October Issue 1999
Winthrop University in Rock Hill Presents GeeGaw Exhibit
A new exhibition entitled GeeGaw opened in the Elizabeth
Dunlap Patrick Gallery in the Rutledge Building on the campus
of Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC, which continues through
October 31. According to guest curator Jason Forrest, the five
artists included in GeeGaw examine the exciting notion
of minutiae.
GeeGaw focuses on the small details of everyday life as
revealed in the works of five Atlanta-based artists Lilly Cannon,
Wendy Given, Pam Longobardi, Barbara Shreiber and Angela Willcocks.
Images and materials as distinct as baby doll heads and dryer
lint are used to examine several divergent themes: the exploration
of family dogma, the use of decoration as abstraction and the
work's physical relationship with the viewer. "Geegaws of
all kinds add flavor to the spice of life, supplanting functionality
with decoration or diversion," suggests guest curator Jason
Forrest, who offered the following essay.
GeeGaw - A Gallery Guide/Essay
by Jason Forrest, Guest Curator
This exhibition focuses around the notion of minutiae. Upon first inspection one might consider GeeGaw to be organized around small scaled works, but upon consideration it becomes obvious that each of the five artists - Lilly Cannon, Wendy Given, Pam Longobardi, Barbara Shreiber, and Angela Willcocks - use the intimate proportions of their work in order to glimpse their vision of the sublime. Each of these five Atlanta artists move in divergent directions, but upon examining them as a group, several themes are revealed: the exploration of family dogma, the use of decoration as abstraction the work's physical relationship with the viewer, and the connotation of time as applied in the creation and understanding of art in general.
To aid in our understanding of the works in GeeGaw, let's discuss just one of the aspects outlined above - time. Whether frittered away or hurriedly kept track of, time is one our most abstract concepts. It cannot be overtly detected, but can be unequivocally perceived. Time has special meaning in the definition of the term "gee gaw," which is simply some sort of superficial ornament or novelty. Be it Victorian doodads or dime store Kewpies, gee gaws have never been pertinent for social order. Instead, gee gaws of all kinds add flavor to the spice of life, supplanting functionality with decoration or diversion. These diversions, though superfluous, are also very time oriented, with the very best and most excessive of all gee gaws being the very ones which took the longest and were the most arduous to make.
In the very same way, these five artists' work can be understood. With consideration of time, each artist works with seemingly trivial subject matter: for Lilly Cannon, it's baby doll heads; for Angela Willcocks it's dryer lint. As each piece becomes more obsessive (and potentially more ridiculous), their work veers closer to the lofty, culling up not only personal responses but cultural critiques and observations. In Wendy Given's small vitrines and paintings, personified animals engage in mundane daily activities. These gestures, while silly as performed by these creatures, reflect a sort of malaise and discontent with a hackneyed existence, but simultaneously emote the congeniality and warmth of the artist.
When decoding Barbara Shreiber's 2" square drawings, one becomes aware of the fastidiousness of not only the artist's consideration of the objects she paints, but of our own preoccupation with buying and dreaming after these goods (with the premise that ownership of these objects will one day come to pass). While in Lilly Cannon's paintings we see our own prejudices and stereotypes mocked while subversively reinforced. Cannon's paintings remind us of our own childhood when our toys reflected our ideal image and provided us with hours of preoccupied attention.
Angela Willcocks and Pam Longobardi consider the passing of time in a different way. Longobardi presents us with a smattering of doodads that represent the preservation of the past in the mind of the living. Her small paintings, Victorian bits of wood and the inclusion of glass taxidermy eyes all suggest that we take heed from the past and keep its presence with us. This is further echoed in a large pine cone painted with eyes, a household decorative element personified as an unflinching staring freak.
But while Longobardi seeks to lengthen time, Willcocks seems to speed it by using completely ephemeral materials to make crummy structures. Her work seeks to elevate the status of her materials by showing them re-contexualized as surrogates for our own bodily systems. Thus fruit loops become nodules in a diagram for the nervous system and electrical wiring becomes protein strands in DNA. Willcocks delivers us carnal time in constant and immediate flux.
About the curator: Jason Forrest is a 1995 graduate of Winthrop University. He resides in Atlanta, GA., and has contributed as a critic for the Atlanta Journal/Constitution, Artpapers and New Art Examiner. He is also a practicing artist and disc jockey, with an exhibition at the Sandler Hudson Gallery in December of 1999. In 1998 he curated the critically successful When Tears Come Down Like Falling Rain. Southern Art in Examination of the Peculiar at the City Gallery East in Atlanta, and will also be co-curator of an exhibition at Nexus Contemporary Art Caster in 2001 about hoaxes.
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