I wasn’t planning to see James Parlin’s “Noah’s Ark” show at Schmidt Dean Gallery–the images on my postcard didn’t look too inviting. Fortunately, I was in the neighborhood and popped in anyway.
I laughed out loud when I saw Parlin’s six animal couples in person. The polychromed bronze critters disagree, appall one another and studiously ignore one another, acting out the trials and tribulations of romance and partnership atop pieces of furniture painted white–domestic discord meets love and art on a pedestal.
Besides their anthropomorphic charms, the bronzes are beautifully made and colored.
As in the postcard, this image of “Noah’s Ark/Porcupines” doesn’t even begin to capture the visual beauty and the emotional interplay as the male backs off from the female showing off her bottom.
