Document text
Photo by Bob Pennell Margery Mercer discusses "Barbie in the Garden of Eden," one of her contributions to a new exhibit at Galerie Living Colours in Ashland. The 10 women who operate the gallery and exhibit their work there plan to take this collaborative work, called "Out of the Mainstream: Sharing the Visionary Process," to Scottsdale, Ariz. and other cities. Gallery seeks unity in diversity By BILL VARBLE What's 80 feet long, 12 inches wide and has Barbie caught in a spider web? Show starts Friday WHAT : "Out of the Mainstream: Sharing the Visionary Process," a collaborative art exhibit WHEN : Opens at 5 p.m. Friday; regular hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday WHERE : Galerie Living Colours, 295 E. Main St., Ashland, Suite 12 Give up? It's 80 little artworks hung together in a long string, forming one long installation at Galerie Living Colours, an Ashland shop operated by 10 women artists to display their own work. The thing snakes around the walls of two rooms at the gallery, which is upstairs in the building across the street from Bloomsbury Books. A closer look reveals separate, foot-square pieces, each done by a different artist. An exhibit of the long, skinny installation, titled "Out of the Mainstream: Sharing the Visionary Process," opens Friday evening. The works on exhibit span a gamut from Marie Ann Carson's vibrant studies of crows to Caryn Fieger's fanciful ceramic dragon to an angel by Madalin blue. Barbie, one of America's favorite pop culture icons, pops up in a collage by Margery Mercer called "The Spider Next Door." There's even a drawing by Antonia Blum that comments in word and picture on her own drawing process. Madalin blue says the exhibit could be seen as a metaphor for transcending individual differences. Galerie Living Colours was founded a little over a year ago by 10 women who wanted a place to exhibit their work and, artist Charlotte Poulos says, to find a sense of unity in diversity. Other members are Teresa Stark Giacomini, Nancy B. Holley and Haila Williams. "The idea was to have a place to show and to get it out of the gallery," she says as light from a south window falls on the string of small artworks showing alternating colors _ warm, cold, warm, cold. The installation will soon accomplish the second part of that mission, traveling to the Artisimo Gallery in Scottsdale, Ariz. Traveling with it will be a large, multicolored hanging that the women are inviting people to decorate with comments, criticism, poems, whatever, relating to the exhibit. The idea is to wind up with a big stream-of-consciousness piece. Mercer says the women plan to mount one traveling exhibit a year and would like to exhibit in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. Poulos says there's a lot of support with this gallery. "A lot of times the gallery thing has to do with ego," she says. "We wanted to put it together to help each other." Poulos and Mercer say that making art is too often a lonely business. "You don't have anybody to talk to, like musicians do," she says. In their meetings (at least once a month, more often if necessary), things are decided by consensus. "If somebody really hates something, we won't do it," Poulos says. So could a man join this artists' group, with all its cooperation and supportiveness and sharing? "Never," Mercer cries, rolling her eyes. "No Way!" That's a joke. "He'd have to be passed by consensus," Poulos says. That's no joke. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA