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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Small in a Big World @ Franklin Art Works
Wednesday 24 September @ 14:29:25 |
 by Mary Ann Vincenta
This is a sparsely worded, thought-filled show. At Franklin Art Works you can look through an open window into the gallery before you go down a little passageway that lets you into the exhibition space. This first view of Stacey Davidson’s Small in a Big World beckons you to experience her theatrical personas and rigorous workmanship. You get a fleeting glimpse of the colors of blood and money.
A sheet of paper listing titles offers the only verbal clue to the meaning of the work. Visual artists are known as right brainers who are not expected to be verbally competent, although many really are. Some are garrulous and richly talkative without making conventional sense. Others are reticent, and emit premeditated phrases, in a kind of gourmet language. The few words—the titles, that is—in this show are satisfying and stimulating. The quotation from the Buddhist philosopher Lin Chi is an example: “Who is the true one constantly coming and going through the door of your face?”
At the end of the passageway, the show begins. “Stinky” (an unframed oil painting on paper) is one of Davidson’s touching souls, who looks at you with overly big eyes and too-red cheeks, like a clown’s. Lurking beside her and looking in her direction stands a vague little urchin. Both of them are exactly what the show is titled—small, without knowing how small they actually are, in the great big, wide world. You take them to heart right away.
Then come the cloth and leather dolls, all of whom seem to have escaped a frame, that is, come out of a box they were once in. Mounted under or on their backgrounds, they are paintings gone 3-D. Their nobility reminds you of that vulnerable creature in all of us, the one who is left after all the masks are gone, the one who struggles to exist, and, hooray, succeeds! Some are climbing the walls. “Anna and Stinky” hang by strings, like marionettes, from the 20-foot ceiling. Stinky, now an old woman, clings to Anna who makes a vigorous effort to carry her, piggy-back style.
The centerpiece of the exhibit is a tableaux of a play in progress. Dolls and heads on a three-tiered wooden platform against a backdrop of blood and innocence “...present a play to honor this, our first national (long-awaited) Period of Grief. Come, open hearts and listen.” The fatuous man in wig and tails bares his naked goat belly; the man with the painted face makes snide remarks; and Anna fights for her life. A most endearing and grave lone spectator sits on a box as she bravely grasps the terrible truth laid out before her.
If there is a message, it would be: If everyone were individuated, in a Jungian sense, there would be justice in the world. Something like that.
The expressive range of the brilliantly fashioned dolls is dazzling. They seem so psychologically real. And technically they are a tour de force; the sewing involved was so demanding the artist had to enlist artisans to complete her vision.
Also showing at Franklin Art Works are “about symmetry symmetry about” by Phyllis Baldino in the Video Gallery and “Small Work” by Larry Bemm. Davidson will present an artist talk at 2 p.m., Sat., Sept. 27. The exhibition continues until Nov. 8. Gallery hours are Wed. - Sat. 12 to 5 p.m. Franklin Art Works, 1021 E. Franklin Ave., Mpls. 612-872-7494.
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