I always have mixed feelings about the Art in City Hall shows. On the one hand, I’m completely sold on the idea of art in public spaces. On the other, City Hall’s tall, narrow glass vitrines, placed on two floors of the building, are a challenge for the art and a challenge for the viewer.
Put on your hiking boots because to see the exhibit requires pacing hundreds of feet of hallways and ascending two flights of stairs. Apart from those logistics, what’s in the exhibits is almost always worth the trip.
Right now you’ll find the cases full of drawings and paintings by local childrens’ book illustrators. The reason to go is to see how these folks handle narrative. Mostly the strategies are straightforward story-telling of classic tales. Interestingly, though, there’s lots of room for individuality and humor. Two cases in particular talked to me. Lee Wilkinson’s illustrations in Case 9 which seemed to combine vast, minimalist fields of color with figures and odd scale shifts to evoke something poetic. In fact, I found their affect quite like some of the work I’ve seen at Vox Populi over the last several years (I’m thinking Jen Macdonald and Kelley Roberts in particular).
But the mystery of the show came at the end of the line in Juliet Wayne’s Case 13. Instead of book illustrations, Wayne installed the case like a little dollhouse theatre with an upstairs and a downstairs and a red and pink game board path pulling it all together. With its kindergarten materials (construction paper and flannel cut-out) and earnest affect, it trumped the show. The piece was outsider-y and both creepy (a little) and charming.
Wayne’s artist’s statement, affixed to the case, told this story. The artist played the game of “LIFE” as a six year old and lost. She lost because she didn’t wind up with a career (doctor, lawyer etc), something she calls prophetic because she “still [doesn’t] have an occupation.”
I’m not sure what that all means. Maybe she considers book illustration less an occupation than a game? (image top is Case 13; image bottom is detail)
