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Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Visual Art Good Job, Whatshertits (Dawn Cerny)

Posted by Jen Graves on Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 11:07 AM

There are at least three states to Dawn Cerny's screenprint Honorable Mention.

1: As a pile of copies lying on a pedestal on the floor at SU's Hedreen Gallery. (Label says take one.)

All images courtesy the artist and Season Gallery

2 and 3. As a copy in your hand. But the paper is as large as a torso and it's raining out and you're walking. No problem—the gallery manager overheard the artist say she likes the idea of people folding it. So: folded safely in dry pocket for the wet walk, then voilà.

The discarded floral wrapping paper that's printed on the poster is itself all folded up and crinkled. So folding the poster achieves that same image-and-paper-it's-printed-on symmetry as in Oscar Tuazon and Eli Hansen's folded photographs of the geodesic dome homes on the Kitsap Peninsula.*

Cerny's pretty, dusky red is the color of an antiquey colonial plate, but this would be a cheap, late-model reproduction rather than a hand-done valuable; the printing shows its dots. Refined printing of a picture of trash would make no kind of sense. This art is a poster printed with floral wrapper that's printed with flowers—but any actual flowers themselves are conspicuously absent. The title is Honorable Mention: sad non-honor.

But the sweet, smart art operation itself rescues whatever blurry, sorry situation it alludes to, and pulls everything into some more fragile but better realm. "Say It With Flowers," the wrapping paper reads, but Cerny's saying "it" without flowers and with extra folds.

^{*Raise your hand if you miss those two.}

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can you quit this whatshertits thing? It's not funny and it takes away from the post. I see it and, scroll past. It's not doing the artist you're covering any good, since it's driving viewers away. It's not clever or cool or anything. Maybe it means something to you, but it's bad for your subjects. Cut it out.

Posted by Stop it please on October 31, 2012 at 1:32 PM