Random Re-Viewings

If at first you don't quite see, try and try to gain... a second look; that's my advice to those attending the new Valise show--and there are plenty of reasons to re-visit: eight distinct/distinctive artists and umpteen suitcases and carry-ons, in various stages of dress, undress, and total destruction. Here's some of what I saw...

1) A purse full of rounded stones of varying shapes and sizes (title: "Bag of Rocks," by Terri Fletcher) and an open suitcase filled with rusty machine parts ("Pre-digital parts for a new era," by Gay Schy). You are what you meet, I presume.

2) Heather Joy's exceptional, multi-dimensional "Always a Window Seat," which offers depths beyond the obvious, meaning its suitcase with TV screen-shaped cut-out allowing viewer to peer through to see an apparent airplane window and further view of massive mountain in the distance--even though the "views" are a single two-dimensional photo. None are so blind as those who will not seat where assigned.

3) There's nothing really to say about the "New Economy" (Elizabeth Conner). A spud's a spud for a' that.

4) "Bella Abzug" stripped to her orange luggage lining, thanks to the often encaustic Jiji Saunders--a cleared suitcase of over-activism.

5) The tragi-comic, tucked-in-a-corner "Alligator Bag" (by Carol Schwennesen), with lizardly parts protruding fore and aft. (Granny's got your gator.)

And much, as they say, more--40 works plus a wall of amusing and confusing, plastic sandwich bag-encased... stuff. Razors, pregnancy tests, liquids of indistinct origin, fluttery papers, old photos, luggage tags and stickers. The detritus of the Homeland Security age in all its wretched splendor.

But one type of carry-on not mentioned in this otherwise all-embracing show would hark back to the slightly unseemly British comedy films of the previous century--Carry On, Doctor; Carry On, Nurse; and scads of others. And yet, maybe this fun and fuzzy installation actually is a perfect example of a post-9/11 sequel: Carry On, Artists.

"Pack up, let's fly away..."