Edited by Alston Conley McMullen Museum of Art Boston College refigured Edited by Alston Conley McMullen Museum of Art Boston College This publication is issued in conjunction with the exhibition Refigured, organized by the Charles S. and Isabella V. McMullen Museum ot Art, Boston College. Principal Curator: Alston Conley Co-curators: Naomi Blumberg and Katherine Nahum Director: Nancy Netzer June 14 - August 29, 2004 This exhibition and catalogue are underwritten by Boston College with additional support from the Patrons of the McMullen Museum of Art. McMullen Museum of Art Boston College Copyright © 2004 by the Charles S. and Isabella V. McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467. Library of Congress Control Number 2004104574 ISBN 1-892850-07-9 Exhibition and Publication Coordination by Alston Conley and Naomi Blumberg Copyediting by Naomi Blumberg and Naomi Rosenberg Designed by Keith Ake, Office of Marketing Communications, Boston College Printed by Lavigne, Inc. Cover Art: Andrew Tavarelli, A Girls Best Friend, 2003, acrylic and oil on canvas. 65 x 45 inches. Courtesy of the artist Photo Credits: nos. 1 -3 David Caras; nos. 4-6 Leslie Wilcox; nos. 7-9 Andrew Tavarelli; nos. 10-1 1 Asa Chiba; no. 12 Boke Ogten; nos. 13-15 Joseph Wheelwright; nos. 16-18 David Caras. NOTE TO READER: Plates are designated as numbers (no.) to reflect references in essays. Additional images are designated as figures (fig.). A full checklist of works in the exhibition can be found following the essays. Table of Contents 4 Refigured Alston Conley 7 Heidi Whitman Alston Conley 10 Leslie Wilcox Alston Conley 15 Andrew Tavarelli Alston Conley 19 Jo Sandman and Joseph Wheelwright: Finding the Figure Naomi Blumberg 26 Todd McKie Katherine Nahum 31 Works in the Exhibition Refigured Alston Conley This exhibition examines the work of six artists who have explored nontraditionai strategies to depict human beings. Following a century in which artists such as Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Paul Klee (1879-1940), and Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) challenged the figurative tradition by subverting its traditional sources, contemporary artists continue to invent alternatives to the academic conventions. Modernist artists distanced themselves from the figurative tradition that evolved from the classical period into the nineteenth-century. The modernist precedent of rejecting traditional approaches to "the figure,” once an iconic subject matter, opened the door for successive generations’ experiments. At the end of the twenti- eth century many experimental artists discarded Modernist abstraction when it became academic. New approaches to rep- resentation became a post-modern strategy. In his compositions, Picasso synthesized influences from what was then called “primitive:” early Iberian carving and African sculpture. 1 The resulting mask-like faces of his figures combined a simplification of form and accentuated features with bold, painterly markmaking. This approach denied traditional three- dimensional illusionism while increasing emotional content. Klee promoted the anti-traditional approach in his aesthetic, rooting his imagery in children’s art, the art of the insane, and the art of non-Western tribal cultures. 2 In so doing, he abandoned the classically proportional body and the idea of man created in God’s image. Dubuffet, like Klee, subverted aesthetic conventions and equated “crudeness with vitality, and ‘ugliness’ with beauty.” 3 Dubuffet desired not just to emulate “primitive” images, but also to engage with the emotional and personal expression of the “primitive” consciousness, or the disoriented state of the insane. 4 Humor is found in both artists’ work; Klee's figures and Dubuffet’s personages are “comic horrors.” 5 Combined with a Dadaist destruction of the boundaries between art and life, humor estab- lishes the humanity within their art. The compositions’ implicit humor also contrasts with the Surrealists’ “sado-masochistic, Freudian . . . nightmares." 6 What we recognize as art and how it communicates with the viewer has evolved over the last century. The change was evi- dent to art historian Bernard Berenson, who recognized that "the secret of our enjoyment of art lay not in philosophy but in psychology.” 7 The English painter Francis Bacon (b. Ireland, 1909-1992), expanding the concept of transposition of the senses in painting, "articulated the principle that paint should be made to function as an equivalent to the sensations of the body rather than merely reproducing the body’s appearance.” 8 Most artists are not willing to be cameras, visual recording machines; rather, as exemplified by the works in this exhibi- tion, they have complex strategies for distilling human experi- ence into visual form. When contemporary artists refer to the “Body,” they sepa- rate the body as a social construction from the physical actual- ity. But they may also be limiting humans to the elemental ani- mal functions, with the resulting emphasis on bodily fluids: blood, urine, mucous, semen. The medieval humors — blood, phlegm, choler, and black bile — once also claimed to represent both the character and the health of mankind. Has eliminating the “human” component relegated us to just physical bodies, and denied us our multi-dimensional existence? We use the senses — sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell — to grasp and communicate humor, emotions, and thought. These, more certainly than medieval humors or bodily fluids, are fundamental aspects of our humanness, and key to how contemporary artists refigure the representation of humankind. The six artists on display, Todd McKie, Jo Sandman, Andrew Tavarelli, Joseph Wheelwright, Heidi Whitman, and Leslie Wilcox, though not members of a cohesive aesthetic movement, all rep- resent human beings in their artwork as a way to cap ture human experience. They invent visual forms as metaphors for the sensation and emotion that is their content. How they represent human beings reflects 4 personal experience and individual psychology rather than the exterior physical likeness — an approach unimaginable before their Modernist predecessors. These artists’ works engage and transpose the senses metaphorically — sight becomes touch, sound, or thought. Works by Tavarelli, Wilcox, and Sandman contain meditations on mortality and human vulnerability. Tavarelli and Wilcox each addresses and depicts clothing as ornament and as sign, indi- cating social status and role. Sandman, Wheelwright, and McKie investigate the capacity to visually correlate human likeness and natural forms. McKie, Wilcox, and Wheelwright all incorporate ele- ments of humor into their work. All these artists refigure the depiction of human experience in its multifaceted complexity and confusion. Created with the urgency of feeling, these works become emblems of presence, markers of reflection, and the artist’s visualization of human contact. NOTES 1 See William Rubin. Les Demoiselles d' Avignor (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1994). 2 See Will Grohmann. Paul Klee (New York: H. N. Abrams, n.d.). 3 Barbara Rose. "Jean Dubuffet: The Outsider as Insider,” Arts/ Magazine, April 1979. vol. 53, No. 8: 151 . See also Dubuffet, by Andreas Franzke (New York: H. N. Abrams. 1981). 4 Rose 149. 5 Rose 147. 6 Rose 147. 7 Douglas Shand-Tucci. The Art of Scandal: The Life and Times of Isabella Stewart Gardner (New York: Harper Collins, 1 997) 171. 8 Anthony Bond. “Embodying the Real." Body. ed. A. Bond, (Melbourne: Bookman Press and The Art Gallery of New South Wales. 