Connecticut Art Scene: ALL Gallery opening Saturday

ALL Arts & Literature Laboratory
Erector Square, 319 Peck St. Building 2, New Haven, (203) 671-5175
Interleaving
May 12—June 17, 2007.
Artists' Reception: Sat., May 12, 5—7 p.m.

Press release

Arts + Literature Laboratory (ALL) is proud to present a juried exhibition of recent work by sixteen national and regional artists: Donna Adams (Shelbyville, IN); Sarah Buckius (Ann Arbor, MI); Carol Kunstadt (New York, NY); Irene Miller (Woodbridge, CT); Howard Oransky (St. Paul, MN); Hester Stinnett (Philadelphia, PA); Kjellgren Alkire (Chandler, AZ); Banjie Getsinger Nicholas (Warren, CT); Dusty Herbig (Syracuse, NY); Nicholas Knight (Long Island City, NY); Tessa McSorley (Gainesville, FL); (Hammond, LA); Sue O'Donnell (Hammond, LA); Lilianne Milgrom (Fairfax, VA); Linda Ohrn-McDaniel (Tallmadge, OH); Jane Rainwater (Andover, CT); Paulette Rosen (Hamden, CT); and Rita Valley (Bridgewater, CT).

Works selected for this exhibition are provocative and tactile in composition and concept, and evoke a palimpsest-like layering of ideas and imagery. The works cross media, including ceramics, printmaking, and photography, to installation.

Highlights of the exhibition include:

• From a distance, text layered in colorful abstract shapes functions as texture in Donna Adams's intaglio Storyboards. Upon closer examination, the viewer is invited to read bits and pieces of her childhood while simultaneously frustrated in the attempt to know the entire story.

• Sarah Buckius's photographs document the action of imprinting upon her skin, signifying the mental internalization process of being an impressionable person. Social psychologists' research suggests that people do conform to the expectations of others, which can lead to changes in behavior and self-image. The artist imprints her skin with commands spoken in the past to suggest that her own past conformity still affects her present self. Using her forehead as a locus recalls the idea of the scarlet letter.

• Carole P. Kunstadt uses a Parish Psalmody dated 1844 in her Sacred Poem Series to evoke an ecumenical or poetic offering while suggesting the power of a sacred spiritual repository. The use of stitching emphasizes the repetition of the lines of the diminutive scale printed text. The discoloration and fragility of the paper allude to the passage of time, as well as the age and history of the reconstructed book pages.

• Nicholas Knight's sentence diagrams, typically found in grammar textbooks, represent the grammatical rules of the English language. Knight has diagrammed quotations mounted directly to the gallery wall in place of the page, showing the relationships that transform words into meanings. He presents the activity of drawing as the graphic visual analysis, intended to teach proper usage - as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself - and an intervention, an act of drawing out: black armatures exposing the entanglements of language.

• Linda Öhrn-McDaniel's tactile garment evokes an emotional and personal relationship for the artist. Her wedding dress uses text in English and Swedish, embroidered inside circles, to tell stories about her childhood memories and proclaim feelings toward her husband-to-be.

• Jane Rainwater's sculptural diagram is a metaphor for the artist's concerns regarding wealth and avarice, to cultural issues. She employs gold in her work for its unique alchemic properties as an element and deep spiritual resonance in the cultural history of the world.