Brad Blair fully embodies the exhibition’s spirit of curiosity with his whimsical, mythological sculptures. Blair’s “Whitewater Watcher” (2020) and “Intergalactic Grumpfish” (2023) are two piscatorial forms that exist in small space towards the front of the exhibition space. The prior employs a combination of different blue glazes that move over the piece in a direction that implies its movement through water. The sculpture’s top layer of glaze runs and variegates like a satellite image of an estuary with depth and complexity that contrasts the stark royal blue epoxy clay lining the eyes and other features.
“Intergalactic Grumpfish” creates a much less piercing and much more relaxed expression from a similarly fishy creature. A “tongue” of faux fur and resin cast fish fins are just some of the elements the artist beautifully merges in this piece. His hybrid creatures, blending human and animal forms, recall ancient Olmec aesthetics while drawing inspiration from cryptozoology, insects, video games, and R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series. The cover art for Stine’s Deep Trouble II and The Haunted Mask II particularly informs Blair’s aesthetic. Featured in Baltimore Clayworks’ Where the Wild Things Are exhibition, Blair skillfully integrates a range of materials—acrylic eyes, cast resin teeth, rubber tongues, and fur—into his ceramic sculptures.
Stephanie Garmey and Quentin Moseley offer distinct yet thematically interconnected works. Garmey’s taxidermy-inspired sculptures incorporate intricately cut paper and mixed media, while Moseley’s wall pieces channel the primal essence of cave paintings. Both artists, alumni of MICA’s Hoffberger School (1995 and 1972, respectively), have built strong exhibition presences in the DMV area and beyond.
Moseley’s work features imagery of bulls, fire, Venus figurines, and other nude forms, directly referencing prehistoric art as well as sculptural artifacts like the “Woman from Ostrava” and the Venus figurines of France.
His wooden constructions, layered with acrylic paint and hieroglyphic-like lines, oscillate between the ancient and the futuristic. Moseley describes his work as “[appropriating] ancient Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age symbols, which he re-envisions to document and visualize our own inevitable [biological] human concerns with sex, society, security, and time.”
While Moseley often employs neon in his work, this is absent in the pieces in this show. Though his use of mixed media and various bright colors bring a contemporary feeling to “The Original Blue Nude” (2010) and his other sculptural wall works. A nude, phallic form, cuneiform like markings, and early domesticated animals like dogs and cattle are all present in this piece and present sex, agriculture, and language in a way that heavily references ancient civilizations but with a form and color palette that are largely possible due to modern societal advances. There appears to be sand or some other aggregate mixed with the acrylic paint which is another example of the artist using contemporary techniques to mimic what was likely humankind’s original substrate: the rough, rocky texture of a cave.
Garmey, meanwhile, explores the delicate interplay between form and surface. Her three-dimensional pieces, such as “Lion” (2024) and “Red Shanked Douc Monkey” (2020), use cut paper to mimic fur and pattern, with the latter evoking the classic game “Barrel of Monkeys.” Paper monkeys, holding onto each other’s tails and feet, trail down from a saturated pink branch that sticks out from the wall above the star of the work, a life sized red shanked douc monkey holding a red flower. The animal sits with one leg on and one leg off of a white branch that spans across the corner in this section of the gallery.
“Grey Crowned Cranes” (2020) references taxidermy and natural history displays while maintaining her signature cut-paper aesthetic. As the title suggests we are graced with the presence of not one but two grey crowned cranes, surrounded by a number of painted and cut flowers in shades of blue and white. The cranes themselves are also shown in a blue tone that takes liberties with the actual coloring of the animal, likely in the service of a cool color scheme dominated by a royal blue.
In “Insect Curiosity Cabinet” (2011), Garmey arranges butterflies, beetles, and ferns in a space that blurs the line between science and art, presenting two cut-paper birds in a sterile yet intimate setting. The three-dimensional birds, in addition to a small nest between them, are standouts in these “cabinets” that consist of two boxes with glass tops and a single drawer. The tops are raised, and the drawers pulled out as if to suggest the act of studying. The glass lids show avian feet and a moth respectively, while the layers immediately under the glass lid contain a small book with bug forms.
The books show a beetle and an abstracted form, perhaps a scorpion, in circles framed with thick squares, almost reminiscent of the gun-barrel opening scene of a James Bond film. Finally, the drawers are exposed, and this is where you find the aforementioned birds, ferns, and nest in one drawer and a collection of beetles and butterflies in the other—all made from intricately cut paper.
Garmey’s “Insect Curiosity Cabinet” complements Alex Garove’s shadowboxes from her series “Illuminated Histories.” These works were originally created as a collaborative installation for the grand reopening of the Peale Museum in September 2022, in partnership with Towson University’s Coordinator of Art Education, Dr. Diane Kuthy. Garove describes the work as being inspired by “natural history collections, curiosity cabinets, and early taxidermy and preservation practices” but her use of modern techniques like laser cutting and her sharp eye for composition blend the contemporary and artistic with the historic. Incorporating biological ephemera such as bugs, snakeskin, and flowers, Garove’s work aligns seamlessly with the exhibition’s theme, balancing the aesthetics of pinned insect specimens with compositions that transcend traditional dioramas.
