experience, and so much more about the true value of intimacy, the importance of conversation, and the need for low-tech interactions. It reached beyond individual interactions to illuminate the fundamental needs we share. You can get a sense of this temporary installation in the photographs taken by Sasha Funk, a friend of the artists.
In a small darkened room, a space that could have begun life as a storage closet, Heather and Ashleigh created a memorable environment using the absolute simplest means—paper, pens and pencils, and light. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of paper rectangles covered with notes and drawings were hung from the ceiling on transparent string, just above my head, flickering slightly with my movement and the building’s air circulation.
The message, WE HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE, was projected on two abutting walls. I wondered how Heather and Ashleigh got those words to appear on the wall. It took me quite a while to figure this out, but when I realized how they did it, I was just amazed. I expected that somewhere there must be a piece of paper, a sort of stencil, suspended in front of a light source, with the letters required to create the message. Puzzled, I searched everywhere in the room. There was just one single bulb, no stencil.
I raised my hand into the hanging papers and suddenly the shadow of my fingers appeared in the E of the word HIDE. That’s when I knew that these pieces of paper were not randomly arranged—they were all hung so that when the single bulb shined through them, the light formed the letters of the message on the wall. How did they figure that out?
When I met the artists later, I learned that this collaboration was almost a total mind meld that recorded their conversations and exchanged their written thoughts—lists, notes, and journal pages. The result (sometimes intimate and sometimes pedestrian) made me feel invited into their hearts and minds and lives. As I followed the segmented conversation, I felt I got to know them. “This line seems hard to cross,” wrote one; “Yes, I don’t know how to address it but figured . . . ,” responded the other.
As for the rest of the MICA show, there was so much more to see than I could ever capture here. This is one of those experiences— well, you just had to be there! I’m going to mark a full day off for next year’s ArtWalk. You should, too! ArtWalk 2011 will be held on Thursday, May 12.
Filed in: MICA.
Doreen Bolger is always on the move because she can’t stop seeing, supporting, and writing about the arts in and around Baltimore City. Her lengthy love affair for the arts began in Long Island when her father, an executive in the textile industry, brought home breathtaking fabrics every night from the heart of the garment district. 