SUNDAY, MARCH 6 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST PG EE E11
Strathmore are affiliated under
the rubric “Women. Artists.
Makers.” Each is a
representationalist, and Debra
Keirce and Maria Bennett Hock
both work in oils. Carrie Waller,
whose style is the most
distinctive, is a watercolorist.
The show’s title, “The Big and
Small of It,” seems to refer
primarily to Keirce’s pictures,
which are sometimes made with
the aid of magnification and are
exceptionally detailed, but not
always tiny. Two of her paintings
frame scenes-within-scenes,
including a Zen rock garden,
inside a pair of hands. Bennett
Hock makes the largest pictures,
many of which depict women’s
sports and individual female
athletes. Pictures like her
portrait of a woman footballer
are dynamically composed.
Waller specializes in
portr aying such glass vessels as
teapots, canning jars and
unfrosted lightbulbs. In other
words, her subjects are light,
reflection and transparency, all
rendered with a vividness
unexpected of watercolor.
Cherries glow bright red inside
clear jars, filaments burn with
intense white light, and“Wood Wind” melds tree
branches with outlined leaves
and small dots of color to
conjure a forest scene that’s
more dreamlike than factual.
The shapes at the center of three
small round pictures suggest
fruits without being identifiable
as anything available in a local
produce section.
Several of the paintings are
based on complex scientific
matters and are displayed next
to notes on their ecological
messages. There’s a s ense of
unease to much of the show,
since, as Goslee wrote in an
email, “these gardens often
appear to be both falling apart
and coming together at the same
time.” But there are also enough
vibrant hues and voluptuous
shapes to give it all a touch of
optimism.Pat Goslee: Out of Season
Through March 19 art Portico Gallery,
3807 Rhode Island Ave., Brentwood.Women. Artists.
Masters.The three painters showing
together at the Mansion atin the artist’s imagination.Nekisha Durrett: Before and Still
Through March 19 at Brentwood Arts
Exchange, 3901 Rhode Island Ave.,
Brentwood.Pat Goslee
Seemingly biomorphic forms
often appear in Pat Goslee’s
paintings, which are primarily
abstract but sometimes depict
objects that are recognizable, or
nearly so. Recognizability gets a
big boost in the pictures in
Goslee’s Portico Gallery show,
“Out of Season.” Flowers, often
produced via stencils and
rendered in bright garden colors,
dominate the pandemic-era
work by the artist (who is
married to Washington Post
journalist Michael O’Sullivan).
Goslee hasn’t swapped her
previous style for a purely
realistic one. The blossoms in
her new artwork jostle with
nonrepresentational imagery,
and are often deployed in
fanciful ways. In “A Touch of
Optimism 4 Every Worry,” a
cloud bank made of blossoms
floats in a striated blue sky, with
tangled, vine-like tendrils below.IN THE GALLERIESso, well, sad?
The duo has been digging into
this matter for several years, and
Wowsugi has sought to monitor
the results of punk rock on
growing wheatgrass. Very Sad
Lab’s current project is a
miniature garden, flanked by
lights, books on the subject and a
video screen that offers a 1990s
gardening TV show. There’s also
a 'zine, in the manner of punk
and riot-grrrl ones, but packed
with information on watering
and feeding flora.
The garden is filled with
orphaned house plants being
rehabilitated that will soon be
ready to move to their forever
homes. The show culminates
March 19 with a “baby shower
and plant adoption day” from 1
to 6 p.m. After that, Very Sad
Lab’s research project goes out
into the field.Very Sad Lab: The Incubator
Through March 19 at Transformer,
1404 P St. NW.sunbeams scatter through glass
as if refracted through a prism.
Glimpsed around and beyond
the glass containers are leaves,
flowers and art books, the stuff
of everyday domestic life set
ablaze by enchanted
illumination.Women. Artists. Masters.: The
Big and Small of It Through March
13 at the Mansion at Strathmore,
10701 Rockville Pike , North
Bethesda.Very Sad Lab
One of the ways artists and art
spaces try to distinguish
themselves these days is by
presenting their activities as
“research” and “investigation.”
Very Sad Lab, run by local artists
Valerie Wiseman and Naoko
Wowsugi, has some fun with the
trend with “The Incubator .” The
question their Transformer show
researches is a widespread one:
Why do your house plants lookBY MARK JENKINSNekisha Durrett is a
storyteller with a sharp sense of
visual design. The D.C. artist’s
previous project, “Magnolia,”
memorialized Black women who
had died as the result of
encounters with police simply by
punching their names into
sturdy magnolia leaves. Her
“Before and Still” is wordier, yet
more cryptic. The powerfully
evocative installation at
Brentwood Arts Exchange uses
found and made objects to
speculate about “the pre-colonial
and modern day histories of a
small swath of land in
Washington, D.C.,” according to
the gallery’s statement.
Durrett has painted the walls
black and covered three of them
in rows of closely fitted old
shingles, which are battered and
chipped. (An unshingled wall
has an unopenable black door
mounted on it.) A page-long
impressionistic story is available
on paper and excerpted in
phrases printed in black on what
the text calls “mundane milky
white glass jars,” which sit on
shelves amid the shingles. More
words, notably “paradise,” are
embossed on white fabric
squares stacked around the
room. There also are four
ceramic dishes, two filled with
brown powder. Interspersed are
wall-mounted tubular lamps
that are electric but glow with
yellow illumination that suggests
candlelight.
If the individual elements are
simple, the overall effect is
imposing, thanks to the elegant
layout and ritualistic repetition.
That the installation is meant to
summon an awareness of the
hallowed is underscored by
words in the story, among them
“bless,” “holy” and “sacrosanct.”
Beyond that, the meaning of
“Before and Still” is enigmatic.
The show’s text and imagery may
draw from the artist’s private
memories or study of a
particular site, or perhaps
they’re entirely invented.
Whatever the source of the
installation, experiencing it is
potent. It transports the viewer
to an alternate location, whether
historical, geographical or purely
Digging into the matter of sad house plants — and finding them forever homes
VERY SAD LAB
“The Incubator” show feat ures a miniature garden of orphaned house plants
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