Orgies, Yearbooks and Theremins

originally published May 28, 2008

Flesh Pots: Maggie Smith’s figural drawings, prints and painting on display at Espresso Royale recall fashion ads with a pornographic undertone. Of her work, the drawings are probably the strongest, though the single painting - two reclining women partially wrapped in a sheet - recalls Eric Fischl’s sketchy, Freudian paintings from the 1980s. Rendered in black ink, three multi-figure drawings are jarringly situated on a red background of washy, loosely applied pigment. The three drawings feature a mix of clothed and nude figures arranged in an almost orgiastic group. Many of the people pictured have large, surreally teased hair that transforms into arrows at the ends. Though they lick each others’ arms and suck on fingers and toes, they seem disconnected from each other and their actions more disconcerting than erotic. Another series of black and white drawings by Smith show single or double figures alone on blank white paper, again putting an emphasis on the disconcerting solitude of the individual figures. In one drawing, a nude woman sitting upright holds the head of a sleeping man in her lap, while another image shows a woman, again with exaggeratedly large hair, cradling a bleeding hand.

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Mack Attack: Staggered across the brick wall at Walker’s Pub is a series of 16 portraits by David Mack that collectively make up “Mrs. Colelasure’s Third Grade Class.” Based on a page from a 1962 elementary school yearbook, each drawing depicts a now anonymous third grader. As a point of reference, Mack includes the original yearbook photograph toward the edge of the group of drawings. Rendered in contour lines and stippled dots, Mack has blown up each tiny yearbook photograph, playing up the children’s’ awkward and eccentric characteristics with his precise lines: missing teeth (one girl with braids has only two teeth left in her grinning mouth), freckles, hair cropped too short and prepubescent large ears.

Though he is careful to copy each photograph closely, Mack’s style creates a play between the dated found photographs and a graphic contemporary aesthetic. Due to the emphasis on the bizarre individual characteristics of each child, there is a hint of Edward Gorey’s dark, whimsical aesthetic, though Mack’s drawings seem to lack Gorey’s edgy, sardonic wit. It seems that the peculiarity of Mack’s drawings depends too much on the details of the original photograph. There is also a trendy quality to the images that comes from the '60s hairstyles and horn-rimmed glasses that perhaps invites the viewer to question the nostalgic, backward-looking interest in reviving mid-century style that exists throughout contemporary culture - ranging from rockabilly subcultures to Amy Winehouse’s beehive. Overall, the images showcase the artist’s accomplished technical ability and are incredibly fun to look at.

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All in the Family: Father and son David and Galen Burke's show “Renaissance Men” at Clayton Street Gallery strays from a typical art exhibit. Although there are some photographs and silkscreened images, there is also a motley assortment of hand-crafted objects created by David Burke. A geologist by trade, the older Burke also has an assortment of hobbies: creating homemade electronic devices such as a Theremin or a Jacob’s ladder, reproducing props from films (most notably, a pair of light sabers) and constructing wooden musical instruments. Though the show at times seems like a showcase of curiosities, it is interesting and interactive.

Galen Burke’s interests are almost as diverse as his father’s. He too has a do-it-yourself aesthetic that allows him to pursue a variety of tangents. A kinetic sculpture requires the viewer to hold down a simple homemade circuit attached to a trashcan. The current causes a lazy susan hidden inside the metal trashcan to rotate. The lazy susan is attached to a found red and white metal bowl in which the artist has placed three marbles and rainwater. When the current is activated by the viewer, the marbles roll around on the inside of the metal bowl. According to the artist, the sound of the marbles against the metal is the focal point of the sculpture. Other works incorporate moving elements, such as a rotating image of the moon with a face lifted from a comic book. Pasted onto a cut-out wooden circle, the image of the moon alternates between positive and negative images of the same moon. The spinning moon is attached to a red, yellow and blue image of children at a fair taken from a vintage Ferris wheel.

While he expresses a fascination with Duchamp and the lineage of conceptual art spawned by his 1917 "Fountain," Burke confesses that he is most interested in “low” art, such as the graphic image from the Ferris wheel. Though the notion that found objects are viable as works comes directly out of Duchamp, Burke’s desire to distance himself from more conventional (and predictable) art is apparent through his wide range of interests and emphasis on novelty. Like his father's, his work is infused with an inventor-like fascination with contraptions and spectacle. Burke does not completely eschew the more traditional arts, though. One of the more conventional series of images included the exhibition is a group of tiny photographs Burke first took with a digital camera and then re-photographed with a late-19th-century camera. The finished product has a grainy yet ethereal quality due to the artist’s method of re-photographing the digital image with the dated camera. The process creates a circular concentration of light at the center and the edges fade to a gradual black. In some photographs, this process creates the illusion of a glowing orb of light floating amidst the otherwise mundane scene, while in others it simply creates a subtle gradation of light. The photographs vary in subject - some are of flowers or nature scenes while others seem more staged - but the finished product generally has an enigmatic and vintage aesthetic.

Altogether, the eclectic mix of images and objects created by the two artists reveals a wide range of intellectual interests, as well as a genuinely creative and open attitude towards making art. Indeed, it seems that the process rather than the finished product drives both father and son to create.

Rebecca Brantley