Archive for November, 2010

Magical Miniature Installations

Posted by Doreen on Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

 

Leo Hussey’s portals hold unexpected worlds. The small structures are enclosed using rough, recycled materials painted white. And each contains a tiny arrangement of found objects that form a sculpture; pen and-ink portraits of that sculpture; and a backdrop of black-and-white mosaics that are actually Leo’s recycled drawings cut up and collaged.  

Leo’s Portal 7, on-view until recently at Creative Alliance, alongside eight other portals of his creation, especially struck me. Its clump of yellowed tape, pile of green metallic squares, white beads strung in loops, and twisted copper wire suggested a man-made flower. But despite its flower, Portal 7 imparted an ominous feeling. A skyscraper standing before a threatening sky seemed to take shape on the portal’s back wall.

When I blinked and adjusted my view, the sky took the shape of a U.S. map surrounded by parts of buildings propelled into the air.

If you missed Leo’s exhibition Portals, which closed at the Creative Alliance on Nov. 27, visit his blog to find out about other opportunities to view his magical miniature installations. They are truly amazing, absorbing works that will capture your imagination.

Leo Hussey brings to his work the insight of many experiences. He has been a teacher (much loved by his students) at the Fairhaven School; he has contributed comics to the Baltimore City Paper; and, he protects the treasures of The Baltimore Museum of Art.

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Must-See Shopping Carts

Posted by Doreen on Monday, November 29th, 2010

Everything Must Go does for shopping carts what Marcel Duchamp did for the urinal.  Curators Shannon Young and Chris Mona invited artists to create works in, on, and around the familiar grocery store container and the results are well worth seeing.

At Timothy Nohe’s cart, press the two red buttons and listen to endless audio of shoppers reading the contents of their grocery receipts. It invokes the repetitive gesture of yanking boxes, cans, and bottles from shelf after shelf, aisle after aisle, but in this case, your cart remains empty.

In Stuff: Another Self Portrait, writer/artist/animated-videomaker Linda Franklin places a crocheted female figure in a cart festively decorated with plastic bottle tops.  In an accompanying video, we hear a distressing story about homelessness, reminding us of the re-use of carts by those who have lost shelter in any form and its closets and drawers. The narrator of the video segues from dumpster diving to making art from the “stuff” that she finds, to her mother’s demise at the hands of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Dawn Bond’s video, Cart Violations, records the adventures of two shopping carts rolling around an eloquent post-industrial space, apparently an abandoned formica plant.  At one moment, they are metal gladiators; at another, metal dancers.

Joseph Faura’s portable shrine—a shopping cart of course—holds four familiar Christian images mounted in front of a dozen glowing tealights. Below, the cart is filled with more candles and vessels holding glittering costume jewelry and glistening pebbles.

Two artists transform carts into beautiful sculptures that will forever alter how you view these mundane objects. For Pickit, Lincoln Mudd inserts wooden slats through the metal bars of his cart, creating crisp, linear patterns that command the surrounding space.  In Carreta Roja, Wilfredo Valladares welds metal arcs around a small red cart, creating visual energy atop the rigid platform below.

In Kelly Bell’s animation, Mousetrap, the cart is overturned, imprisoning a hapless pink figure within. We can hear conversations and footsteps, and then the rattle of the cart/cage before a mouse ambles past.

Everything Must Go—a palliative counter to holiday shopping—is on view at the Cade Center for Fine Arts Gallery at Anne Arundel Community College until Wednesday, December 8. 

  

Posted in Cade Center for Fine Arts | 1 Comment »

DARB TV

Posted by Doreen on Friday, November 12th, 2010

Photo by Philip Laubner

Rebecca Nagle’s powerful new play, DARB TV, bravely confronts the painful subject of incest and child abuse. For anyone who has been violated, knows or loves someone who has suffered abuse, or even just simply abhors the possibility (that would be all of us)—this play needs to be seen.

Rebecca, Sarah Tooley, and Monica Mirabile so engage the audience as participants that it is difficult to draw the line between the actors and the audience.  When we are offered a lesson on good and bad touches, the performers ask us questions and we respond, our voices uniting with theirs.

At a previous performance of DARB TV, a young man in the audience volunteered to come to the stage and was ordered to straddle a reclining actress, who directed him in a series of gestures, which started with a caress, to unzip his fly.  He returned to his seat without completing the uncomfortable assignment.

As the audience entered the theater that night, we filled out surveys and wrote personal statements on our experiences with abuse. After hearing the survey’s results, and learning precisely how many people in the room had experienced sexual abuse, the personal statements were redistributed randomly throughout the audience. Some of us were summoned to the stage to share peoples’ terrifying moments.  I read: “Stabbed in the side.” Like others who came to the stage, I threw an egg at a suspended target and the simple cathartic gesture made me feel better.

During the evening, a man in the audience told us about the death of his father, who had abused him as a child. He then climbed onto the stage, disappeared through a closed door, and reappeared naked.  This was an actor, now in the role of predator. The victim had become the abuser.

DARB TV’s final performances are Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, 8 p.m. at  Current Space (421 North Howard Street.)

 

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Curves

Posted by Doreen on Friday, November 5th, 2010

Photo by http://nudashank.blogspot.com/

If you visit Michael Dotson’s solo show at Nudashank before it closes tomorrow, you will know immediately why its title, Curves, is crossed out.  There simply are no curves. Every line is straight and executed with such technical tour de force that you will not quite believe that it has been painted.  In a delightful way, these works reassert the primacy of paint—even in the digital age when effects can be so easily accomplished with pixels.  To see how the paintings are made, view the creation of one, where even rounded pods are composed of innumerable straight lines. The secret lies in what must be miles of masking tape.

Photo by http://nudashank.blogspot.com/

In Michael’s Unidentified Floating Object, a ‘rounded’ form floats in a desolate, arctic landscape. Innumerable overlapping triangles comprise the freezing ocean water and thin pieces of ice suspended in it. Like many of Michael’s paintings, Unidentified Floating Object invites us to develop a narrative.  What is this object? A castaway igloo? The engine of a fallen airplane? The eyeball of a giant?  How did it get here?

Michael’s paintings often appear like stages awaiting actors (or video game settings awaiting avatars). Whether virtual or real, these spaces are nonetheless so appealing that we feel compelled to enter.

Photo by http://nudashank.blogspot.com/

In Living Room,modern zebra sectionals and turquoise minimalist tables stand before a vista of palm trees at sunset.  Dark corners with thinly painted bars flank the brilliantly colored landscape. Are these walls or are these views into outer space?  Is the pattern on the rug just a shadow?  We are now confused about what is virtual and what is real, what is solid and what is air or light or shadow.  The installation at Nudashank heightens this anxiety by adding a zebra rug and two potted palms in front of Living Room.

Window, completed just the night before the show opened, is deceptively simple.  You really have to be there to fully appreciate the effect of these four paintings – all of walls made of black brick. Each has grouting in a different color of day glow that reverberate forcefully against the white gallery walls.

It’s gratifying to see Michael’s work unfold in this solo show. Last year, Nudashank’s Seth Adelsberger and Alex Ebstein featured Michael, who is an M.F.A. candidate at American University, Washington, D.C., in their group show Picture Plane.

Tomorrow, Saturday, November 6, is your last chance to see Curves at 405 West Franklin Street. And don’t miss the closing party tomorrow evening from 6 to 9 p.m.

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