1997) 45-46. 1 Heidi Whitman Uncharted Territory (71), 1 998 Ink, gouache on Kitakata paper, 17 x 20.25 in. Collection of the artist 6 Heidi Whitman Alston Conley “If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing — every- thing, would appear to man as it is, infinite.” In a lecture dis- cussing myth and art, Joseph Campbell, a scholar of compar- ative religions and folklore thus quoted from William Blake's poem “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” To his audience of artists, Campbell stated, “Now this is the problem of the aesthetic vision, the vision of the artist and the poet.” 1 In Blake’s poem, cleansed perception is the path to the infinite. In her recent works, Heidi Whitman investigates perception by focusing on the human head. The head is a “container of expe- riences,” states Whitman, who has visualized the inner work- ings of the head in many variations since 1996. Her series of work titled Uncharted Territory depicts the head, not as a portrait — representation of features that reflects little of an interior life — but as a symbolic vessel for the senses. These works present the iconic head as container of the brain, the processor of our perceptions, thoughts, and emotions. Whitman’s work investigates the graphic depic- tion of thought processes. Emphasizing the senses, eyes, ears, and mouths fill the head-forms and often the spaces around them. Whitman occasionally depicts the head as a boundary between interior thoughts and exterior life. In Uncharted Territory (96) the area outside the head holds various external images whereas the area inside the head contains multiple eyes and ears. Flowing lines pass through the ears and float throughout the surrounding space, as if the barrage of experi- ence is being selectively edited for conscious consideration. In Uncharted Territory (71) the head has a permeable barrier with ears and eyes both inside and out, implying unfiltered aware- ness, a moment of fluid perception (no. 1). Lines, both sharp and softly stained, are equivalents for the nervous system’s elec- trical processing of experience. In Uncharted Territory (76) the form of the head is less defined, unbound, sensation seeming to flow throughout. Multiple eyes examine the interior as well as the exterior. Several fingerprints float inside the head, suggest- ing the sense of touch. Like a moment of self-reflection, the inte- rior eyes examine the fingerprints, creating an implicit aware- ness of identity. In the Brainstorm pieces, the head loses its defined form; the picture, quivering with activity, is a metaphor for the layered uni- verse inside the brain (no. 2). Scratch marks, a series of dis- continuous dots or dashes, signify the electrical firing of neu- rons. Bifurcated lines suggest neural electrical pathways. The most recent series, Brain Terrain, appropriates the lan- guage of cartography. Whitman maps the brain as if an island in a newfound world. The drawing marks could be cartogra- pher’s symbols, but are also readable as abstraction. In Brain Terrain (7) the curving blue lines that look like rivers may repre- sent veins (no. 3). Geometric shapes suggest agricultural plots or section borders; lines read as roads or the inner workings of the neural system. The darker outline of the brain resembles an island shelf. Brain Terrain (64) contains other map references: the North marker of a compass and a measurement scale. 7 2 Heidi Whitman Brainstorm (19), 2000 Ink, charcoal, gouache on Mulberry paper, 25.5 x 38.25 in. Collection of the artist These, however, are small and subtle notations that signify the cartographic reading within the larger picture. Despite Whitman’s employ of the cartographic-symbol vocabulary, the images retain their ambiguity, neither purely abstract nor representational. Along with the pictographic imagery of organs of percep- tion — eyes and ears — Whitman’s works on paper are filled with a variety of painterly incident. Most drawings have a tonal wash, a background equivalent of “white noise.” Many draw- ings contain searching, yet intentional, linear marks that can be abstraction or can become a recognizable pictograph. These symbolic images exist in a space full of unintentional marks, the accidents of painting: a drip, some splatter, uncontrolled bleeds or stains. Whitman's painterly process becomes a metaphor for the world of sensation racing to the brain, while the brain attempts to order chaos. The rapid mark making and channeled accident imply a stream-of- consciousness depiction, like the Surrealist process of “auto- matic drawing" that Andre Masson (1896-1987) developed “to allow his pen to wander undirected and without recourse to composition or subject matter.” 2 Formed from abstract jum- bled lines, these automatic drawings were the basis for images upon which Masson later expanded. Whitman freely marks paper and then builds upon the emerging form. Instead of the 8 3 Heidi Whitman Brain Terrain (7), 2002 Ink, gouache on Kitakata paper, 16.5 x 20.5 inches Collection of the artist Surrealist’s symbol-laden dream imagery, Whitman’s work explores the permeable boundaries of the shifting self. Her title, Uncharted Territory, implies the exploration and mapping of unknown space. Exploration and mapping are processes that transform the unknown into the recognizable. Whitman’s practice approximates a charting of sublimated sensation, a depiction of an interior region transformed into a mapped land- scape, an aesthetic vision. NOTES 1 Joseph Campbell (1904-1987). Unpublished lecture given at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine. 1987 2 Michael Parke-Taylor. “Andre Masson: Printmaking Inside Outside Surrealism.” Andre Masson Inside Outside Surrealism: Prints and Illustrated Books From the Gotlieb Collection. Ed. Catherine van Barren. (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2001)24. 9 Leslie Wilcox Alston Conley The French Surrealist writer Tristan Tzara (1 896-1 963) wrote, “A key aspect to the elaboration of metaphor was the capacity imaginatively to transpose the sensations of touch to sight.” 1 Leslie Wilcox’s sculptures urge the viewer to imagine implied, but absent, bodies — flesh suggested by voluminous wire screen sculptures. This is not only apparent in works like Culottes (1998) and Sweats (1998, no. 4), but also evident in less volumetric works like Crushable Jumpsuit (2001 ) and Crushable Overcoat (2001). Their translucent masses invite the imagination to complete the form, visualize the body, and imagine the sensation of touching it. What appears then to the viewer as transparent is imagined as solid, in the way that the hard metal becomes soft flesh in the imagination's transposition of sensation. Clothes, the materials of dress, serve a variety of functions. They both cover nakedness, protecting from the elements, as well as signal to others a specific role in society. Wilcox uses metal screen to fabricate “clothes” and suggest human form. Wilcox shaped translucent screen into recognizable garment configu- rations. Both Culottes and Sweats stand with the waist resting on the floor and the feet in the air, as if performing acrobatics. Behaving impishly, these upside down forms are humorous. They reflect human proportions without flesh or frame and suggest the physical body, without comprising solid mass. The bronze wire screen in Culottes produces a delicate form that shines and reflects light, yet, with its obvious lack of solid mass, it is insubstantial. Wilcox’s earliest clothing pieces were