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Second chances

Found-object art at Clark

by Leon Nigrosh

At the University Gallery, Clark University, 950 Main Street, through December 7.

The very title of this show is enough to pique anyone's interest. What kind of things could be both small -- and sorry? Sarah Walker, gallery director, explains that the exhibit showcases nine artists from across the country whose works are not merely physically tiny, but are concerned with "small" issues of life: memories, nostalgia, the mundane, and the commonplace. Each of the invited artists lives in his or her own hermitic environment, collecting, assembling, and reworking pieces of cast-off scraps, often in an attempt to recapture his or her past, but also to make others think about their personal history.

Take Clark professor of screen studies Dana Benelli, for instance. Each day he walks to work in almost ritual fashion, repeatedly casting looks left and right, stooping to the ground to retrieve mysterious objects. A selection of these Street Saves, 1991-1997 is displayed at curb height around the gallery. Many of the objects are fairly recognizable, doll arms, a Batman head, encrusted loose change, and a bent and flattened fork. Other items like bits of crushed metal are less identifiable, and some offer no frame of reference.

At first, like Benelli, we are attracted to the various shapes, colors, and textures. Then we get involved with attempts at identification, and finally we are left to ponder questions about how these things got to the streets. Who left them behind? Was it accidental? If they could speak, what stories would they tell?

In contrast to Benelli's collection of individual found objects, June White painstakingly creates handcrafted flowers from paper tape, silk ribbon, and human hair. Her Bud, Bloom, Blow contains corsages that represent women in different stages of life. The silk rose with a tendril of thick blond hair, along with a raven-haired lily, suggests femininity in full bloom. Another small flower with a bowed stem and a tuft of white hair implies the grace of aging.

According to Elizabeth Cheatham, her Little Hands series embodies a "sorry" aspect because her entire effort is similar to traditional merchant-marine projects like whittling, scrimshaw, and lace making, all of which serve to while away boring times. Her small hands, carved from chunks of washed-up coral, are the product of personal ennui and have none of the grandiose ambitions usually associated with sculpture. In fact, Cheatham sent the 15 tiny carvings along with five doilies and a couple of shelves in one box with no instructions. It was left to Walker to decide how the objects should be arranged; even this act helps bring out the "small and sorry" -- the notion that the work has such little consequence that it can be arranged by anyone -- which surrounds Cheatham's work.

California artist Laura Whipple draws inspiration for her conceptual works from history. Her minuscule Scroll Fragment (Journey Along Misty River) is one of a large group of works (Drew Carey bought the rest) based upon an exhibition of 16th-century Chinese paintings by Tung Ch'i-ch'ang. She spent many hours enraptured by these masterpieces and created her "scrolls" in homage to Tung. Whipple's images of boats, buildings, and landscape are as ethereal as the originals with one major difference. Instead of fine silk, rice paper, and Chinese inks, her work is executed on flypaper with spider legs and insect parts. Although Whipple has said, "My work is conceptual in nature, but I prefer not to explain the concepts,"she has achieved her goal of "making something beautiful from seemingly repulsive materials."

The rest of the gallery is filled with an eclectic array of items such as slices of cake entombed forever in plastic, hand-rubbed balls of soap, sock puppets, and other knickknacks and detritus that embody humor, pathos, love, longing, and raw emotions pent up within us all. A trip through the gallery is like an emotional roller-coaster ride that takes us through the inner corners of the artists' minds -- as well as our own.

The University Gallery is open Wednesdays through Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. Call 793-7113.