Mel George
Landmark, 2009
kilnformed glass
19 x 4.25 x .5 inches (installed)
Memory and melancholy strike few among us as "glassy" evocations. Slick, unyielding and fragile, glass rarely sheds its impersonal chill, no matter how spectacularly it's been colored, rippled or made to shimmer. On the other hand, materials evoking the human touch -- cloth, paper, wood, paint and clay among them -- are often known to trigger such sentimental responses that they override the artwork's intended effect.
Photographs, of course, are so thoroughly associated with personal history that we ascribe detailed recollections to "photographic memories," and in place of film, we load our newer cameras with memory cards. Hardly objects of sensual tactility, though, photographs manage to lob emotional punches in spite of the standoffish veneer they share with cold, glossy panes of glass.
"Reminders," a whimsical and charming show by Mel George at Bullseye Gallery, introduces a body of kiln-formed glass works that hang discreetly on the wall in what can only be described as "photodrag."
George's would-be snapshots of rolling clouds, thick forests and distant mountains take the familiar form of Polaroids -- pocket-sized picture mementos, squarely framed within the instant photo's iconic white border. The faux-tographs quickly reveal themselves as sculptural objects, though, perfectly scaled to Polaroid proportions, save for their coaster-size thickness. Made entirely from opaque glass with a waxy surface, the small works huddle in cool-tone quintets, blocky grids and in the case of "West Bank," an impressive row of 100 uniformly crafted mock shots. Richly hued, the "pictures" present tonal and hard-edged abstractions in the austere vein of such 20th-century painters as Ad Reinhardt, Brice Marden and Kasmir Malevich.
Milky white stripes and bold spearmint bars traverse the five frames of "Landmark" like a minimalist stripe painting or a fruit-flavored Morse code schematic. Monochrome panels of crimson bookend the three-panel "Lazy Sunday." In its center frame, a grid of red and white squares form an off-kilter cross, driving home the triptych's iconographic symmetry.
George employs a softer palette in "Serve With Love," a grid of four warm, velvety hues. The blocky white Polaroid borders that encase each panel actually benefit the composition here, allowing the rich mocha, sienna, carnation and berry shades to play off one another roomily, as the rhythm of rectangular layers create a jazzy tonal syncopation.
A Portland resident since the late 1990s, George recently shuttered her studio and returned to her native Australia. Before leaving, she created the pieces in "Reminders" as sentimental portraits of Portland -- glass snapshots to remember the city by. While George's backstory lends an air of poignancy to her Polaroid motif, it's in the knowledge that each of her abstract images are based on specific Portland places that "Reminders" comes to life.
The red-and-white squares in "Lazy Sunday," for instance, are based on the checkered floor tiles of George's favorite brunch spot. The row of 100 salmon- and mint-hued abstractions that comprise "West Bank" represents the parade of cherry blossoms that line Tom McCall Waterfront Park in the spring, while the four velvety tones of "Serve With Love" are inspired by the seasonal strawberry, pumpkin, blackberry and chocolate-hazelnut milkshakes at Burgerville.
Although few of these associations reveal themselves without friendly prompts from gallery staff, George's regional slant is both clever and warmhearted. The Polaroid trope teeters perilously close to gimmickry, but George rescues it with her painterly and inventive approach to creating visual souvenirs. In doing so, she manages to impart a sentimental and wistful history that tests the emotional capacity of glass itself.
-Chas Bowie
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