made in paper, followed by pieces made in roplex. Sculptures created in these media rely on an internal wire frame for structure. Wilcox often used dressmakers’ patterns as her starting point. Drawn to their inherent material color and physical qualities, she experimented, for several years, with non- art materials, i.e. metal and fiberglass screening. She painted bolder colors only on outdoor sculptures. Like a seamstress working with woven metal, she cut, pleated, or assembled the screens with lead-filled, stapled, or joined seams. Both the more recent freestanding and the outdoor sculptures are meant to embody the entire human figure, rather than just a fragment, pants or shirts. Silhouette, a compressed accordion-form of a once much larger garment, is so densely pleated that the material has lost its translucency and now absorbs light like a shadow. To flatten the earlier bas-reliefs in this series, Wilcox ran over the forms with her car. Both Crushable Overcoat and Crushable Jumpsuit have also been compressed till nearly flat, yet these appear more naturally shaped, as if hung on a hook after use, or containing a boneless, transparent soul. The Crushable series addresses the fragility of human life. Wilcox created the crushed forms by applying force to metal. Informing these works is Wilcox's injury and recovery from an automobile accident in 1994, in which the car, as well as her body, were crushed like accordions. The translucence of the material and the play of light and shadow upon it evoke more than just physical vulnerability. Are beings not emotionally breakable when they are transparent — seen through? There is a laid-bare quality to Crushable Overcoat and Jumpsuit that is not unlike the flayed skin — an exposed soul — held in St. Bartholomew’s hand, depicted in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel (1536-1 541). 2 Wilcox’s pieces, however, in their trans- parent exposure, contain more humor than judgment. Other pieces in the Crushable series are twisted and com- pressed into denser forms. Crushable Leaning Man (2001 ), made from copper screen, and Crushable Leaning Woman (2001 , no. 5), made from bronze screen, both appear dense and opaque. The twisted metal holds the imprint, the memory, of the artist’s hand-wrung creation. Bronze sculptures often retain the artist’s finger marks from the original hand-worked clay. Like clay-cast bronze sculptures, Wilcox’s works convey the artist’s process to the viewer. Wilcox’s tall, skinny forms recall Alberto Giacometti’s thin figures, like his Walking Man, of 1948, 3 which captures in bronze hand-wrought, angst ridden, twisted clay. Giacometti's 10 4 Leslie Wilcox Sweats, 1998 Lacquer, anodized aluminum screen, 50 x 18 x 10 in. Courtesy of the artist and Barbara Krakow Gallery Leslie Wilcox Crushable Leaning Woman, 2001 Bronze screen, 72 x 12 x 6 in. Courtesy of the artist and Barbara Krakow Gallery sculpture of the late ’40s was associated with Jean-Paul Sartre’s post-war existentialism. Wilcox’s sculptures, in con- trast, resonate with an angst that is softened with humor. The most recent piece in this exhibition, Torso Twist Hi (2003, no. 6), is a swirling, pleated, dress-like form. Sealed at the top and bottom, the sheer dress encloses the torso’s space, leaving no openings for head, arms, or legs. A shape, which is at once clas- sical and contemporary, Torso Twist III resembles an ancient sculpture that has lost its appendages. It is, however, a complete sculpture, without artifice or folly. Through the pleated screen and within the diagonally wrapped form, the viewer sees the over- lapping moire patterns and the shadows translated on the wall. In works ranging from Culottes to the Crushables, Wilcox hints at the human form by surrounding it with garments. The sculpted clothing signals to the viewer an impression of the invisible body. “Clothing was embel- lishment which drew attention to the body, but which also stood for the body, as a shifting set of signs for its parts." 4 Each sculpture captures a different garment, enticing the viewer to imagine the body it adorned. With the Torso Twist series, Wilcox added an elegant gown, a body no longer focused on its vulnerability, but one flaunting a refined beauty — a transparent body draped in a sheer fabric of sculpted metal, stepping out. The body heals itself and even- 12 6 Leslie Wilcox I Torso Twist III, 2003 Anodized aluminum screen, 66 x 12 x 9 in. Courtesy of the artist and Barbara Krakow Gallery tually the psyche heals too; with the Torso Twist series, Wilcox moves on. The shifting psychology contained in each clothed- body sculpture marks a development over time. Meditations on mortality, vulnerability and, most recently, beauty accom- pany the humor found in Wilcox’s earlier work. In these sculp- tures, the viewer finds an appreciation of beauty enriched by prior reflections on vulnerability, and perhaps not available without a brush with mortality. NOTES 1 Briony Fer. “The Flat, The Floax, The Body." The Body Imaged: The Human Form and Visual Culture Since the Renaissance. Ed. Kathleen Alder and Marcia Pointon (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1933) 172. 2 Loren Partridge, Fabrizio Mancinelli and Gianluigi Colalucci. Michelangelo, The Last Judgement: A Glorious Restoration (New York: Harry N. Abrams. 1997) 139. 3 Valerie J. Fletcher. Alberto Giacometti: 1901-1966 (Washington. D.C.: Smithsonian Institution P, 1988) 135. 4 Fer 162. 13 7 Andrew Tavarelli Veil of Tears, 1 999 Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 in. Courtesy of the artist 14 Andrew Tavarelli Alston Conley In his paintings from 1999 to 2003, Andrew Tavarelli combines human images with symbols to communicate complex emo- tional experiences. His earlier compositions concentrate on faces, while more recent paintings include larger sections of bodies and complete figures. Tavarelli incorporates a range of cultural references into his imagery — a reflection of his far-flung travels, including Indonesia and Southeast Asia. In Veil of Tears (1999, no. 7), human faces, built from mosaic- like brush marks, occupy either side of the canvas. On the left face an “all seeing eye,” reminiscent of those found on the vil- lage gates in Nepal, cries a river of tears, partly obscuring the nose and mouth. The adjacent head comprises two profiles. In human relationships, one who is inconstant is said to be two- faced. The two-faced Roman god, Janus, traditionally depicted with beard and headdress, with one profile facing forward and one looking back, as seen here, was believed to see both the past and the future. Implicitly, Tavarelli’s image asks what the Janus figure has revealed to cause this grief. Was it seeing the future or was it looking back that caused the “veil of tears?” Where Veil of Tears and Just a Thought borrow primarily from Western cultural history, other iconography in the series springs from non-Western sources, as well. A large amorphous profile occupies the right side of Tavarelli’s Sweet Talk (1 999). A cartoon word balloon like form, with curving brushstrokes substituting for words, emerges from the mouth. In Italian, word balloons are “fumetti," translated as "smoke” or visualized breath. Recalling similar undulating forms in Mayan hieroglyphs that also indicate speech, Tavarelli imagines the balloon as breath. This face speaks colored dancing forms that both visual- ize speech and imply the communication of interior thoughts and emotions. The background’s horizontal brush- strokes, in alternating colors, define a field like sheet