Home is where the art is
Fort Lewis Art Gallery exhibits the art of ‘home’

The Fort Lewis College Art Gallery is currently displaying ‘home,’ featuring works on the topic by local artists./Photo by David Halterman.

by Jules Masterjohn

Home. It’s both a concept and a place, rich with meaning, experience and emotion. As an impetus for creative expression, “home” has been explored by performing, literary and visual artists from various cultures and throughout time. Owing to its near universal experience as either a place in the world or in the heart, the notion of home is a provocative and timeless muse for artists.

Some of the most profound visual art that interprets the idea of home has come from the New York studio of now nonagenarian Louise Bourgeois. Over the last 60 years, Bourgeois has created drawings, prints, sculptures, installations and performance art that mine her childhood and early family life: hers was a home life both idyllic and corrupt. She created numerous sculptures during the 1980s titled “Lair,” that bring to life Bourgeois’ mixed sentiments about her home of origin. Of this body of work she has stated, “The security of a lair can also be a trap.”

I enjoy the artist’s consideration of two opposing realities. She intends her “lairs’ to be perceived as nurturing and protective structures that are simultaneously able to stifle and harm. Expressing paradoxical concepts, Bourgeois’ work embodies psychological tension that compels one to ask, ‘What is home?”

A group of 17 local artists have posited this question to themselves, and the results are presented in an exhibit titled “home,” currently on display in the Art Gallery at Fort Lewis College.

In addition to the visual art displayed, the show opened last Friday with two performances: a reading by writer Katherine Leiner and a performance piece choreographed by Judy Austin. Each woman weaves – one through words and the other through movement – a story that accentuates the pleasurable and inviting aspects of a house lovingly inhabited with home cooking and engaged familial relationships.

Perhaps the most direct and simple piece in the exhibit is “Enso,” a calligraphic work by Chyako Hashimoto. Though the single black brushstroke forming a near continuous circle appears effortless, years of Buddhist practice and Shodo discipline have gone into its making. Hashimoto writes, “In its utmost simplicity, enso seems to show us something that we are, and something larger to which we belong.”

Judith Reynolds’ quilt, ‘Death Comes Home,” which pays homage to her father and husband./Photo by David Halterman.

Peacefulness flows through the pages of Louise Grunewald’s hand-made book, painted in cool, calming colors with celestial marks, conveying her desire that home be a sanctuary. The book offers the feeling of being embraced by cosmic energy; her poetry expansive and reassuring. The overall sense of the piece is one of ease. Yet knowing that it is a coptic sewn book, which requires a tedious binding process, its making was a true labor for the artist.

Ilze Aviks’ tapestry is another work that illustrates the time-consuming nature of some artistic media. More than 160 hours of weaving went into the creation of “New Home: 1977,” a piece that recalls Aviks’ journey from her once-home in Manhattan to join her fiancé in Perth, West Australia, the world’s most isolated capital. Her subdued color palette reinforces the sense of blurry-eyed awareness that traveling from this continent to the land down under can induce. The tall, narrow shape of the tapestry hints at the great distance she has traversed, both geographically and emotionally.

“Small Town,” by Amy K. Wendland, brings us back home with her mixed-media and found-object assemblage in the form of a foosball game. Fabrications of human tongues act as the players on the table, with a set of dental impressions serving as the home team’s court insignia. As always, Wendland has made a meticulously crafted and clever work that gently pokes fun at one of the less pleasant realities of small town living: gossip.

Maureen May also uses Durango life as the subject for her mixed-media assemblage, “What Are You Looking For?” An open-top box structure, divided in two halves by different colored paper applied to its surface, sets the scene for May’s story. She is portraying a mind divided: passion and emotion are symbolized by her use of red-orange wallpaper in one side vs. practical and material concerns, indicated by the black-and-white of newspaper classified ads for “Homes for Sale.” Hand-written text in gold ink surrounds the outside of the structure, an autobiographical account of her encounter with a homeless man who posed an angry yet profound question to her, which is the title of the piece.

The fabric quilt, “Death Comes Home,” created by Judith L. Reynolds, startles when one realizes, through reading her artist statement, that this quilt is made from the shirts of her father, long dead, and her recently deceased husband. Not only do the materials and subject unhinge us, her composition reinforces the break down of things familiar when death comes. A quilt offers connotations of comfort and security, yet Reynolds makes it clear that even a “safe harbor” can be overwhelmed with great loss.

Linda Robinson’s photomontage, “There is No Place Like Home,” comes closest to the anxiety-producing sentiment of Bourgeois’ work. Robinson turns her camera’s lens toward the interiors of houses at night. The resulting photographs contrast the warm light glowing from the inside with the black void of the night, setting the tone for the near-voyeuristic nature of the piece. We have a desire to know the private matters within others’ lives, yet, without invitation, this viewing can be an intrusion. Her piece begs us to peer inside but our societal morays instruct otherwise. Robinson has created an iconic expression of a contemporary uneasiness.

Also represented in the exhibit are Deborah Gorton, Mary Ellen Long, Terry Hobbs, Kris Hill, Christina Erteszek, Barbara Tobin Klema, Judy Brey and Tirzah Camacho. •

“home” is on display through Feb. 13 at the Fort Lewis College Art Gallery. Hours are 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.