The Noble Savage and the Little Tramp

I’ve enjoyed the exhibit on two nights, and was fascinated by the way the different performances affected the way that I attended to the art on the walls. The first evening’s performance was exploratory, sometimes subtle, blurring the line between performance and “real life.” The attentive tone of the piece resounded more than any particular emotive quality. After the performance, the audience migrated to the walls, pulled to the art like magnets. People quietly took in the exhibit, just as we’d taken in the performance.

The second time I saw The Noble Savage and the Little Tramp was at the closing night of the season. The dance performance was raw with emotion and afterwards few people looked at the images. I tried to look (because I wanted to be able to see the exhibit and say something about it!) but when I tried to go toward the walls, I felt disinterested, unable to engage it at all. I had to come back to it later.

Perhaps this says a little bit about the exhibit, in that it does not grab-you-by-the-throat-and-throttle-you. If it’s in competition with a very emotive performance, it needs time and space before being appreciatively engaged. Otherwise, the emotion overwhelms the senses, and The Noble Savage and the Little Tramp blend into the wall. So I found it helpful to give this exhibit time, space, and more time to come back to.

I’m of the belief that if you hang art on the wall, it should be able to speak for itself, to stand alone, requiring no explanation. When I walked into Mt. Tremper Arts and was handed a colorful flier expounding upon The Noble Savage and the Little Tramp exhibit, I tucked it away for later. I tried to read curator Hannah Whittaker’s essay before writing this review, but the curator-ese is a little thick for me. I’m sure that what Whittaker wrote is meaningful to her, because the exhibit brings together such an odd collection of images it’s impossible to come up with my own explanation of why these images were collected – and yet, the exhibit works. I think my responses below may even correspond with Whittaker’s intent. The Noble Savage and the Little Tramp comes together as a whole, each piece playing off of the other.

Responses to the pieces:

Anya Kielar Native Walker

Oh you radiate

You sprocket jointed high healed babe of who we may be if you can look and see through all this latex to who I am inside out

Would it really be any different from

Mr. Neanderthal?

Yes, things are different now. We’ve outdone ourselves.

But who are we?

 

Nayland Blake

Bits of no interest

Not random

Thin, hard to grasp, it may cut, this may hurt

Delicate, mysteriously strong

And therefore I respect your tail

 

Boru O’Brien O’Connell GE 2

Steely cool perfection

Smooth, distant,

elegant

 

Michaela Fruhwirth

Two sulfur smelling dry crumbly rocks

Click them together

And they spark and crackle and fall

Apart.

Is this really pencil on paper?

 

Gil Blank

No title

No date

A flair of a sliver of a moment nano not in time

Yet Two, glorious, radiant, slow hissing expanding

Fire ball big bangin’ molten lava hot orange

Amidst

This black

Endless

Sea

 

Estelle Hanania Demoniac Babble

Fuzzy nondescript

Who be you

Standing to standingly upright

Took a long time to get here and here you are, all fuzzy with your earthen friends

Comical? Comfortable?

 

Mary Weatherford Cave Drawing

Naïve innocence

An old soul

 

Matthew Porter Fort Knox #1

Footprint foot on earth

Stepping forward, you delve into the darkest deep

But somehow, the trees will not allow you to step back.

 

Jonah Groeneboer Still of a 4D object

Ok, maybe this exists in time because I didn’t see it the first time round,

I only noticed it when the light caught junctions

Geometrically sound

Spanning nodes

Of in between

 

Mark Wyse Winter #1

Ayk! Fear and repulsion!

At first…

Live with this a while

And the hard surface

Becomes a message open only to those willing to touch

The disconcerting crags of not knowing

 

Lucas Blalock Cydney

Knot in the back of my head

Pulled my throat round a cord

Tightly wound

Dizzy

I once heard that the arguing souls of materialism and conceptualism attach themselves at the shoulders.

Also, that the blades are where angel wings may grow.

These shoulders are so bound they may dissipate under the pressure.

 

Trisha Donnelly

Oh come on.

The photo says it all, the rest is gimmick.

 

James Welling Conrail BUOI

Beauty of sterile form

Nostalgia

Oil hot summer day

Don’t touch the tracks!

Still

Moving

There is a live flesh covered soft being

Amidst this vast steely brain

 

Noah Sheldon

Standing stark

Alone

Gray

Dry

Crunchy seeds slip through my fingers

The aching arch of beauty, line

And time

 

Arthur Ou’s Untitled (Ocean Wave1)

sparkling firecracker water wave,

swaying flow

surprising zips singing zinging traces

of light

of what might

be

 

Caleb Considine Reinforcements

Smothered, afraid

Tickling, laughing

Grabbing, titillating

Dog legged keeping you down stay

Laugh or cry?

Amy Shoko Brown offers workshops and private sessions in Healing through Creativity. She also teaches qigong in Phoenicia and cohosts Be the Change: Voices of Action every Wednesday on 91.3 WVKR. She was recently nominated as a Democratic candidate for Shandaken Town Justice.