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‘Bags and Baggage’
Have you ever left home without your bag? What do you
carry with you in a day? What kind of bag do you take with you? Bags
and Baggage, presented at the Falkirk Cultural Center, offers the
opportunity to see the work of nine artists considering the “baggage” of
human existence.
The nine mid-career exhibiting artists who have shown
their work locally, nationally and internationally call themselves EDGE,
and include Jeanette Carr, Cynthia Jensen, Shoko Kageyama Klyce, Giselle
Kappus, Nancy Ziegler Nodelman, Melody Oxarart, Ruth Tabancay, Cecelia
Thorner and Stuart Wagner. Using a variety of three-dimensional media
including quilting, fiber, metal, clay, paper, found and recycled objects,
the artists create sculptural works that address both the literal and
conceptual nature of bags and baggage. Playfulness abounds, and functions
well as a strategy for lightening the potential load of so much cargo.
A variety of literal bags form the structure of many of
the pieces. A great number of ordinary brown paper grocery sacks are
folded by Kappus into rhythmic structures, then combined to form an
installation which transforms and transcends the familiar and utilitarian.
Every Day of Shopping is Christmas is a gigantic tree made by
Thorner of hundreds of shopping bags. Jensen’s Bag Ladies dresses
are also made of many, many folded and sculpted shopping bags.
Purses are the conceptual basis for another group of
works. Hand Bag, by Kageyama Klyce, features a knitted-steel hand
holding a welded steel purse. Thorner’s Retail Therapy features
purses constructed of multiple price tags, while Carr’s delicate lace
Trophy Totes appear as light and airy as if they were created for
fairies.
Ordinary tea bags turn into purse Tea Bags in
the hands of Ziegler Nodelman, and into an entire comforter laid onto a
bed titled Sweet Dreams in the hands of Tabancay. Surplus bank
moneybags become a quilt called Security Blanket by Kageyama
Klyce.
Literal, heavy baggage is also transformed into
metaphorical baggage, whose load is somewhat lightened by whimsy. Jensen’s
He’s Got Baggage, a set of weathered luggage, carries individual
loads, each identified by a specific logo and sentiment. Oxarart’s
Burden Basket is woven from paper strips, each strip imprinted
with exhortations heard from mothers around the world. Ziegler Nodelman’s
Case of AmmoAllure features multiple alternating bright red
lipstick tubes and black shotgun shells, in an open carrying case ready
for action.
Some of the heaviest baggage in the exhibition is
carried around on a little red cart with a long red handle. Titled, My
Struggle, Wagner’s cart bed has been replaced with a concrete slab,
into which has been inlaid a simple, wooden, Jewish star. How much baggage
does one carry in a lifetime? Is there a point at which one can leave the
baggage behind?
Bags and Baggage will be on view October 29
through January 8 at Falkirk Cultural Center, 1408 Mission Ave., San
Rafael.
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OCTOBER
2004
