BmoreArt

Aesthetic differences become apparent as you walk around the exhibition and take in the three bodies of work at once. Boone-McCreesh’s practice is kaleidoscopic, while Mack’s installations feature neutral-colored ceramic forms. However, a through-line soon emerges.

The pieces on display highlight each finalist’s dexterity with their chosen materials to address fraught subjects. You can feel their confidence as they navigate between observable reality and uncertainty, the specific and the enigmatic. Boone-McCreesh, Ascoli, and Mack execute successful flourishes of playfulness and wit while diving head on into charged territory. These finalists are clearly working at the top of their game, having listened to their communities and sounding off in response.

Questions emerge after parsing through what is offered in the show. What is the relationship between social status and access to safety and comfort? What have colonizing forces made inaccessible? How does oppression disrupt communities and limit access to care?

Such topics may already be at the forefront of many viewers’ minds during a tense election year saturated with heated discussions about harm, empathy, and those who has been targeted or left behind. Who is comfortable and thriving in the United States? Who has the resources and support to achieve “the good life”?

These questions will surely resonate with those currently residing in an East Coast city where rents continue to rise and waves of possible gentrification recede and swell on the horizon. Boone-McCreesh, Ascoli, and Mack are unafraid of delving into uncertainties, and seem equally interested in exploring moments of reprieve and resilience.

Amy Boone-McCreesh

Rob Kempton 

Enter the long carpeted gallery and see Boone-McCreesh’s “Hostile Seating:” two ottomans contained within a circle of painted black steel with spires at the top, alluding to a barrier, a cage. As tantalizing as they look, with red fringes, colorful fabric, and laser cut acrylic charms, we are not permitted entry. The keys are locked away, contained within the steel apparatus but in plain view. It reads as gatekeeping while also suggesting safety and control. Boone-McCreesh subverts our expectations of functionality and domestic spaces throughout the exhibition; in this, she underscores “cultural definers of success from a female perspective.”

From domestic spaces to dinner parties, Boone-McCreesh confesses–during her artist talk–that she’s curious about how others live and what their homes look like. When we go to a dinner party at a guest’s home, she says, we may start “lowkey judging” the host’s stuff. In the mixed media assemblage “Questionable Tastes,” a black window bar stands at the bottom-center. She has already drawn back the sage-colored curtains, revealing bricks with her initials and age. A second window bar in pinkish hues floats amidst a cacophony of mixed media and found objects. A pink and black flower centers her composition in a field of yellow and swirly black lines. Hearts and suggestions of smiley faces appear abstracted and fragmented.

I’m a bit entranced, if not overwhelmed by everything going on here. Overhead, a garland of charms with X’s, her initials, and keys dangle like kitschy beaded curtains, allowing the viewer into her world.

Nearby, “Proof of Life Chair Rail (ABMC 2024)” is in visual conversation with “Questionable Tastes.” The same garland of charms is echoed in this chair rail, a decorative element that hints at purpose here. Three feet from the ground and mounted to the gallery wall, it’s function is to keep non-existent chairs from hitting the wall. She’s painted her chair rail in chartreuse and it bears her trademark motifs.

Recurring symbols of X’s, her initials, window bars, bricks, her age, and the year the piece was made inform her process. The artist draws from 18th and 19th century textile samplers, which were crafted by women to show off their wealth, skills, and achievements where personal information, their age, and where they came from would be sewn into cloth. Boone-McCreesh doubles down on her symbols, reusing them as charms mimicking ones dangling from expensive Hermès handbags.

Playfulness may be the first impression when observing Boone-McCreesh’s work—bright complementary colors, hearts, flowers, lush gardens, and mixed media swirling around on paper—but something more serious surfaces from within her visual vocabulary. She sees collage as an accumulation of tastes, city views, and personal information through which she pokes fun at class and access to wealth. It’s an effective way to portray the extreme imbalances between excess and access.

“If you have a key to a car, if you have a key to a house, do you have a second house? The more keys you have essentially the more the stuff you have,” Boone-McCreesh said during her artist talk.

Measuring 20 x 20 inches—the exact measurement of a cloth napkin—“Cloth Napkin Sampler (Thank You for Nothing)” repurposes a cut-up plastic shopping bag, with “THANK YOU” emblazoned on it. The text fades in and out, becomes lost in the brouhaha of lace and fabric. A lone key hangs from beads in the top left corner. She provides no information in the label text, but this sampler points to the ways in which consumerism has failed us. At the bottom lies a lottery ticket with the top ten prizes. With luck, maybe we can win.