music for these emotive notations. Tavarelli used a women’s powder puff to paint the lip forms on the face to increase the pictures asso- ciation with female touch. As a result the face appears covered with kisses. The phrase “sweet talk” suggests flirtation and romantic exchange, but also dubious truthfulness, or question- able motivation. As in Leslie Wilcox’s work in this exhibition, Tavarelli requires the viewer’s imagination to transpose sensations, sight to touch or sight to sound. He attempts to visually depict the sound of speech in Hold Back the Night (1 999). Here, a profile positioned horizontally at the bottom faces darkness descending from the top edge of the composition. Blue-violet rays emerging from the figure’s mouth break a twilight background. In these rays are blue cut-diamonds rising upwards. The breath of blue rays con- tradicts the profile’s death-like horizontal position, and keeps at bay the descending darkness. As in Sweet Talk, here the visu- alized breath equates speech. Tavarelli perceives the diamonds as hard, enduring clarity, a representation of thought. This con- templation on mortality poetically equates with life, thought, speech, and breath. As in Veil of Tears, there is a classical source for the female angel's face in Just a Thought (2002, no. 8). Borrowing from a Roman mosaic, Tavarelli has painted the image with small geo- metric brushstrokes. Bone forms surrounding the face are sym- bols of death; several occupy a speech balloon shaped like a question mark. The artist’s contemplation of death reaches across time to this nearly forgotten classical face, which is reincarnated in his painting; the image clings to existence and is remembered by a new audience. The Nepalese “all seeing eye” and the Roman mosaic face become cultural masks. Like Pablo Picasso, who painted Gertrude Stein with a mask-like face derived from African sculpture, removing any associations with portraiture and increas- ing the expressive potential, Tavarelli has drawn from ancient, non-Western, and early “primitive” sources to reinvent human portrayal. Tavarelli’s early love of Walt Disney and his adult appreciation of Henri Matisse continue to be visible influences. Both aesthet- ics share with Japanese prints a fluid linear quality and an economy of line. Tavarelli’s current series of paintings employs female figures inspired by Kitagawa Utamaro’s 15 8 Andrew Tavarelli Just a Thought, 2002 Acrylic and oil on canvas, 54 x 40 in. Courtesy of the artist (1 753-1 806) turn-of-the-nineteenth-century woodcuts. Many of the characters in Utamaro's prints were actors, musicians, geishas, and teahouse waitresses, all figures in Japan’s “floating world" or entertainment districts. Utamaro completed many series depicting Japanese women, and was particularly known for imag- ing a new conception of feminine beauty with tall, slender, willowy bodies and heads with mask-like faces. Tavarelli favors Utamaro's depictions of idealized Japanese women’s beauty and the artist’s use of clothing as a marker of beauty and social status. In each of his paintings, Tavarelli contrasts Utamaro women with styl- ized male figures based on Western Art Deco sources. Often the men’s dress, as well, indicates social status. Drawn from Utamaro's Love Meeting Nightly J Tavarelli’s A Girl’s Best Friend (2003) depicts a kimono-clad female in the lower foreground. She is joined by a silhouette of a Western male figure, which was inspired by a European cigarette advertise- ment. The man, in top hat and coat, appears behind her, obscured by a screen. Cut diamonds descend from the top left to the bottom right corner. They may be either a visualization of thought, as in Hold Back the Night, or a symbol of commerce. The implicit narrative here suggests rela- tionships between male and female as well as the East and West. It is both a story of individuals and of cultures. In The Letter (2003) the fashionable woman looking over her shoulder, drawn from Utamaro’s Hanazuma of Hyogoya print (ca. 1794), 2 clutches a letter, while a Western business- man, newspaper and briefcase in hand, exits in the other direc- tion. The space is not literal; the two figures inhabit opposing colored spaces, and the curvilinear border around the purple “male-space” could be a window, or a thought balloon, per- haps containing a memory conjured by the written note. The letter serves as a symbol of communication or language and the figures’ juxtaposition suggests a narrative. This scene shows the individuals and cultures coming together and turn- ing away. Utamaro’s prints were a popular art form, produced for the masses. Some of his characters were known in their day and the prints in which they appeared carried their names. Utamaro’s 16 9 Andrew Tavarelli The Falls, 2003 Acrylic and oil on canvas, 76 x 53 in. Courtesy of the artist print Takigawa 3 is named for the richly clothed and fashionable woman it depicts. In Tavarelli’s The Falls (2003, no. 9) Takigawa sits next to a waterfall reading a scroll. Two male figures are sub- merged into the background. One wears a farmer's hat and the other a worker’s cap, both images drawn from a European Art Deco Socialist poster. The waterfall, on the right, suggests the passage of time; the characters existed a century or more apart, but here, are joined in Tavarelli’s pictorial juxtaposition of cul- tures. The woman, engrossed in her reading, seems unaware of the male figures hovering behind her, as Japan, once closed to trade, ignored the west. Eastern women and western men become characters in implicit, but ambiguous, narratives in Tavarelli’s paintings. In his recent series, Tavarelli displays a writer’s interest in constructing a private narrative that describes male/female interaction imbued with sexual energy. Japanese print imagery, once an influence on the flattening of space for early Modernist artists, is Tavarelli’s source for culturally defined female beauty. The juxtaposed representations of male/female, east/west, and ancient/contemporary are cultural signs and players in Tavarelli’s imagined stories — interior scenes the artist creates by balanc- ing emotion and conceptions of beauty. NOTES 1 Nuneshige Narazki and Sado Kikuchi. Utamaro (Tokyo: Kodansha International. Lmt. 1968) 50. From “Selected Poems On Love” series. 2 Narazki and Kikuchi. 57. From “Modern Beauties in their Prime” series. 3 Narazki and Kikuchi. 56. From “Modern Beauties in their Prime” series. 17 10 Jo Sandman Light Tracing 9, 2003 Enlarged photogram, 23 x 19 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas 18 Jo Sandman and Joseph Wheelwright: Finding the Figure Naomi Blumberg Jo Sandman and Joseph Wheelwright work from nature, pay- ing close attention to the specific and essential character of their media: Sandman, in stone, shells, and coral and Wheelwright in wood and stone. Sandman and Wheelwright both collect natural objects that possess human or animal char- acteristics, then sculpt and carve the objects into more recog- nizable beings. Whereas both artists engage with the natural world and draw analogies between vegetal or geological forms, on the one hand, and human and animal forms, on the other, Sandman, in all three of the series in Refigured, converts her found objects into two-dimensional photographic images. In contrast, Wheelwright draws direct attention to these visual relationships; his three-dimensional finished products retain the original shapes and some of the textures of the trees and stones from which they were made. "We prefer to have bodies in front of us, or in our hands, and if we cannot have them, we continue to see them, as afterimages or ghosts . . . echoes of bodies.” 