When Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz" clicked her ruby slippers together chanting "there's no place like home," she was longing for the comforts of her Kansas farmhouse and family. Dorothy's timeless phrase has a whole new meaning in the 21st century, and it includes shopping at Target, recycling and single working women and mothers cleaning up the shards of glass from their rise to the top of work world.
Exploring and evaluating the meaning of home-sweet-home, The Center's new exhibition, "Domestic Life," is a multidisciplinary project revealing many facets about the home.
"When we first planned this project it seemed that the obsession with decorating and domesticity would never end," said Courtney Gilbert, The Center's curator of visual arts. "But even as the financial boom of the 1990s gives way to an increasingly bleak economy, the underlying issues still feel valid. Why do we need kitchens equipped like restaurants and bathrooms outfitted like hotel suites? Is it an extension of rampant consumerism, fed by visions of an ideal portrayed in catalogs and magazines? Or an indicator of a deeper anxiety that leads us to seek comfort at home rather than venture out into a risky world? Perhaps it's nostalgia for a time when life centered on the home.
"And of course no discussion of contemporary domestic life is complete without considering the changing roles of women, the traditional keepers of the home," Gilbert said.
Images by Julie Blackmon feature members of her extended family and their homes as fodder for her darkly funny photographs, which depict what she describes as "the stress, the chaos and the need to simultaneously escape and connect" that characterize everyday domestic life.
Sculptor María A. López creates tiny houses out of cardboard that she covers in vacuum cleaner lint. Born in Colombia, López paid her way through graduate school in the U.S. by cleaning houses, carefully saving the contents of vacuum cleaner bags as she worked. Her pieces capture the disparity between our notion of the ideal home and the "dirty" realities of living in one, including the use of domestic labor to maintain it.
Jim Richard, based in New Orleans, makes beautiful oil paintings of over-decorated domestic interiors found in the pages of home decorating magazines. Void of people, these paintings are richly textured and patterned at the same time that they are eerie and cold.
Artist Martha Rosler's interest in the home dates to the 1960s when she developed an artistic practice that challenged the traditional notion of the home in photomontages and in the landmark video "The Semiotics of the Kitchen." Work from this early part of her career will give historical context to other work in the show and also prompt questions about the relationship between feminism and the current domestic craze.
Lisa Solomon uses watercolor, acrylics and embroidery to create delicate domestic scenes. Her images of furniture transcend the decorative and escape the confines of the interior. Birds fly away carrying a chair; green grass sprouts up at the foot of one of her beds while poppies grow across others. Her drawings probe traditional ideas of women's work, the role of nostalgia in our ideas about home and the relationship between the natural and the domestic worlds.
Megan Wilson is creating an installation for the exhibition that explores the many influences that have shaped her idea of home, including her family's history in the American West and her travels in Asia. The installation will incorporate textiles, indigenous materials and a sound element with recordings of relatives playing folk instruments.
The exhibition opens at The Center in Ketchum, on Friday, Jan. 16, and continues through Saturday, March 21. For details, call 726-9491 or visit sunvalleycenter.org.
Exhibition events
"At Home with Gloria Steinem"
· Wednesday, Jan. 14, 7 p.m. The Presbyterian Church of the Big Wood, Ketchum.
SOLD OUT.
Junior Patrons Circle with artist Megan Wilson
· Friday, Jan. 16, 6-8 p.m. The Center, Ketchum.
· Member sign-up.
"Move Beyond Green in Your Home" with Dale and Peggy Bates
· Thursday, Jan. 22, 7 p.m. The Center, Ketchum.
· Free.
"Exploring Contemporary Feminism" with Amy Richards
· Wednesday, Feb. 18, 7 p.m. The Center, Ketchum
· Free.
"Getting Green Done" with Auden Schendler
·Thursday, Feb. 19, 6 p.m. Community Library, Ketchum.
· Free.
Teen Workshop: "Introduction to Interior Design" with Abbey Christensen
· Saturday, Feb. 14, 10 a.m.-4p.m. The Center, Hailey.
· $10 fee, pre-registration required.
"(Be it) Ever Evolving, There is No Place Like Home" with Alex Taylor, Domestic Life One Night Workshop Series
· Tuesday, Jan. 27, 5:30--7:30 p.m. The Center, Hailey.
· $30 members and $35 non-members, Subscriber package—$55 members and $65 non-members
"Creating a Home for Conscious Living" with Dale and Peggy Bates
· Tuesday, Feb. 10, 5:30--7:30 p.m. The Center, Ketchum.
· Free.
"Domestic Life" Family Day
· Saturday, Jan. 24, 3-5 p.m. The Center, Ketchum.
· Free.
Gallery Tour
· Thursday, Jan. 29, 5:30 p.m.
Gallery Walk
· Friday, Feb. 13, 5:30-6:30 p.m.
· Friday, March 6, 5:30-6:30 p.m.
Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and Saturdays from 11a.m. to 5 p.m. during February and March. Admission is free and exhibition tours are given every Tuesday at 2 p.m. or by appointment.
"Birds at Home" by Julie Blackmon. Courtesy of the artist and G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle, and Appleton Museum of Art, Ocala, Fla., at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts.
