Encoded Structures: Interpreting the Story at the Brownlee O. Currey, Jr. Gallery at Watkins College
The fall art season always holds unexpected surprises and autumn in Nashville has seen a lot of focus on the intersection of books, text and art. Encoded Structures: Interpreting the Story is an exhibit of artists’ books curated for Watkins College’s recent bookzanza Handmade and Bound Nashville. While the show seems to include a disproportionate number of simple paper books, it also includes a handful of selections that demonstrate the broad and bold possibilities of books as art.
Rachel Growden’s 14 Strands of Hair consists of single lengths of hair displayed vertically on rectangular paper boards, secured at top and bottom with similarly single swatches of tape. A small piece of paper at the bottom of each piece announces the names of the various hair-owners (donors?), creating de facto titles like: “Sarah M.,” “Sarah G.” and “Robert.” Knowing how much information can be encoded in human hair, each of these cards can be considered a portrait of sorts. However, the seeming repetitive sameness of the strands speaks to our implicit, interpersonal connections. The cards are loose and collected in a box – a typical form for artists’ books to take.
Lesley Patterson-Marx’s Little Lady Harmonica Book combines antique sheet music, found photographs, wood, mica, thread, and one tiny HohnerLittleLadyharmonica into the show’s most ambitious construction. Using layers of her sheet music and mica, Patterson-Marx builds her own full-size replica of a normal, diatonic harmonica. The “instrument” opens to reveal a cavity that contains the very tiny Little Lady harmonica. Removing this piece, the Little Lady opens into a succession of minuscule antique photos and miniature lyrical phrases on small swatches of antique sheet music. The piece is held together by the smallest stitches of thread. RecallingRussiannestingdolls andFaberge eggs, Patterson-Marx’s offering remains pure Americana, and it represents the kind of ambitious crafting that much of the rest of the show lacks.
Nance Cooley’s Florida’s Creatures gets our vote for Best in Show. This volume is published in an edition of eight, combining sly humor, clean, well-crafted presentation and a thoughtful message all in one. Using handmade paper and leather lacing, the cover of Cooley’s book looks like reptile skin. The addition of two strategically placed glass cabochons reveals cold, predatory eyes. The overall effect makes the flat-lying book resemble an alligator’s head just rising above the surface of some too-close Everglades waterway. The book itself is stuffed with page after page of Cooley’s carefully crafted linoleum cut prints of her eponymous animals. Alligators, manatees, panthers, mink and turtles are all rendered in loving lines – the jagged nature of the linocut prints evoking the wild vitality of her subjects. Every print is interleaved with a sheet of vellum printed with the name of each animal and its “threatened” or “endangered” status. Disarmingly fun – as well as striking and important – Cooley’s book alone makes the exhibit worth the trip.
Courtney Ann Greenlee is a local photographer and Watkins student that I often find myself singling out for her striking images and her consistent work ethic. Looking Glass is a stately, plain photo book that presents herpalladiumprints on vellum. While we wish Greenlee would’ve bound her own volume – she picked up a blank book at an art supply store – her images are among the most affecting in the show. Greenlee’s process dates back to the 1800′s and involves treating vellum with a chemical concoction and printing her negatives in sunlight. All of her photos feature still lifes shot behind reflective glass. In one, a taxidermied deer in a store window display seems to tower over a reflected city street in an odd reverse of the Bambi Meets Godzilla cartoon.
In another, Greenlee snaps a laughing visage from a Dutch movie poster. The glass in front of the poster reflects the barren branches of winter trees, adding a note of pathos to the ebullient expression. For me, these black-and-white prints of Greenlee’s images recall early experiments in both photography and film that found artistsplayingwithmultiplenegatives and cross-fading to blend subjects into single images. Her use of a 19th century processing technique is all the more apt in this light.
All photography is about capturing reflected light to expose an image on a surface and Greenlee’s subjects make this implicit dialog explicit. Looking Glass is not a great example of book art, but Greenlee’s demonstrated understanding of the history of photography, married to a post-modern comment on her own materials and processes, makes this the artist’s strongest statement to date.
Encoded Structures: Interpreting the Story, on display in the Brownlee O. Currey, Jr. Gallery at Watkins College of Art, Design & Film continues through Oct. 28th.
