Convergence of innovation and craftsmanship
A group show at Childhood's End with Jean Mandeberg, Bob Haft, Kathy Gore Fuss, Deborah Mersky and June Kerseg-Hinson
Tacoma City Paper review by Alec ClaytonWhile this month's featured artists at Childhood's End Gallery work in a wide range of media and styles, they are united through a common approach to materials. Each works either with non-traditional materials or in non-traditional ways with traditional materials, and they all share a high degree of fine craftsmanship.
Jean Mandeberg "paints" with tin. She takes old pieces of sheet tin, most of which are pre-printed with advertising slogans and pictures, cuts them into little squares and rectangles and puts them together in dazzling geometric patterns. She is showing eight of these works in embossed and found tin over wood. Each piece is one foot square. The patterns within the squares are made of simple circles, squares and rectangles. The simplicity of these patterns is deceptive. Their gloss and the modulations of hue, value and pattern within the larger patterns make them much more striking than description can convey.
One piece called "Chekered Game of Life" is a checkerboard pattern in black and white. Each black square has a word incised into it, words that allude to the ups and downs of life: wealth, pain, crime, hunger, sex, truth, old age, death, money, loss. Each white square is embossed with pictures of kitchen implements like bowls and cups and spoons in silver and brown, combining the specifics of everyday life with the larger life forces.
In "Napolean Parcheesi," small squares and rectangles, alternating between solid silver and printed images of Napoleon's face inside a wreath, form the shape of a Parcheesi board, with embossed silver cookie-cutter floral patterns in the corners. "Tricky Game Board" is the only one that breaks out of the one-foot-square mold. Two circular forms on each side extend beyond the square format. On one circle is printed a Superman insignia in red on yellow; on the other is a clown's face. The central portion is a checkerboard pattern in red and white, with the reds alternating from dark to light. Within the white squares are stripes in yellow, blue-green, red and blue-gray. Some of the stripes are horizontal and some are vertical.
Bob Haft is showing a group of black and white photographs with images that cannot fit together in reality, but which fit together seamlessly in the photographs, such as a head or figure in a doorway or reflected in a window in an urban scene that is proportionally about 10 times as large as it should be. The delight in these is that it is almost impossible to tell whether they are photo-montages or straight-ahead shots (what appears to be a montage could be a billboard or mural on the side of a building).
Kathy Gore-Fuss is showing five sets of hands, with the attached set of arms from which each extends. Each pair of hands is cast from life in plaster and coated with flower petals and painted with intricate patterns. The patterns look like very complicated tattoos. Each pair of hands is cut off mid-forearm and protrudes from the wall as if thrust through from the other side. One set of hands is holding a book and turning a page. The others are all holding very delicate, abstract flowers made of wire and some kind of transparent membrane.
Deborah Mersky's mixed media sculpture resonates with the delicacy of Gore-Fuss's hands. They are small bottle dolls and dress forms made of bottles, wire, paper and other found or discarded materials. They are almost fetishistic and precious in their delicacy.
June Kerseg-Hinson's woven baskets in natural and dried pine needles, rafia and waxed linen look more like pots thrown on a wheel than anything we might expect to see in basketry. They are simple and elegant and amazing in their precise craftsmanship.
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