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METAPHORS FOR LIFE
I'll Be Your Mirror: Imagine a disembodied head and arms
inside a white cube. A woman wearing a tight, white cap and
white sleeves emerges from the base of the open cube. This is
the environment of Alison Crocetta's “Framed Events" on view
at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. Crocetta, an artist who com
bines sculpture and performance art in her work, presents six
films in two triptychs, each reminiscent of early experimental
film or Dadaist theater.
The films are black and white, with each starring an unusual
protagonist: a figure dressed in a white, engaged in surreal
behaviors. In "Reveal," part of the "Clear/Fill/Reveal" series,
her cap is covered in small daisies like the swimming costume
from an Esther Williams film. Repeating the phrases, "She loves
me; she loves me not," the woman pulls a flower from her cap,
mimicking the child's game of pulling petals from flowers to
determine the faithfulness of one's beloved. As the action is
repeated, so is the incantation. Her voice begins to wear and
crack, becoming almost desperate in her uncertainty of love.
Projected on three walls, "Gather/Shed/Lift" is another
triptych set in three very different landscapes. In "Gather,"
again dressed in a similar white outfit, a lone figure arranges
what appear to be large snowballs amid a winter landscape,
attempting to harness and bring order to these inert objects.
In "Shed," set in a bare room with only a ladder in the back
ground, she carefully removes smaller white orbs from her
body. The third film, "Lift," is set on a rooftop with a gridded
Also at the LDSOA: The "SLOW Invitational Exhibition" is in
Gallery 307, on view until Oct. 17. The concept for the exhibi
tion revolves around slowness, time and evidence of process
in art. The show was curated by LDSOA gallery director Jeffrey
Whittle and faculty members Nell Andrew and Jon Swindler
and includes six artists from across the U.S.
"The idea behind the show is slowness, versus the 'velocit-
ized' race to do more, to do it quickly and move on, that is so
indicative of our culture right now," Whittle says.
Examining the linear timeline of art history itself, Brian
Dettmer creates altered books that reveal pages cut away to
create a layered progression of the beginning of art to the
Renaissance. Taking an art history book, he has cut away the
negative space surrounding images page-by-page, so one can
see a face from Van Eyck's "Arnolfini Wedding Portrait" peer
through a Romanesque arch. Piled on top of each other, these
well known art works compress the linear Modernist view of
time into an image that shows history as moving both back
ward and forward, overlapping and interacting in one glance.
Clare Hairstans' "Haiku Series" presents copper-engraving
prints depicting grasses and branches in fine, delicate lines.
The puce-colored ink on creamy paper and her mastery of bal
ancing negative space with lush and organic tendrils are truly
gorgeous. The 12 prints don't amount to the 17 syllables of
traditional haiku, but the condensed beauty of the images does
have a poetic quality.
Alison Crocetta s Surrealist films are on exhibit at the Lamar Dodd School of Art through Oct 17.
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floor. The composition is divided into a large, cloud-filled sky,
a thin line of trees below and a modest cityscape of rooftops;
a roof acts as a stage in the foreground. For a while, white
balloons maniacally bob in the wind; as the film moves at an
accelerated pace, our clown wrangles the balloons and attaches
them to her head as if she were ready to fly. These films are set
to music, a contemporary score Crocetta created with composer
Barbara White and the Janus Trio, which is punctuated by a
shrill flute, along with percussion, viola and harp.
Crocetta writes that in using her body as a medium, "(Her
work) often explores the limits of the body and results in
actions that require both physical stamina and mental focus."
This focus is required of the viewer, too. Our attention is held
both by the surreality of the image and the recognition of
ourselves in the artist's repetitive actions and unusual behav
iors. Dressed as a minimalist version of the pantomime clown
Peirrot, Crocetta represents the lover, the fool, the outsider
and the "every(wo)man." It is in this anonymity and elusivity
of a fixed persona that we are allowed to empathize with her
depiction of modern life in the metaphors she acts out on film.
Enter this strange ind wonderful world through the black felt
curtains of Gallery 101. On view until Oct. 17.
Drawing is another medium associated with slowness and
the artist's meditative attention to the subject. Zach Mory's
graphite-on-paper drawings reveal a painstaking process, espe
cially the intricately designed "Sweet Nothings." When given
time to pore over the image, what looks like detailed patterns
of flowers and stars reveals faces and figures. Stefan Chinov
presents pinhole photographs of the South Shetland Islands
in "Distance in Itself Invisible " Pinhole photography also
requires long exposure times, extending the camera's gaze to
capture a minute or even hours rather than only an instant.
The pictures of this icy landscape populated by walrus and
penguins is frozen in time for us to enjoy at our leisure.
Take some time to check these pieces out, and while you
are there, don't miss the MFA Ceramic students' exhibition
of their recent work. My favorites include Kyungmin Park's
"L'Oiseau Mort" and Clara Hoag's "Mami Wata." Though com
pletely different in style and material, both are sad and beauti
ful sculptures fil'ed with a feeling of longing that will inspire
yearning for the artists' grand finale at the MFA exit show this
spring.
Caroline Barratt arts@flagpole com
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