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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Tara’s Healing Art @ Betsy’s Back Porch Coffee Shop
Wednesday 10 July @ 09:57:03 |
 by Mary Ann Vincenta
From her impulse to dance comes the immense whirling movement in Tara Arlene Innmon’s work. From her dreams and storymaking comes the tender, poetic feeling of her art. From her fight to make peace with the loss of her sight comes a body of work—direct, emotional and foreign to pretense, artifice and maquillage
Small squares of complementary colors create a texture that fills nearly the entire canvas in “A Vision of the Beginning.” The exciting, abstract work replicates the optical delight of pressing lightly on one’s eyelids or squeezing one’s eyes shut. A black area on the right side pushes in toward the center of the painting as though pushing the colors away. The encroaching darkness suggests the journey of the painter who labored to continue painting as congenital glaucoma gradually claimed her sight. Innmon says she used the squares of a laundry basket as a kind of stencil to guide her.
All of the paintings in Tara’s Healing Art are from the period when Innmon had to “hurry to paint before going blind.” Her vision capacity would change from the time she started a piece until the time she finished it—which meant “constant problem solving.”
In “The Sky is Full of Stars” she made figures out of clay and tried to use them to make a print, like a potato print. Her friends and her children gave her feedback on how to place things. The image is of two young women-girls, slim and lithe, in papier-mâché relief, looking out at a host of stars above and a circle of larger white lights in front of them, about to encircle them. All around them it is night. They seem to be in the depths of space. One of the young women-girls holds up her right hand as though leading a celestial chorus or just exclaiming in wonder.
“Mother Circles” was painted from Innmon’s memory of the way the light of dawn reflected off the neighbor’s house through her window and onto her baby daughter’s face. A mother is shown cradling her infant in an enveloping circle of tawny hues. Their closeness suggests the point in their relationship when they are still like one person.
Innmon has lost her sight but she maintains her poetic vision and her visual memory. And she is astonished that being blind hasn’t affected her happiness. After working through her grief and loss, she says she is just as happy as before. Her current works are powerful papier-mâché sculptures on canvas. One, “My Hand is Fading Too,” is on display throughout July at the lower level of the Hennepin County Government Center in Tip of the Iceberg, a show with 14 other artists. Another, “I Have to Use a Cane Now Too,” will be part of the Plains Museum traveling exhibit throughout Minnesota until July of 2003.
Tara’s Healing Art will be at Betsy’s Back Porch Coffee Shop, a calming spot on a busy commercial corner, until Aug. 1. 5447 Nicollet Ave. S., Mpls. 612-827-8283.
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