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On the first floor of the School 33 Art Center, people are laughing and giggling like children in a schoolyard. Peacock colored owls, green nymphs, and forest creatures mingle about, playing hide and seek, posing for pictures, and sparking conversations. In the midst of the crowd, Melissa Webb, fiber artist, is playing hostess dressed as a woodland goddess. Her installation, The Temporary Nature of Ideas, plays with the sensibilities of the natural world as it exists in fairytales and dreams. Her wonderland includes a bright green and pink fishnet of sorts, draped in layers as if to catch a magic sea creature, twig and grass-tied ladders climb upward toward the heavens, and intersecting this scene are love notes strung between two lines. I walk through and around the installation many times, examining the pieces with a different recall, snippets of old stories: my crush on Jack from the Beanstalk, Korean folklore where dogs and cats talk to one another, and nightmares about the witch from Hansel and Gretel. The gift of Webb’s work is the layers of fantasies that the participant uncovers from one’s childhood and the flashbacks that evoke those singular moments.
A viewer, Marian, said “I feel like I am floating in a dream, waiting to climb every ladder, waiting to touch ever plant. It’s lovely.” Participation is encouraged and necessary while standing in the green surroundings. In an open room adjacent to the installation, children and adults of all ages were making their fiber art, sitting on the floor sifting through brightly colored yarn, fabric, and ornaments for their own work.
For me, the round islands of fake grass drew formidable attention. The stands of sharp grass insert an insidious edge into her work. I am drawn to them with the recognition that even in fantasy there are always thorns on the century old roses and poison within the crimson apple. Without this tinge of the sinister, I would feel like an adult peering into a world a richly designed from youthful notions. Thankfully, the grass spears seemed to be at the center of things bright and willowy.
The installation may not seem the same without the “living” fairy queens and magical woodland creatures that attended the greens and acid washed hues colors of that evening. But the exhibit stands on its own and will evoke a myriad of childhood narratives that inspired frivolity as well as a shade of fear.
Melissa Webb: The Temporary Nature of Ideas
GALLERY ONE – School 33 Art Space
1427 Light Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21230
410.396.4641
Gallery Hours: Wed-Sat 12-6pm,
09/03/2010 – 10/30/2010
www.SCHOOL33.org
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