meredith cutler :: arts marketing :: artist

It has been a light week for writing, due to the fact that I have had family in town and therefore the rare chance to show people around Providence, which I still feel that I am getting to know myself as a relatively new Boston transplant.

Locals may have seen me dragging my eerily resemblant mother and aunt down Thayer and Benefit streets (note: the latter relative = me in 20 years, the former = me in 30 years), with a very unenthusiastic 11-year old cousin in tow. It isn't family day without a stop at the gift shop, so after a brief stint at the RISD Museum to skim the concise and impressive Styrofoam and Evo/Revo shows, we hit up RISD Works.

I wasn't planning on any purchases, but my intrepid mother scouted out the sole copy of Dirty Wow Wow and other love stories, by Cheryl and Jeffrey Katz. I had to treat myself to this sweet, little hard-cover book, which documents in neutral, portrait-style photography the well-loved, tattered and often humorously repaired softies and blankies of childhood in their "sunset years". With short, fable-like biographical essays accompanying each portrait, I find this collection in pleasing contrast to my "Lost and Found" cell-phone photo documentary series of abandoned softies.

Oh, and the dust-jacket cover art features the retro-pup "Le Mutt" (in this edition knighted "Rover" by his small person).

I was once the proud owner of both a "Le Mutt" and his paramour, "Fi-Fi La Femme" back in the good 'ol early 1980's. I recall that "Le Mutt" had a very weak ear, but that didn't stop me from spinning him by it like a windmill until it came off, catapulting the poor canine into outer space.