“You Win More (Textile Study)” is crafted from mixed media, fabric, and found objects on paper. A patchwork of colors and abstracted bricks in the center take shape. We see green and black dotted X’s, an enormous window bar at the top, which resembles an eye, dangling beads, and more lottery tickets. Toward the lower right, Boone-McCreesh humorously sneaks in a QR Code from a lottery ticket, as if it could unlock the winning prize. The result reflects an American infatuation with winning. In the middle of a paper flower at center right, she places a lottery ticket, which reads as unnatural and signals the absurdity of winning.

“Do we want to win?” I asked her. “That’s a good question,” she replied.

Hellen Ascoli

Jess Bither

“the world upside down,” a three-paneled textile work hung on a wooden frame, was the first piece I encountered in Hellen Ascoli’s section of the special exhibition space. The frame is pulled away from the wall in such a way that it seems to be stepping into your path, asking to be acknowledged—you are forced to experience the piece with your body. The woven cotton’s geometric pattern depicts two abstract tree forms. Between them is a big X. The pattern isn’t symmetrical, and only the left panel has tassels that hang down and respond to movement as you walk past or around it.

I thought back to a moment during Ascoli’s artist talk when she spoke about her deliberate approach to displaying textiles. She said that whenever possible, she aims for “no separation” between the viewer and the art. In the case of “the world upside down” I felt an immediate connection. I responded to it, and it responded to me moving through the space.

The accompanying wall text offered information about the title, which is a reference to the writing of Guamán Poma de Ayala, a 16th century Quechua artist who recorded life under Spanish colonial rule in the Andes. Also included in the wall text is a quote from sociologist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, who provides commentary on Guamán Poma de Ayala’s chronicles of “the colonial situation.”

The concluding sentence of the Cusicanqui quote functions as a compass to better navigate Ascoli’s work: “It is evident that in a colonial situation, that which goes unsaid contains the most meaning; words mask more than they reveal and symbols take center stage.” My gaze migrated back to the X between the blocky green and yellow trees before I moved on to a display case where a familiar image caught my eye.

“poch’onïk/autopsy” is a collage composed of weaved raffia, found imagery (including a reproduction of the Rembrandt painting “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp” with most of the corpse excised from the image), and text by Ascoli and others. The collage is displayed in such a way that it resembles an accordion-style book at first. Though the more I looked at “poch’onïk/autopsy” the more I started to think of it as an unfolded map, the type that shows you what is there and what is not there at the same time. The wall text serves as a key: “X marks the many present absences that so many Guatemalans face.”

While pacing around the exhibition space I wrote down snippets of text in my small notebook, wondering what a woven support could do for our collective imagination. This sentence appears in the label for “border crossers,” a sculpture composed of two small wooden desks with thread looping around their legs. Looking up at the work hung high on the wall, it alludes to what it would feel like to leave your heart behind as you cross over into unknown territory. I suspect it would feel like being split in two, being between worlds. How does someone recover from such a rupture? Ascoli’s work references the ways that memories get stored in the body and how to activate and process them through movement (through weaving, for instance), and how weaving can be used as a tool for excavation, recollection, and for healing as well.

In “interpreting Ana,” a startling and beautiful work of hand-woven textile displayed on the wall behind “the world upside down,” the topmost layer is made of raffia, the surface rough and uneven. Rebellious bits of fiber spring out this way and that. Red X’s mark its center, where the random weave layer merges into the more structured pattern behind it, like skin growing back over a wound.

Sam Mack

Jess Bither

The last section of the exhibition offers an array of disparate but familiar elements: sand-colored works of ceramic, white brick, white tile that looks like the kind you find in a bathroom, a shiny surveillance mirror, unfinished wood. I initially overlooked bits of metal glinting under the lights and patches of carpet attached to the leg of a wooden platform, the gray carpet (which matches perfectly with the gallery floor) functioning like moss climbing up the side of a tree. It would be inaccurate to say that bold colors are absent in Sam Mack’s work, but you have to hunt for them. I found this refreshing, impressed by the strategic use of color and materials to focus the viewer’s attention.

