A snapshot portrait of women’s experience in art and life

The cool blues and whites of the main gallery at MCAD surround the current artworks well. It’s a cozy fit for the faculty who’ve been striding these halls for many days. In All the Wiser: Women’s Art Institute Faculty Exhibition these instructors are not only playing with their comfort space, they’re representing a snapshot portrait of women’s experience in art and life on a global scale.

Krista Kelly Walsh immediately involves the viewer with her installation. The thrill of participation becomes bittersweet as Odysseia cannot move beyond her chair and, by extension, her everyday life. The binoculars setup is so wistful it’s sad; to feel away, Odysseia uses the field glasses from a “Vista Chair” to read travel books propped on the floor. Here we experience the armchair travel of many dreamers, readers and TV watchers. But after contemplating map origami for awhile, I felt more itching to hit the road than to settle into an armchair. Therein lies the tension of Odysseia.

We travel along with her, as the imagined character sweetly changes her map shoe liners daily, content that “every step is a journey.” We vicariously experience distant lands of Kathmandu’s monkeys and crows, through small notes viewers place on the “Travel Memory Map,” a glorious testament to how travelers condense sense memories of locale down to a few iconic words. Even little waysides get represented: “My parents had unprotected sex in Hazelton, PA,” read the card marked with a little fetus drawing.

Walsh’s use of maps, as well as Al Monsur’s city map drawn on the floor of an acting goddess temple, can extend the imagination in a way that infinity does when drawn as a figure eight sideways on paper. Such vast concepts condensed to tiny graphics infuse symbols with divine presence and immensity.

There’s a great variety on show here; alongside interactive installation we see fine art paintings by Michal Sagar, intent on interpreting infant form with delicate strokes—though the forms are often distorted, where one large head leads to two baby bodies, or a child floats in the sky with huge, manly muscles. Warm tones comfort the viewers, as mothers do children. Woman as nurturer, overwhelmed by humanity’s need is what inspires my thoughts as I contemplate these images.
More feminine themes abound. Erica Spitzer-Rasummen’s “Intimacy of Memory” is a woman’s torso split in half and filled with dried cherry tomatoes. The sculpture looks like a very excruciating girdle. This piece resonates with Nancy Robinson’s “Tyranny of Fashion” oil painting, exhibiting mastery of human form, entwined a bit uncomfortably with nature in the vibrant manner of Frida Kahlo.

From fine arts visuals we approach Stevie Rexroth’s crisp C-print, a perfectly glossy photo on stark white, minimal in everything and also ambiguous in subject. The decisive lines of the image are thrown into question as the viewer tries to figure out what the heck it is ... a modern living space void of accouterments, reflected? Or a close-up shot of some familiar office equipment? Boggling in its simplicity of form, it manages to echo the fluency of ad design.

A soothing respite for the eyes comes in Jantje Visscher’s “For Just a Moment” where cut plastic strips become feathery white waves through use of light and shape. Its neutral tones tie the gallery together with the Odysseia piece in front, and the “Group” on the far wall, where Shana Kapoln’s digital video projection shows women with beautiful skin physically attempting to make each other smile. An ambient rustling, subtly banging soundtrack suffuses the entire space from the rear corner, adding a soundtrack to a show that contextualizes women’s art and experience at the beginning of a new millennium.

The Women’s Art Institute Faculty Exhibition runs through June 27 in the Main and Concourse Galleries. MCAD, 2501 Stevens Ave. S., Mpls. 612-874-3700.