meredith cutler :: arts marketing :: artist

For a small, manageable city, Providence enjoys a disproportionate amount of creative energy. Generated by its powerful arts community, and constantly refreshed by an influx of creative students; the programming, entrepreneurship, venues and activism rival that of its larger neighboring city to the north.

Marilyn and I mused upon this over inspirational $4 craft beers in the window of AS220’s Taqueria Pacifica last night. A vaudeville-style review twittered and honked away in the adjacent room, backed by golden stage light and red velvet curtain, while restless, leg-warmer and denim-clad creatives between ages 18 and 80 flitted and slouched between the bar and performance.

Our pit stop came after the opening reception of artist Anna Shapiro’s solo show just around the corner at AS220's Project Space, located in the recently renovated Dreyfus building. Native of NYC, and long-time resident of Boston (that larger, neighboring city to the north of which I’m also native), Shapiro entered the Providence art scene not too many years ago. Now well known about town as Director of the year-old alternative arts space Firehouse 13, Shapiro also exercises her mixed-media muscle for the Steelyard’s public art commissions, and maintains her own studio work in paper, fibers, sculpture, installation and performance.

Shapiro’s solo show, in the main room of the gallery, is entitled Piece Work. A play on words as well as a point, she refers to the late 19th century practice of a seamstress, taking on sewing assignments “per piece”, and receiving payment as such. With so many balls in the air, for a mixed-media artist and arts administrator, to sit down and create en masse in the personal solitude of studio work can seem a challenge. And so, she takes each piece on as a personal assignment, letting the materials at hand inform her process.

Still, this body of work, comprised of found papers, paint, fibers, bullets, feathers, fabric and other detritus shows a cohesive thread, despite the framework of fragmentation. A repeated, un-gendered silhouette finds it’s way into many of the pieces – and where he/she does not appear, a teapot stands in. In a way, there echoes a question posed to gender and place in the broader scheme of things. Mirrors, maps and tarot cards suggest an implied question (that sits in the minds of many of my 30-40 year old contemporaries).

The strongest pieces in the show confront the visitor entering the main gallery. Chance/Galaxy/Overlay, a triptych, features a life-sized silhouette interpreted in three distinct views. The first silhouette, Chance, is carved from a sea of traditional, plaid playing cards scattered face down over a large sheet of backing paper. Implied by the muted primary hues of a tarot card deck, the body void hangs in nervous balance at the center of the composition. Galaxy, a fittingly ethereal figurative drawing, upon close examination is built up by hundreds of carefully planted lipstick kisses. Each red or pink kiss, doubling uncomfortably as a bruise or wound, is tied to its flanking sisters by a red thread. The result is a map of the human body (or heart?) reminiscent of an antique anatomical diagram. Overlay, the final silhouette of the triptych, serves a more traditional, painterly point-of-view to the art of figurative silhouette, and acts more as a shadow to it’s partners’ bold questions.

Anna’s strength is with applied mixed-media, and this continues on the adjacent wall with another triptych of sculptural torsos rendered in a dizzying array of materials. My favorite piece of the show, Torso (Feather and Floral), blooms out of a fabulous, gaudy swatch of vintage upholstery fabric, quilted to imply musculature. A swath of emerald green plumage erupts from the solar plexus, and restrained by plastic, defines an elegant contrapposto. Torso is a drag queen runway diva, and she is fabulous.

You can catch Piece Work by Anna Shapiro at the AS220 Project Space, located at 93 Mathewson Street, Providence, RI 02906. The show runs through January 27th, 2008.

While you’re there, visit Infinitiesimal Fortitudes, a plast-tastic video installation by Richard Goulis.
Recommended local dining: Local 121, Taqueria Pacifica, Trinity Brewhouse