'Monsters,' 'color' exhibits serve up tons of expressive fun

By Victoria Gail-White
Advertiser Art Critic

•	'Monsters Under the Bed' Featuring work by Alexa Horochowski, Koi Ozu, Cade Roster and Jenny Schmid Noon-6 p.m. Thursdays- Sundays, through Feb. 7 workspace gallery 732-2300

"A cackle berry is a slang term for an egg," Koi Ozu says. "What kind of monster would lay these types of eggs?" Presumably, these monsters come in the night while you are alone and vulnerable in bed, sleeping or just barely awake, frightened by the darkness and nocturnal noises.

In a grouping of 31 low-fire ceramic "monster eggs," Ozu has taken the more humorous side of the show's "Monsters" theme. But even that is questionable, depending on how one might define monster and what is frightening to you.

Monsters in Ozu's mind lay cackle berries that look like: a large breast with an oversized nipple, a metallic bronze-looking anus, a blue vagina, an olive with a pimento, mochi, excrement and intestinal shapes emerging from windows cut out of the brightly colored painted egg shapes (which aren't all egg shaped).

Many of the cackle berries are intentionally nebulous to "encourage the viewer to decide what will hatch," Ozu says.

Cade Roster's "Gentle Play" is a series, consisting of five ink-on-paper cartoons. They are part of a lengthier comic book (70 pages) to be printed later this month.

"It is about a girl who communicates with the dead," Roster says.

In "Gentle Play 4," the girl is celebrating with friends at her birthday party. A few years later — noted by the change in years on her birthday cake — ghosts replace the girl's friends. In "Gentle Play 5," the balloon over her head reads, "It's so dumb! I know math and science and history but something out of my brain I don't know that. So stupid. What if I don't even want to know?"

Roster has also included "Throbbing House," a mixed-media maquette for a larger series that has many theatrical qualities. In two levels, one with an open room with a bed and a spectral entity is positioned over another room with a person upright in bed. A full moon hovers beside the upper level.

"It is about the thoughts that occur when you're lying in bed and hear weird noises," Roster says.

Artists Alexa Horochowski and Jenny Schmid are friends of the artist-owners of workspace, and live and teach at universities in Minneapolis.

Although Horochowski teaches sculpture, she submitted an almost life-sized mixed-media drawing for the exhibit, titled "Girl Dancing with Death." The drawing is a peculiar blend of pretty and frightening. Against a rosy pink background a blue-outlined, blindfolded ballerina dances with a brown-outlined skeleton wearing a top hat. Both are on the edge of a cliff that appears to be crumbling as they dance.

Schmid's three beautifully executed, tattoo-like lithographs are the most frightening pieces in the show. They are tattoo-like because of the heavy black outline and inside coloration of the central figure, in each case a woman. They are frightening because they address issues that involve women suppressing themselves.

"The Curse of the Older Man" has an oversized female figure showing the cash in her back pocket and an older man with a pipe pulling on her pigtails. It is very Lolita-esque. The words "Vixen" and "Cash Money" come out of her mouth.

Surrounding the central figures in all of Schmid's pieces are orb-shaped illustrations reminiscent of 15th- or 16th-century chiaroscuro woodcuts. They appear Bosch-like (in their juxtaposition of heads with bird bodies and objects emerging from their genitals), religious (angels and saints) and light-hearted (cherries in a pattern). "Fast Girl, Knocked Up" and "Drunken Girl" have vines under the dresses of the central female figures connected to images of devils and other evils. It is assumed that the "Monsters Under the Bed" in Schmid's lithographs are generated by one's own conscience.

•	'Dreaming in Color' Featuring work by Calvin Collins, Elea Dumas, Jessica Kim, Inka Resch and Noe Tanigawa 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, Jan. 25 The ARTS at Marks Garage

Each of the participating O'ahu-based artists previously had approached Rich Richardson, the director of gallery space at The ARTS at Marks Garage, about exhibiting. Richardson made the task simple and introduced the artists to each other and the space, setting parameters on scale and the number of pieces to be submitted. The outcome is dazzling.

As you enter the gallery, the installation "Clouds" by Jessica Kim and Noe Tanigawa fills the left section with floor-to-ceiling white gauze. Inside the gauzy room, a multimedia environment of white encaustic wax covers all the objects: a ladder, slippers, sneakers, a cell phone, glasses, a model car, a computer keyboard, a Buddha, a ball, a toy gun, pill containers, a rabbit, a wishbone, a calculator, a shell, a toothbrush, matches, toilet paper and so on. A video of clouds plays from a monitor that is covered in white wax. Photo transfers of clouds on clear film run down the lengths of the pedestals that hold the wax-covered objects.

This is the first time Kim and Tanigawa have collaborated on an installation. They spent many hours gazing at clouds at Diamond Head for research. In fact, the video part of the installation reveals what they saw.

When I asked Tanigawa what she learned about clouds, she said, "It's really all about the light coming through the clouds."

She also has an exhibit titled "New Beginnings" opening at the Prince Hotel Jan. 25.

Breaking away from his familiar large oil paintings, Calvin Collins has poured highly glossy translucent resins over painted personal, magical and modernized cultural symbols. The intensity of color he has achieved is as astonishing as some of the components used in the works such as hair and blood.

"Boiling Point," a more intimate piece for Collins, is symbolic of many things. In a deep red background color, three pears are suspended in resin that bubbles up around them. "It is symbolic of the Holy Trinity," Collins says. "And of the three children who are no longer in my life — that painful loss makes my blood boil." It is compelling because on one level you want to stick your hands in it and grab a pear. But remembering Adam and Eve, acquiring forbidden fruit is never a good idea.

Elea Dumas' printed color photographs, sensuous close-ups of flowers, represent four years of work. She printed and mounted the dozen large-scale photographs.

"I have been taking pictures of flowers since I got my first camera at 11 years old," Dumas says. Her love of flowers even inspired her, at one time, to open a flower shop.

The passion she feels for her subject is articulated in the intimate relationship she conveys in the heart of flowers such as the magnolia, lily, yucca, freesia, pink water lily, passion flower and plumeria.

The electric drenched reds of "Gladiola" and the impressionistic tone and atmospheric blues of "Borage" reveal Dumas' more painterly focus.

Working only at night, preferably by the light of a full moon, Inka Resch's pictures, like Dumas', are straight photographs, not manipulated by a computer. Resch creates altered-looking worlds based on familiar objects.

"I like it to be dreamy," Resch says. "I don't want it to look like it is."

Her goal is certainly achieved in "Glitter." It is a photograph of golden light reflected off a street, evocative of hundreds of lit candles on a watery surface. A remarkable photograph, it is astonishing to discover what was involved in creating the illusion. Resch achieved the affect simply by putting glitter on the sidewalk — the handiwork of a true magician.

Note: The last happening of the evening was a dynamic opening of Jodi Endicott's "Bears, Bulls and the Big Board" at Studio One.

You can read Advertiser staff writer Zenaida Serrano Espanol's report on the exhibit online at the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2003/Jan/07/il/il01a.html.