YOU SAID IT: Or someone you know did. |
A window is much more communal and inviting than a facade. Rather than one-way surface dispositions, a window presents while also inviting you for to enter a world-unto-itself for closer inspection. Countless shopkeepers labor on Sunday afternoon to create hodge-podge dioramas of their many wares to great effect. There are, however, a few windows that transcend the mandates of the consumptive holidays to emphasize the creative act.Patrick O’Rorke has been presenting his “24/7” for months now at the York Street site of Whitney Art Works. Unobtrusive and quietly cutting in tone, “24/7” involves a small, light-up marquee and interchangeable red letters that the artist updates twice weekly. The subject is the overheard phrase or passing comment, which the artist champions and sets apart for all to see. The result is a very unique mode of communication with the city. O’Rorke becomes a filter for these phrases, compiling laconic interpretations that, when displayed over time, suggest an unknowable personal narrative.
“24/7” reminds you that you are being watched, but not in an Orwellian manner. Rather, it stands as a day-glo monument to the idea that we all watch each other in the community. Sometimes we learn from each other, sometimes we disgust each other, but we are never alone in the city (even if you avoid someone’s eyes on the street by looking in the nearest shop window). O’Rorke creates a model for a communicative city in which our daily environment can metamorphose into an active playground of creative intention, a human face on a brick wall.
At Local 188, the work of Matt Welch and Chris Keister are visible from the street. Keister’s work is brightly lit and takes advantage of the built-in molding frame in the restaurant. A carefully considered olive background serves as the only counterpoint to a grouping of finger-length whittled-wood objects protruding from the wall. The objects are potentially phallic in nature, but more closely resemble sharp talons or shark teeth. Track lighting creates multiple shadows resembling flapping wings such that the objects can be seen more as the oncoming heads of birds. The placement of the pieces is reminiscent of the natural order of a flock of birds or school of fish. As much as the untitled piece invites rational interpretation, Keister’s work is ultimately archetypal, utilizing simple and subtly familiar imagery that comes from the same place as our dreams.
Matt Welch’s “Peace in the Window” hangs in the colorfully lit Local 188 frame window. A plywood peace sign is covered in crayons. The tips of the multiple colors radiate out from the perimeter in a starburst pattern. The message is succinct: creativity and peace. Compared to plastic baubles and cold tinsel, Welch has created the ultimate holiday decoration full of genuine aspiration.
The most effective window display by far comes to us from the cake-taking Anna Hepler. Her “Projection Rooms” on display at the front window of SPACE Gallery exemplify quality artistic craftsmanship and sincere subject matter while maintaining a levity and interactive playfulness appropriate for the passing holiday shopper. The piece involves a series of portholes that require the participant to peer into the openings. These portals contain miniature illuminated scenes involving small white figures in proportionately large white spaces (perhaps the white cube of the gallery room). The people contemplate immense dimensional structures suspended before them, ingeniously conceived by drawing on subsequent layers of glass to create the illusion of sprawling connected points extending into the distance. The figures are dwarfed by these phenomena, standing in awe as they attempt to grasp their meaning.
The series of portals ends with a possibly autobiographical scene of an artist in the studio with some of these various elements filling the room as works-in-progress. It is in this creative space, small and interior, that the vastness of all-that-is can be contemplated and explored.
An honorable mention goes to Wary Meyers Decorative Arts on Hampshire Street, where hundreds of clear plastic straws are fused to form crystalline angles extending in all directions like frost on a windshield as a creative act of practiced patience. All of these windows exemplify art-making as spirituality in practice. We have a lot more windows in this town waiting for the right person to fill them with holiday spirit. Any ideas?
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Ian Paige: ianpaige@gmail.com.
