About Flagpole. (Athens, Ga.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 12, 2011)
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. our annual... Customer ppredatlon STORE WIDE SALE ! Saturday Psssst... It’s the ONLY DAY of the YEAR the ^ ENTIRE STORE 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 v, * otAT Art Classes & Workshops NOW ENROLLING! 706-548-1115 1037 Baxter Street, Suite A Open Monday through Saturday OCTOBER 12.2011 FlAGPOLE.COM 9