1 James Elkins, in his study Pictures of the Body: Pain and Metamorphosis (1999), posits that human beings are conditioned constantly to visualize bod- ies and figural forms in their surroundings. It is common, when describing one’s environment, to use words related to the shapes and contours of the human figure. Trees and branches may be likened to torsos and limbs; rolling hills, to the curvature of the hip; or a craggy mountainside, to a facial profile. Moreover, when the viewer looks at a painting or work of art that contains only a suggestion of a figure, the brain is quick to fill in what the eye does not see or to extract an obscured being from its context. 2 Often, as part of their creative process, artists recognize a close visual relationship between the human and the natural world, drawing on this capacity when creating works of art. Working within this framework, Sandman and Wheelwright initiate their respective artistic processes by merging the very sources of these analogies — nature and human — into a composite physical object. Rather than the inspiration, nature is the medium, which sub- sequently, through sanding, carving, and recontextu- alization, becomes the "being.” Each of Sandman’s series in Refigured relies on the same groups of objects, but the results differ depending on the artist's choice of photographic method. Some materialize in surprisingly alien forms — ghostly or monstrous — others emerge as visual vehicles leading the viewer to con- template the inner workings of the human psyche. In her series entitled Momenta Mori (1997-98, no. 11), Sandman addresses mortality. Photograms printed on Arches watercolor paper with the Van Dyke brown process, the Momenta Mori images are made from small sculptures that Sandman carved from stones, shells, coral, and lava that she found along beaches. Her first encounter with such objects occurred while walking the shore of a volcanic island: “I came upon small pieces of coral, which, to my surprise, actually resembled primordial heads with incom- plete features.’’ 3 In her studio, Sandman reshapes these “incomplete" stones and coral, bringing them to life, making them look even more like personages. Using small drills, picks, and sanders, she enlarges holes that ultimately emerge as eyes or mouths. By capturing in white the refined form on the dark brown ground, she produces a ghostly image, almost like an accidental blur or chemical mishap that appears on film upon developing. While the original stone evokes a somewhat human or physical presence, the photogram imprint, by contrast, is strikingly ethereal and elu- sive; it is like the afterimage or echo of the body. Momenta mori, Latin for “remember you must die," is an art historical genre that originated in the Middle Ages. Momenta mori images traditionally symbolize mortality: a skull, a snuffed candle, a body in an advanced stage of decay. The momenta mori's original purpose was to remind the viewer of the inevitabil- ity of death; it gained its power by playing on human anxieties related to the instability of the bodily state. 4 Thus, Sandman's Momenta Mori images, though intimate and seemingly 19 11 Jo Sandman Momento Mori 1 6, 1 998 Van Dyke Brown photogram, 9x11 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas innocuous, are, by implication, meant to haunt, to “touch on the dark side of life” 5 and perhaps, to trigger fears related to mys- teries of the afterlife. To achieve the small ghostly imprint, the artist places the stone on light-sensitive paper and exposes it either to sunlight or ultra-violet light. Sandman is constantly engaged with the essence and physicality of the original medium, as she anticipates its new incarnation. In Twice, a series completed in 1 998 to 2000, Sandman again began with small stone and coral pieces that appear familiarly human or animal-like. As in Momento Mori, she further shaped each one into a more “cogent face or mask with its own iden- tity." 6 The final sculpted faces, simultaneously human and alien, were then photocopied onto watercolor paper as well as onto a transparency. The skewed manner in which Sandman layered and then framed the identical faces produces depth and sepa- ration and a constantly shifting relationship between the two floating forms. Consequently, they seem to vibrate, “like phan- toms or beings in the process of mutation.” 7 Each small print, only about two inches in diam- eter and floating within a white expanse, is unique and eerie. Number Six from the Twice (no. 12) series resembles both an animal covered in leopard spots and a human with distinct facial features — almond- shaped eyes, a slightly opened mouth, and what looks like an indentation for a nose. The visage captured in Twice 27 reveals the closest relationship to the original object, retaining the texture of the stone’s surface and the illusion of three-dimesionality. Returning to these same natural materials in 2002, Sandman began a new series entitled Light Tracings (no. 1 0). For the Twice works, Sandman made small copies of stones that left a small, dark imprint on white; for Light Tracings, she made enlarged pho- tograms directly from the carvings, leaving white, positive imprints afloat on black grounds — an effect similar to that of her Momento Mori works of a few years earlier. Perhaps even more so than those permutations already discussed, these much larger prints 20 12 Jo Sandman Twice 6, 1 998 Photomechanically produced image, 8x8 Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas resemble “true” ghosts or goblins. Completed while she was working with x-rays of human body parts and heads, the Light Tracings reflect Sandman’s strong impulse to delve into the fright- ening and unseen aspects of the human body and psyche. Sandman plays with degrees of flatness, resulting in some, very white, textureless Light Tracings and some more modeled and sculptural. Subtly graduating from light to dark, the enlarged masks are imbued with a surprising chiaroscuro effect, as well as painterly textural detail. The viewer can almost see through the face (albeit to an infinite black abyss), just as one would expect to experience the vision of a “real” ghost. As convincingly ghoul- ish as these images appear, upon closer inspection, the viewer may be reminded of the image’s origin — a sculpted stone. These vaguely human representations compel the viewer, as they did the artist, to retrieve from memory and apply a lexicon of body metaphors and associations. Furthermore, upon seeing all three series displayed together, the viewer may begin to recognize faces that appear more than once. The repeated faces, while slightly altered in form each time they reappear, may become familiar, like old friends. 