My “Little Queen of Nothing” by ~Charlette Hove

Walking into a small, dark gallery like the Project Space, located within Crane Arts, one might expect to be confronted with the unknown – the bends or flows of traditional painting or sculpture – something that puts one at an arms length from the thoughts of the artist. This was not the case.

The walls and floors here were covered with the familiar. Objects rendered from a genre scene of everyday life and transfigured into a conglomeration of thought or memory. Very personal, yet universal in thinking. I believe that one could associate the objects and drawings used in this collection with very specific memories and moments from their lives.

Rebecca Tennenbaum, David Meekins and Arielle Passenti made their own little pieces of everyday life speak to a larger audience, even better with one another’s art. I like the assemblage of everyday objects or recreation of thing’s known in visions of ways unexpected.

Walking first left and then clockwise around the room, there was a grouping of red, yellow, blue, and green objects, including a ping-pong paddle, blurting out their thoughts from the wall; there was a gray, taxidermed something or other purring in conjunction with some rotary system on the floor;there were some semi-origami and green meshed collages with string that made you feel, for some reason, like you were at a childhood lake-house; and there was a bright yellow painting that resembled a video camera shooting a sheath of Mylar containing a dictated black squiggle.

Continuing on, these pieces felt both simultaneously synthetic and organic; there was something to be said about a connection between the natural and the mechanical.

As if one’s mind snapped a photo of a scene somewhere out in the woods and also happened to have seen a construction sight and crane earlier in the day, and married the two.

Or a long day at school with pens and pencils mixed with a Christmas setting or a dinner out later in the evening.

Specifically, there were a few pieces that struck me personally: there was a strong metal sheet hanging as if it were ripped from a large mechanism and glued to the wall, which it matched in color.

From the metal hung a red fruit sack, containing papers and plastics. In the sack, there was a drawing of a terrified or angry chef stirring soup. These objects in cohesion with themselves served up no answer, but allowed me to draw my own connections. The metal sheet becomes a meat cleaver, and the Christmas wrappings made me feel as if this job were someone’s present to their customers. An imprisoned worker.

There was a red abstract painting in the shape of a diamond. Within, were pale yellow and black markings, which draped above yet another Mylar sheath swathed in red paint. Another imprisoned little being.

Further on, a collage of red and pink torn paper, some 70s type pad with perforated holes and a duck’s foot in a blue cradle. Another caught victim of the workplace.

I wonder if these familiar items, often found in either work or play, were meant to hearken images of the daily routine, and break my mind’s association of something stuck.

They feel oddly warm, yet also mundane. The idea that maybe I am presently somewhere, yet am envisioning something more.

I furthermore liked the humor these pieces held. Most left a little something to snicker at, or an unnoticed snippet that caught me later in the evening. A tender jest from the artist that made the everyday a little more tolerable.  

Follow Charlette @ www.charlettehove.com & www.fakingfashion.com