In “considerations,” the assemblage’s focal point is a ceramic cup that looks as though it is being forced to walk the plank. The cup is placed near the end of a plywood board that juts out from a wooden platform forming the base of the precarious display. There is a lot of push and pull in this piece, a lot of vulnerability. A glance at the wall text confirmed Mack’s interest in exploring how “unseen forces” act upon the objects installed. Moving closer, I spotted an empty vial of testosterone cypionate dangling underneath the plank of wood, transformed into a delicate ornament.

In the middle of the room, an arrangement of objects titled “historical present,” includes a clever nod to the process of firing clay. A plastic-turned-ceramic cup and straw are reunited using metal, and the sculpture sits on top of a type of brick that is typically used to insulate kilns. The cup’s previous life (Big Gulp?) imbues the new object with mystery. Is it a totem? A memorial? An inside joke? Before my imagination could conjure answers to these questions I found myself wanting to inch closer to “a practice in immediacy,” which is installed near one of the corners of the room.

A vertical line of white ceramic tile climbs the wall, and up near the ceiling more square tiles traverse the wall horizontally, meeting and forming a giant T. One of the T’s arms bends to accommodate the shape of the room, and at the apex of the T is a surveillance mirror, the kind you might see in a convenience store. Perhaps I had symbols on my mind because of the previous section of the exhibition–I saw the giant T as particularly loaded, and not unlike the X’s that appear in Ascoli’s woven pieces and collages. “a practice in immediacy” has an enigmatic aura, and though it stretches from floor to ceiling it doesn’t overpower the other art in its vicinity. It’s quiet and commanding at the same time.

“a practice in immediacy” is one of two works that deal with surveillance. The other, “pigeonhole,” is literally a ceramic pigeon peeking out of a hole. It’s installed high up on the wall, just about where you would expect to see a security camera. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the out-of-place creature, which appears to have a chain and USB flash drive attached to it. Initially I found its startled expression kind of cute, but interpreting it as a hybrid of old and new practices of spying and gathering information caused a shift in my feelings (it’s actually creepy…).

After circling back to take another look at Mack’s other chimerical objects, I reflected on their artist statement, specifically their interest in exploring “strategies for survival, pleasure, and refusal used by queer and trans people.” I considered the ways that playfulness can function as a buoy keeping you afloat when circumstances are dire. Mack’s reappearing mischievous streak brings subversive energy to the show, and it sharpens rather than tempers the seriousness of their art.

Just past and to the right of the spy pigeon is a constellation of ceramic forms installed on the back wall. Spindly armatures used for displaying hats are repurposed to hold the works of ceramic that make up “midwest mythologies.” The title pushed me towards a cerebral interpretation, that the objects could represent a cloud of ideas about a place or a group of people.

Some of the vessels resemble ancient vases used for carrying water or housing the ashes of the dead. One of them is displayed upside down, like a snapshot of an accident in progress, as if you have caught the vessel falling to the floor. “midwest mythologies” is a perfect bookend to Mack’s section. It’s a demonstration of a balancing act, of impish and academic impulses coexisting and playing off of one another.

Conclusions

The art in the Sondheim Art Prize Finalists Exhibition  functions as an invitation to be more thoughtful and imaginative as we weather the storm of uncertainty together. Boone-McCreesh, Ascoli, and Mack  reveal ways to restore connections and navigate through hostile environments. They suggest possibilities for adapting and finding joy outside of imposed structures.

Ascoli explains how her process allows her to regain a sense of community, to recover what was once lost: “To weave with the backstop loom is never an individual activity. We weave alongside another being and with other weavers across time.” In a show dense with ideas, each artist’s passion for working with and learning from their chosen materials shines through and inspires.

Fortunately, there’s still plenty of time to take in these objects. The Sondheim Art Prize Finalists Exhibition, presented by the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts (BOPA), is on view until September 8 at the Walters Art Museum.

The winner of the 2024 Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize, chosen by this year’s jurors, will be announced during a special reception and award ceremony at the museum on Thursday, August 22. Each finalist will also receive a $2,500 M&T Bank Finalist Award. One finalist will receive a studio residency at the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower.

Jurors for the 2024 competition are artist, scholar, and poet Noel W. Anderson; curator, educator, and historian Connie H. Choi; and curator, historian, and lecturer Aaron Levi Garvey.

Authors’ Note: Upon arrival at The Walters Art Museum we were both thinking about our friend and former BmoreArt writer Dereck Stafford Mangus. Dereck passed away suddenly in early July, and his absence is acutely felt within the Baltimore art community and beyond. We dedicate this piece to Dereck, and hope to match his passion for engaging with bold and challenging works of art.