21 15 Joseph Wheelwright MHarepa, 2004 Quartzite, 36 x 30 x 34 in. Private Collection 22 13 Joseph Wheelwright Stone with Stonehenge, 2002 Feldspar, 9 x 18 x 12 in. Collection of the artist Joseph Wheelwright’s world of gesturing stick figures and expressive stone heads invites viewers to visu- alize new potential for “life" in inanimate natural objects. Like Sandman, Wheelwright combs the shores of New England, seeking stones and coral that evoke a human or semi-human presence. He also scouts local construction sites for much larger stones that have potential for incarnation. The feelings evoked by works like Wheelwright’s Crucified Tree (2004, no. 14) or Milarepa (2004, no. 1 5) are contrary to the intimacy one feels when viewing Jo Sandman’s small and elusive photograms. When culling objects, Wheelwright considers the visual effects of manipulated scale. Thus, his tree figures are either tiny and pixie-like, or large and, sometimes, frightening; his stones range from quadruple the size of a human head to colossal. None of the figural parts Wheelwright fashions from nature directly mimics human proportions. Wheelwright’s latest work brings to life tiny sculptures carved from, and still attached to, much larger stones. In these works, such as Stone with Stonehenge (no. 13), his deliberate manip- ulation of scale is striking, introducing new, more explicit themes of relations between humanity and nature. In this work, the artist also explores the mysteries of Stonehenge (2950-1600 BC), a site thought to be a miraculous prehistoric accomplishment of engineering, strength, and understanding of the sun and moon (fig. 1). The site, whose original purpose is still debated, was constructed over hundreds of years out of enormous stones, some weighing more than four tons. Wheelwright’s tiny repro- duction — created by a single person, and certainly in much less time than the original — is no longer larger-than-life, but is situated on a large, smooth rock that the artist has rendered humanoid. The face, "primitive" and minimalist, bears only the most basic human facial features. The head appears primordial, incorpo- rating allusions to ancient civilization and the traditional practice of stonework. The scale and position of the miniature construc- tion on the great human head offer the viewer a unique aerial perspective rarely experienced. Wheelwright gravitates toward objects that present possibil- ities for personification and maintains much of their original form and textures. When objects’ particularities are lost in produc- tion, Wheelwright reapplies these particularities, as he did with the bark that covers the head on Crucified Tree (no. 1 4). Trees, like humans, are living bodies subject to growth patterns and genetic inheritances. 8 The tree’s posture and the positions of its limbs are the result of its particular nat- ural environment. They, like humans, can die from 23 14 Joseph Wheelwright Crucified Tree, 2004 Hornbeam, 91 x 62 x 52 in. Collection of the artist disease, or may have enduring life spans. It is not surprising, therefore, that one would recognize in trees similar physical and biological characteristics. Defining a human figure from a tree seems an intuitive endeavor. A commitment to the object's original essence guides Wheelwright throughout his process. For Crucified Tree, he began with a hornbeam, a small, hardy tree of the birch family. Wheelwright took cues from the hornbeam's “gestures,” its curves, postures, and physical presence. He first recognized a body in the object, but further humanized it by directly carving and enhancing certain elements that now stand for figural forms or features. Speaking to its distinct melancholic posture — arms (originally the tree’s roots) taut, extended upward and back- ward and head hanging down — Wheelwright envisions this tree as “crucified.” Although, by nature, stones are not gestural like trees and plants, and, to the untrained eye, bear little resemblance to human beings, Wheelwright brings their frozen solidity to life in the form of heads — some large, some small, and some more human than others. Wheelwright collects stones with crevices, holes, bumps, and strange colorations and textures and transforms them into eerily familiar beings. For Burka (2004), the least altered piece in this exhibition, he preserved the beach stone’s amorphous shape and rich, charcoal color, but polished a small horizontal oval, darkening the stone, then carved out tiny eyes, lightening the surface back to its original shade; the eyes emerge from the stone as they would from a burka, lending the object both mys- tery and realism. The stone’s shape, with its peeking eyes, becomes an unassuming, cloaked woman. 24 Fig. 1 Stonehenge, 2002. Salisbury Plain, England (constructed 2950-1600 bc). Photo: Jeffery Howe. Milarepa, a renowned, eleventh-century Tibetan yogi, is rec- ognized for his commitment to Buddhism and for the life of extreme asceticism he led to attain the Buddhist state of enlightenment. Wheelwright’s representation of the yogi relics on the original form of the quartzite stone (no. 15). Emerging from the top of the bottom-heavy sculpture is the head of Milarepa; the solid, amorphous mass of gnarled stone sug- gests his body. His face — comprising two vaguely arched slits for eyes, a slight protrusion with nostrils for the nose, and del- icate accentuated lips — evokes the calm and enlightenment that the yogi achieved in his lifetime. Wheelwright’s minimal carving reflects the subject’s essence. As during a Rorschach test, the viewer projects onto both Wheelwright's sculptures and Jo Sandman’s images associa- tions stemming from personal experiences in the natural world. 9 According to Wheelwright, his stone and tree figures “animate the landscape," literally. 10 The context in which one views Wheelwright’s work dictates which metaphors first come to mind. Within the art gallery, they are art, sculptures made of stone, coral, and wood — objects both engaging and clever. In the out- doors, the stone heads seem quite at home in their original habi- tats and among their non-personified relatives. The trees, as well, come creeping out of the landscape, as if all the trees that surround them will also gradually come to life and walk off into the world. Upon seeing the sculptures outdoors, the viewer comes closer to the vision that the artist experienced when he first encountered the materials. Depending on how they are configured, one may also perceive a dialogue in a secret language taking place among the figures and heads. Despite the familiarity the roots and rocks exude, this notion of an underlying conversation among them proves somewhat alienating to the human onlookers. Wheelwright’s creations leave the viewer wondering what happens at night, when the visitors have gone home and the tree- and stone- beings can interact freely. This aspect of mystery imparts an “otherness” to this community of “sticks and stones” and reveals the human fear of and fascination with the unseen ecological world. It is comforting to know, however, that after the sculptures have been held captive in his studio and refigured, Wheelwright often sets them free to settle back into the natural environment. 11 Still, one might imagine that, once the museum closes for the day and the galleries go dark, these inanimate beings, even those of an indoor display like Refigured, miraculously come to life, assum- ing the personas that Wheelwright has instilled in them. NOTES 1 James Elkins, Pictures of the Body: Pain and Metamorphosis (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999) 1. 2 Gottfried Boehm, “A Paradise Created by Painting: Observations in Cezanne's Bathers.” Paul Cezanne: The Bathers. Ed. Mary Louise Krumrine (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990) 14. 3 Jo Sandman. “Artist's Statement,” Jo Sandman: Photo/ Drawings June 26-July 14, 2001 (New York: 55 Mercer Gallery) n. pag. 4 Tom Flynn, The Body in Three Dimensions (New York: Harry N Abrams, 1998) 71. 5 Jo Sandman. “Artist's Statement” in conjunction with the exhibition Terrors and Wonders: Monsters in Contemporary Art at the Decordova Museum and Sculpture Park. Lincoln. MA. Sep. 15, 2001 -Jan. 6, 2002. www.decordova.org/decordova/exhibit/terrors/sandman.htm 6 Jo Sandman, “Artist's Statement,” January 2001 . 