Art Feature |
Identity, Folklore, and Conventionby Cynnie Gaasch |
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The “24/12” exhibits by Patricia Carter and Kelly Spivey currently on view the Burchfield-Penney Art Center challenge notions of what is normal. Working in film, Spivey makes use of vintage print and film advertising imagery to confront the consumer culture we have been living in for decades. Carter tackles the legacy of African-American domestic workers. Delving into very separate terrain, the two artists’ investigations cross over on the subjects of identity loss, uniformity, and convention.
Kelly Spivey’s site-specific installation contains four film projectors running loops of film that are projected onto scrims with line drawings of anonymous women. The sound of the running projectors provides an immediate environment for the art works. The footage that Spivey uses for this installation comes from a film she found at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. It is a training film that teaches students how to read customers and sell more—presumably useful for someone who might work on a sales floor, design marketing displays or create advertising. The film was shot in the 1950s or 1960s and presents the idealized woman of the era shopping for vacuum cleaners and other household items—things one could not live without at a time when television advertising was, as it still is, washing the brains of the typical American family.
Spivey presents several other films transferred to video. Poor White Trash Girl: Class Consciousness is made with stop-motion animation. In the film, Spivey layers images and sounds from “The Brady Bunch,” Fisher Price™ toys, and Good Housekeeping print imagery, with a line drawing of a young, pig-tailed girl. The girl’s black-and-white, emotive self is trying to make her way among the colorful world of toys and television. She breaks down and cries, and cuts the hair of a blond doll that looks like Cindy Brady. In Why You Were Born, Spivey comically and beautifully creates an animation out of the women in print advertising of the 1960s and 1970s. The women shop and fall in love with each other, march in a line-up of shoe models and make out in an orgy-like tea party. The animation in both of these films is exceptional in its meshing of media.
Patricia Carter’s oil paintings and drawings explore the roles of African-American maids and nannies. The irony of black women’s roles in caring for children in the American South is the world with which the artist grapples. A moving series of small ink drawings shows white babies in Ku Klux Klan costumes. The group is shown collectively in a museum case, as if in an American history museum, and is titled, “What Stupidity. To determine their fates in childhood.” A large charcoal drawing, “A laundress contemplating her resignation & pretending not to see the Klan kiddies,” shows a black woman in uniform with KKK children at her feet.
On the long wall of the gallery, Carter’s small oil paintings of African-American women in dark green maid uniforms are presented on two long, wooden planks. The women each sit in a wooden pew, looking like they may be at church or attending some kind of school. This piece is titled “18 Granny Midwives. From Folklore to Forceps,” and each woman appear consigned to her fate and, again, anonymous. It is difficult to realize that what we could write off as a Southern American experience is not so far removed from the reality of today’s working-class and service-industry women—African American and otherwise.
Marion Fuller: A Life in the Arts
Long-time University at Buffalo professor Marion Fuller presents her photography of Americana in the hallway of the Burchfield-Penney Art Center. Quite often her work focuses on folk traditions, and the prints tend to have a warm, orange light. The show includes an image of “The World’s Largest Pumpkin,” shot in Clarence in 1996. Other photos depict “Buffalo in Bloom” winners and a parade of Easter bunnies. The images are fairly straightforward documentation, but it is the selection of content and attention to traditions and folk culture that stands out in this work.
New Series
The “24/12” and “Life in the Arts” exhibitions are two new series the Burchfield-Penney started this past summer. “24/12” presents 24 solo exhibitions in the space of 12 months. “Life in the Arts” pays homage to artists who have had long careers and have made significant contributions to the Western New York artistic community. The three exhibitions currently on display are of such quality that the Burchfield-Penney’s plan to plow through so many artists in such a short period of time seems questionable. Each of these exhibits is strong enough to warrant a catalog with interpretation provided by a curator or scholar. The Art Center creates a black and white and orange card for each “24/12” exhibit that is available at the exhibit. The card contains an artist’s statement and one image, something any artist could complete on their own home computer.
It is also surprising that each of the “24/12” artists has a show that is on display for less than a month, hardly enough time for each artist’s work to be seen. Even more surprising is that the “Life in the Arts” exhibits are presented in a hallway and no publication is created at all for these treasured artists. We can only hope that once the Burchfield-Penney Art Center has moved to its new building further resources will be made available to provide more substantial service to individual artists.
“A Life in the Arts: Marion Faller” remains on view through Sunday, February 26. “24/12” exhibits by Patricia Carter and Kelly Spivey are up through March 10.
Burchfield-Penney
Announces a New Building
The Burchfield-Penney Art Center, the only collecting museum in the region that is devoted to the exhibition of Western New York artists, has announced plans for the completion of a new building designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects by the fall of 2007. Placed on the southeast corner of the Buffalo State campus, on the west side of Elmwood Avenue, this new building will provide education spaces, including labs, research centers and an auditorium, as well as extensive gallery space for the permanent collection and visiting exhibitions. The building will also provide a gift shop, café and a balcony for receptions. The building is contemporary with a reflective zinc surface that curves. The Elmwood Avenue side of the Art Center provides a background to a spacious sculpture yard that will work nicely with the public sculpture across the street, in front of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. The entrance to the new building will be off of Rockwell Road, with parking hidden from Elmwood Avenue, yet convenient to the museum.
New Music at the Gallery
The Burchfield-Penney Art Center will present a free concert by the Open Music Ensemble this Saturday, February 25 at 8pm. The Open Music Ensemble formed two years ago and has played at local art venues and performance spaces ever since. The group hosts a monthly improvisation at SoundLab that is open to all—musicians or those who are musically interested included. The Ensemble is devoted to new music and experimentation. The musicians are Andrew Walsh on contrabassoon; Leah Muir on vocals, cello and autoharp; Will Redman on percussion; Otto Muller on accordion; Chris Reba on bass and electronics; Josh DeScherer on bass; Bill Sack on electric guitar; J.T. Rinker on trumpet and Ben Harris on violin. For this concert, the nine musicians that are the core of the Ensemble will be performing new compositions by young composers. The scores they perform are often unconventional, graphic or pictographic in form. This means the group is translating a visual representation of sound, so experimentation and interpretation is always key in their events.
Enter to win two free general admission passes to the Burchfield-Penney Art Center.
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