Wednesday the 16th we ventured to this exciting resource for artists. The featured show was Susan Harbage Page. She used found objects, photo, video, audio and painting on fabric. She addressed themes of womens place in society and in personal relationships. One particularly striking piece to me was a found embroidery with 4 victorian looking female profiles embroidered on a huge cloth. I'm guessing Page found this, but she had added an embroidered hand in the middle of the women clenching strings which were tied around the womens throats. The piece was called "Control".this theme was echoed in many of her other works-- some titles were-- "You Never Knew What Kind of Mood He Would Be In" " I asked Too Many Questions" and "I Hide My Successes In The Dresser Drawer". This show seemed a catharsis for Page as well as a way of reaching out and offering support and reassurance to other women who have perhaps had to hide their light or were labeled hysterical or depressed because they expressed something other than docile submission.
Another piece by a different artist was an installation using found glass desert dishes overflowing with mass produced labels reading "Misconceptions". This piece like many others forces the viewr to decode what the artist is getting at. It raisess questions and pushes the viewer to answer those on their own. Again this seems to be about the "labels" put on people by society these labels often reflect more than anything societies "misconceptions" about the true natures of humans.
I will be thinking more deeply about all the choices an artist makes when designing a work, it seems every detail is significant.
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