7 Jo Sandman. “Artist's Statement," January 2001 . 8 Robert Taplin, “Hague's tree-trunk anatomies,” Art in America, vol. 88, no. 11, Nov. 2000. 154-57. 9 Chris Bergeron, “Garden of Sticks and Stones," Metrowest Daily News 26 June 2003. 10 Joseph Wheelwright. Email to the author. 25 Feb. 2004. 11 “Joseph Wheelwright: Stone Heads and Tree Figures." a recent exhibition held at the Decordova Museum and Sculpture Park (Lincoln, MA. June 7, 2003-May 16, 2004), displayed a selection of very large tree figures and stone heads on the outdoor terrace in addition to some smaller works on display in the indoor gallery. This layout allowed the visitor to experience Wheelwright’s creations in their natural habitat as well as in the traditional art gallery setting. Many buyers of Wheelwright's work display the objects outdoors in yards and gardens. 25 Todd McKie Katherine Nahum Many of the artists in Refigured (McKie, Sandman, Whitman, and Wheelwright) emphasize the sensate apparatus of the human form to explore what it means to experience and respond to the world. The eyes and ears of Heidi Whitman’s heads (nos. 1-3) are expressively reduced to their essential functions as optic and aural sensors. These organs have exploded beyond the confines of the skull because they are over-stimulated, as overloaded as electrical circuits. Jo Sandman’s photographs (nos. 10-12) and Joe Wheelwright's rough boulders (nos. 13-15) also concentrate on the head, but facial features are rendered in their work only to a degree that makes them identifiable and invites the viewer’s empathic participation in creating form. Wheelwright, with a purism that seems Buddhist, works directly with nature, bring- ing into play coarse textures of stones to create new beings somewhere between fish, animals, and humans. McKie, Sandman, and Wheelwright encourage our recall of the earliest need to see responsive features in a “one shot image,” as McKie has put it. The viewer imbues the mouth, nose, and eyes with meaning immediately, as the infant is hard-wired to seek and to find his mother's face through smell and sound, and because he just likes the look of ©. Todd McKie has a painting in his studio — it does not appear in this exhibition — that captures the witty nature of his art. It shows a human head on a duck body, a flat form set against nearly expressionist brushwork in various hues of green. The head, composed of simple, schematic features, looks out at us with a smug expression. That is because inside the body to which the head is seamlessly attached is another face whose bold features are arranged in shapes of mild panic. The smug face seems to say, I got him! McKie observes human foibles with affection and from an ironic distance. Yet many of his figures represent ‘the artist’ who is recognizable by his jaunty black beret worn securely when things are going well l/\ Very Good Year, 2000, no. 18), or that flies off his head when they are not ( Geometry without Fear, 2001, no. 17). The latter painting shows the artist staggering. His wine glass has just slipped from his hand. Will he fall into those diamond shapes that appear to be a woman next to him? The two exist in a field of modulated yellows and greens along with more geometry, a gallows, from which is suspended a red rectangle by a chain. The arms of the translucent green gallows cross and form another, purple rectangle that brings our atten- tion to several more floating, colored geometries. This motif recalls Paul Klee, 1 but McKie says he has not looked at Klee very much; he prefers Picasso, Matisse, Miro or the pots and ves- sels of Pre-Columbian artists. McKie makes ceramic pots. I Made Them Myself, (1 994) rep- resents a broadly smiling McKie holding pots in each hand and balancing another on his head. Several more stand at his feet or are placed on a shelf whose edges neatly frame the dark vessels as if they were shadowy portrait figures seen against a deep blue ground. The pots, flat as they are, may represent the outer delin- eation and the inner life of the human figure; it almost seems as if McKie is standing around with friends and smiling. “Pre- Columbian artists stretched figures to make them into a pot or ves- sel, or they gave the figures three legs so the pot would stand up. That kind of art is my favorite kind of art to look at, just to look at.” 2 So his pots have a simple, flat, universal shape that links his work with ceramicists and artists through cultures and through time. “I accepted that shape,” he said ambiguously twice dur- ing my studio visit. Perhaps he has accepted the shape as an icon of his art because its two-dimensional simplicity works not only as human image and self-image, but also as a multivalent image for art as well. La Meme Chose (1998) bears this out: pots figure signifi- cantly in it. McKie originally thought he might include Autour du Monde to complete the title, for the painting is about how things are the same for artists everywhere. In Paris, McKie saw an artist unaware that he was being watched through his atelier window. McKie realized at once that the French artist was agonizing over his work, questioning the 26 16 Todd McKie How to Paint Women, 1 999 Flashe on canvas, 40 x 30 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery NAGA, Boston 27 17 Todd McKie Geometry Without Fear, 2001 Flashe on canvas, 48 x 36 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery NAGA, Boston decisions he had made, and McKie recognized his own artistic quandaries. His painting shows the artist facing us, a melan- cholic hand brought to his skull-like head that is enlarged because it is the site of uncertainties. His brow is furrowed as he holds a ceramic pot, the artistic product before him. Other pots stand on bases behind him, while a single lamp with an exposed bulb hangs from the ceiling. The painting is a contrasting pendant to I Made Them Myself and its giddy pride. High seriousness and humor fuse within these images. The female body of How to Paint Women (1999, no. 16) is brown from the neck down and it ends with a tab shape that can be read as both legs and vagina. Schematic breast and eyes are compared; a vertical eye echoes the vagina shape. Smiling stiffly, the model poses, but she gestures in much the same way as the disconsolate artist of La Meme Chose, so one wonders if this figure embodies the quandaries of both the model and her artist — superimposed. How like Picasso! But McKie is much funnier. Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind (1 999) may refer to a woman trapped by (her?) art because the figure with its large worried eye is wedged between the encircling ellipses — painted as flat planes of color — of a metal mobile. Woman may also be an odd alien force that only Art can contain. 