Nash Gallery: Kari V-Carlsen
The first pieces that struck me as absolutely brilliant were the 4 drawings in the Hollis Sigler series. They were right when we walked in and done with really bright, eye-grabbing colors, somewhat reminiscent of the eighties. (Perhaps they were done then, I didn't catch a date) Anyways, they all have chairs as the subjects, and the chairs take on the emotions of the piece. All of the emotions are somewhat self-loathing, such as "They were right, they were perfect" with one sad-looking chair gazing up at two other chairs on their self-righteous pedestal. I just thought it was unique that the artist chose chairs to represent someone feeling this way. A chair bears a great load, is often underappreciated, and wholly incapable of expressing oneself, and the sentiments expressed in these four pieces identify entirely with these characteristics.
The second piece I really liked seems to be a favorite in the class: Sandra Menefee Taylor's "Doll". I immediately thought of Ibsen's A Doll's House because of the four dresses along the bottom that were painted over with lines that looked like a house. The enlarged "see spot run" text on the larger dress made me think of how elementary education is (at least mine was) very focused on creating the ideal life, cut out of a magazine. For instance, there was a recent debate about whether Sesame Street re-runs from the seventies/eighties should be rated PG because in some of the skits, the puppets were wrestling. It is, of course, ridiculous to assume that children are not capable of seeing things like wrestling, but the goals behind ideas like this seem to be aimed at creating doll-like perfection in adolescents, but that simply isn't realistic, nor is it desirable.