'Michaelene Walsh: Sculpture & Drawing'
Ceramic exhibit on display in New Wagner Gallery
Christy Schicker
Issue date: 11/1/01 Section: Lifestyles
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Walsh's works grace the gallery space at SIUE thanks to the effort of Dan Anderson, area head of ceramics and gallery coordinator. Anderson knew Walsh when she was an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
"I was familiar with her undergraduate work and intuitively knew that she was destined for stardom even at that early juncture of her career," Anderson said. "I have been a keen observer since her undergraduate days and have remained a good friend."
Walsh is now an associate faculty member in the School of Art at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
The primary body of work represented in the exhibit consists of figurative works that have movable arms attached to the bodies with pieces of wire. Many of the figures, made of earthenware with low temperature glazes, stand on ceramic pedestals, and are positioned on the gallery walls at eye-level. Groups of Walsh's preliminary drawings are hung on the walls as well, enabling viewers to see ideas in their various states of progression.
For Anderson, Walsh's work invokes, "the feeling of the unknown, the feeling of bad and good dreams, and the feeling of color, with a veritable rainbow of choices."
Anderson also noted the works' reminiscence to puppets or marionettes that almost take on a life of their own. Indeed, each piece seems imbued with an individual personality that is different from every other.
The figures, painted with a variety of colorful glazes, are male and female, human and animal. Some figures are an amalgamation of human and animal parts, having human bodies and heads of rabbits or monkeys. Some have empty stares while others have inlaid glassy doll eyes that appear lifelike.
Figures that have their limbs bent, as though they have been frozen in action, convey a sense of immediacy. One piece titled, "Horse & Rider in Grass (No. 4)," illustrates this effect. A female figure clad in black riding boots, white pants and a white-collared red jacket sits atop a white horse and turns her head to look at the viewer with blank, colorless eyes. Her head, slightly tilted, her slitted mouth that almost smiles, and her arms and hands, locked in an unfinished gesture, convey a sense of suspended motion – of aliveness.
This quality that dolls have – their seeming ability to appear real – drives Walsh's works and imbues it with deep meaning.
"Dolls interest me because they seem to possess an inner life," Walsh said. "A doll is both feared and loved because it, like animals, exhibits residue of experiences it has had that are not of the rational world. Dolls exist between worlds."
In her work, Walsh explores what she calls the "tension between instinct and ration" that is inherent in the modern world.
"Both doll and animal imagery seem metaphorically aligned with the human subconscious; both being symbols of what is untamed, instinctual, pre-verbal, corporeal and irrational within each one of us," Walsh said.
Dolls have the ability to symbolically draw together the rational outside world and the inner world of imagination, intuition and the subconscious, Walsh explained. Dolls then become meeting points of these various states of human existence.
"Between consciousness and the subconscious, between man and animal, between ration and intuition lies terrain which is not of opposition, but of continuity between states of being," she said.
Although at first glance Walsh's figures seem like the lighthearted work that might be created by an imaginative child, there is an underlying density of thought-provoking significance.
"I like the way Mikey is able to instill her figures with an edginess," Anderson said. "Although seemingly created by a child, naive artist or an outsider artist because of their simplicity and directness, the work is both challenging and sophisticated. She treats you to a 'feast' of sensitivities with each and every artwork."
Yet this edginess is not overpowering. It's there, but it's subtle, and it enables viewers to relish in her works without feeling overwhelmed. One can't look at an oversized rabbit's head placed atop a human body and feel weighed down by existential implications.
"For me, the work, for the most part, makes me extremely happy," Anderson said. "It makes me smile. When I look at the work I instinctively get the feeling she enjoys every aspect of her role as an artist."
Viewers can even see excitement and energy running through Walsh's drawings in the form of loose, uninhibited line work and free-form scribbles.
On one wall of the gallery, Walsh's "Trinket" sculptures are displayed. Among these black-glazed kitschy sculptures are smiling rabbits with protruding front teeth sitting up on their haunches, rubber ducks with incredibly large eyes, an elephant and a poodle. The surface treatment of these pieces ranges from matte black to a shiny graphite-color, to a very glossy, reflective black. Here, Walsh plays with our expectations. The subjects are, in themselves, familiar and cute to the point of being sickly sweet. However, by swathing these pieces in black glaze, our expectations are subverted. Sleek, lustrous, seductive surfaces undermine the intrinsic cuteness and innocence of the objects portrayed.
"Shifts in the surface of these objects between various shades of black, between captive and reflective surfaces are meant to be metaphorical," Walsh said. "Using forms which reference innocence then imposing tonal surfaces which betray this innocence, things become not what they appear. Content is shifted. The past and the present collide."
Indeed, much of Walsh's work seems to be about a confrontation between dualities – childhood and adulthood, human and animal, reality and the subconscious, animation and inertness. Lurking behind the vibrant color and the playfulness, there is what Anderson described as an "aggressiveness" and a "boldness" about Walsh's works. As Anderson said, Michaelene Walsh "is strong enough to venture where others have yet to tread artistically."
Walsh's solo exhibition will be on display in the Art and Design Building Gallery through Nov. 9. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. For more information, call the art office at 650-3073, or visit the Web site at http://www.siue.edu/ART.
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