28 18 Todd McKie A Very Good Year, 2000 Flashe on canvas, 28 x 22 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery NAGA, Boston 29 McKie plays the cadences and meanings of a title against the content of an image. His titles sometimes “suggest themselves” while he is working; sometimes he writes down a phrase hap- hazardly and waits to see if, later on, it will fit a painting, an associative device that seems surrealist. We can hear the nuances of You Think You’ve Got Problems (2001), a 30-inch square painting in which a large-headed figure is placed neatly within the frame. Against the ground’s brushed orange, the red- ochre head is bounded by a narrow band of yellow which con- tinues unbroken from one of the legs, the one that is shackled. The figure is in irons and the chain extends out of the paint- ing at a slight incline. Should the taut chain break, the weight of the huge, unhappy head would pull the figure over with a thud. Weight and sound are visually implied; a cross-modal association of the senses is suggested. As the yellow bound- ing line continues around the head it becomes a clenched fist, rising in a line parallel to the chain. One black eye, one white eye, a yellow triangle for the nose, and a grim grid of teeth form a face that expresses, with minimal means, torturous conflict. Hearing the intonations of the title and looking at the struggling figure who really does “have problems” we chuckle at first, and then grow thoughtful. The first bemused response that Mckie’s work inspires is quickly followed by others that are more ambiguous and com- plex, the level at which McKie is truly working. McKie’s schematic figures placed in spaceless fields of brushed, modulated color have enlarged heads with bold sense organs to show the artist’s sensate grasp of the world. The artist of A Very Good Year (no. 1 8) extends his tongue toward the grapes suspended above him, conjuring the taste of fine wines that is implicitly compared to the depiction of beauty. McKie’s for- mal language succinctly conveys such sensuous pleasures — or consternation, boisterous fun, helplessness, the artistic predica- ment, even anger. McKie has accepted that shape of Art with humor and love. NOTES 1 See Polyphony, 1932 (Basel: Kunstmuseum) and Caphccio in February, 1938 (M.G. Neumann Collection, Chicago). 2 McKie: Todd McKie and Judy Kensley McKie. Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, 1990. n. pag. Checklist of Works in the Exhibition Heidi Whitman 1 Uncharted Territory (71), 1998 Ink, gouache on Kitakata paper, 17 x 20.25 in. Collection of the artist 2 Uncharted Territory (76), 1 999 Ink, gouache on Kitakata paper, 16 x 20.25 in. Collection of the artist 3 Uncharted Territory (96), 1 999 Ink, gouache on Kitakata paper, 16.5 x 20.5 in. Collection of the artist 4 Uncharted Territory (1 14), 2000 Ink, gouache on Mulberry paper, 25.5 x 38 in. Collection of the artist 5 Brainstorm (13), 2000 Ink, gouache on Hosho paper, 18.75 x 23.5 in. Collection of the artist 6 Brainstorm (19), 2000 Ink, charcoal, gouache on Mulberry paper, 25.5 x 38.25 in. Collection of the artist 7 Brain Terrain (7), 2002 Ink, gouache on Kitakata paper, 16.5 x 20.5 in. Collection of the artist 8 Brain Terrain (64), 2002 Ink, gouache on Kitakata paper. 16.5 x 20.75 in. Collection of the artist Leslie Wilcox 9 Silhouette, 1 998 Lacquer, anodized aluminum screen, 72 x 12 x 6 in. Courtesy of the artist and Barbara Krakow Gallery 10 Culottes, 1998 Bronze screen, 48 x 16 x 10 in. Courtesy of the artist and Barbara Krakow Gallery 11 Sweats, 1998 Lacquer, anodized aluminum screen, 50 x 18 x 10 in. Courtesy of the artist and Barbara Krakow Gallery 12 Crushable Overcoat, 2001 Fiberglass screen and lead wire, 80 x 12 x 9 in. Courtesy of the artist and Barbara Krakow Gallery 13 Crushable Jumpsuit, 2001 Fiberglass screen and lead wire, 70 x 12 x 6 in. Courtesy of the artist and Barbara Krakow Gallery 14 Crushable lead Headed, 2001 Lead sheet, 84 x 6 x 4 in. Courtesy of the artist and Barbara Krakow Gallery 15 Crushable Leaning Man, 2001 Copper screen, 72 x 9 x 4 in. Courtesy of the artist and Barbara Krakow Gallery 16 Crushable Leaning Woman, 2001 Bronze screen, 72 x 12 x 6 in. Courtesy of the artist and Barbara Krakow Gallery 1 7 Torso Twist III, 2003 Anodized aluminum screen, 66 x 12 x 9 in. Courtesy of the artist and Barbara Krakow Gallery Andrew Tavarelli 1 8 Veil of Tears, 1 999 Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 in. Courtesy of the artist 1 9 Sweet Talk, 1 999 Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 in. Courtesy of the artist 20 Hold Back the Night, 1 999 Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 in. Courtesy of the artist 21 Just a Thought, 2002 Acrylic/oil on canvas, 54 x 40 in. Courtesy of the artist 22 A Girls Best Friend, 2003 Acrylic/oil on canvas, 65 x 45 in. Courtesy of the artist 23 The Letter, 2003 Acrylic/oil on canvas, 78 x 54 in. Courtesy of the artist 24 The Falls, 2003 Acrylic/oil on canvas, 76 x 53 in. Courtesy of the artist 31 Jo Sandman 25 Twice 3, 1 998 Photomechanically produced image, 8 x 8 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas 26 Twice 6, 1 998 Photomechanically produced image, 8 x 8 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas 27 Twice 8, 1 998 Photomechanically produced image, 8 x 8 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas 28 Twice 11, 1998 Photomechanically produced image, 8 x 8 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas 29 Twice 14, 1998 Photomechanically produced image, 8 x 8 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas 30 Twice 27, 1998 Photomechanically produced image, 8 x 8 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas 31 Momento Mori 3, 1 998 Van Dyke Brown photogram, 9x11 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas 32 Momento Mori 13, 1998 Van Dyke Brown photogram, 9x11 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas 33 Momento Mori 15, 1998 Van Dyke Brown photogram, 9x11 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas 34 Momento Mori 1 6, 1 998 Van Dyke Brown photogram, 9x11 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas 35 Momento Mori 1 7, 1 998 Van Dyke Brown photogram, 9x11 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas 36 Momento Mori 26, 1 998 Van Dyke Brown photogram, 9x11 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas 37 Light Tracing 2, 2003 Enlarged photogram, 23 x 19 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas 38 Light Tracing 4, 2003 Enlarged photogram, 23 x 19 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas 39 Light Tracing 5, 2003 Enlarged photogram, 23 x 19 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas 40 Light Tracing 9, 2003 Enlarged photogram, 23 x 19 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Kayafas Joe Wheelwright 41 Rootman, 2001 Bronze, 18 x 16 x 9 in. Collection of the artist 42 Stone with Orange Stripe, 2001 Granite, 10 x 16 x 15 in. Collection of the artist 43 Stone with Stonehenge, 2002 Feldspar, 9 x 18 x 12 in. Collection of the artist 44 One Eyed Striped Stone, 2003 Basalt, quartzite, 9 x 9 x 7 in. Collection of the artist 45 Burka, 2004 Carved beach stone, 10 x 16 x 15 in. Private Collection 46 Crucified Tree, 2004 hornbeam, 91 x 62 x 52 in. Collection of the artist 47 Milarepa, 2004 Quartzite, 36 x 30 x 34 in. Private Collection Todd McKie 48 / Made Them Myself, 1 994 Tempera on paper, 22 x 28 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery NAGA, Boston 49 La Meme Chose, 1 998 Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery NAGA, Boston 50 Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind, 1 999 Flashe on canvas, 40 x 30 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery NAGA, Boston 51 How to Paint Women, 1 999 Flashe on canvas, 40 x 30 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery NAGA, Boston 52 A Very Good Year, 2000 Flashe on canvas, 28 x 22 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery NAGA, Boston 53 Geometry Without Fear, 2001 Flashe on canvas, 48 x 36 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery NAGA, Boston 54 You Think You’ve Got Problems, 2001 Flashe on canvas, 30 x 30 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery NAGA, Boston 32 McMullen Museum of Art Boston College ISBN 1-892850-07-9 9 781892 850072