Spring Solos 2007 @ Arlington Arts Center
Driving by Arlington Arts Center, it’s easy to think they have succumbed to a unique prank. Approximately 100 poles are scattered across the front lawn, stuck in the ground like plastic forks, a toy rests atop each pole. This piece, Cory Wagner’s Give/Take, engages the audience with items for trade. Some visitors have simply taken. Others have given a plastic spoon, a watered down ounce of milkshake, two weather-soiled cigarettes, two dandelions, two cents, and handfuls of crayons in return. From the plaque marking the object, this seems to be precisely what Wagner has in mind.
This is the kind of work that inspires the corners of your mouth to turn up, just a little, if it doesn’t inspire your brow to furrow. Unfortunately, much of the work in the Spring Solos inside doesn’t fair much better. Of the eight artists inside, there are just a handful attractive highlights. Most of the artists are still grappling with their media, with only a couple at that precious moment where it looks like their ideas can take flight – within a year or two the work might actually become something dropping your jaw in awe rather than simply letting it go slack with indifference.
Some highlight's include Keith Sharp’s photographs in the Tiffany Gallery, which are a labored act of analog photoshopping: pasting printed photographs onto foam boards and placing them in interior sets. Most of them fool the eye for a bit, until the edges of the foam board can be discerned.
Katherine Kavanaugh’s Cry, located in the basement, is a sensuous video focused on the mouth of a teething and crying baby. But, it is a little too much like an early and raw version of Bill Viola, which is to say that it’s not so good. The image is slowed down to a couple of frames a second. Despite frames blending and jerky camera movement, the image is still captivating, if only in passing.
Ephraim Russell steals the shows inside. Assembled from wood and laminates, mixed with electrical gadgetry, much of his work resembles consoles for kid’s-activities ala 1970: nothing stands larger than three or four feet from the ground, and all the edges are rounded. The irregularity of these works is that they don’t appear to sustain any activities or utilitarian function, forcing the objects to straddle that line between industrial design and sculpture.
Returning outside, the best work is Margaret Boozer’s Dis/Integration on the side lawn: a rather anti-aesthetic construction of clay lumps above the ground, confined within a strip of metal several inches high that separates the lawn from the art. Labeled as an evolving dirt drawing, these lumps of colored clay erode into the metal confinement below, becoming more of an abstract painting than a drawing. Semantics aside, if allowed the opportunity to reflect on notions of geologic time and entropy, as should be done with most works of earth art, the piece maintains an astounding magnitude of introspection. If such pondering is not given to the piece, it is simply a muddy mess. But, it is a beautiful mess of white, gold, and purple clays, extracted from various locales in and around the greater Washington area, which will continue to evolve until its de-installation late September. Should the rains continue to be hard in what remains of the spring, it might be worth it to visit Dis/Integration periodically. Take a football from Cory Wagner while you are at it. Give more than your two cents.
Arlington Arts Center is located at 3550 Wilson Blvd in Arlington and is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Spring Solos 2007 runs through May 26. Sculpture on the Grounds runs through September 22.
Photos by John Anderson.