Crit Streed "Making Arrangements: the Milk Glass Mandala"

A.I.R. Gallery

poster for Crit Streed "Making Arrangements: the Milk Glass Mandala"

This event has ended.

Somewhere between an analytic impulse and intuitive reflex Streed quietly dresses the interior of a small room. Vintage milk glass gathered over the past ten years is the muse for this video/object interaction. A mandala emerged and a video projects an image of a woman relentlessly seeking an arrangement of two chairs. A shared practice of shape shifting becomes a human blend of otherwise
disparate actions, a crossbreeding of desired perception and a yearning for resolution. Getting it right is often just trying to get there.

Some history: Milk glass is one of the most inexplicable, ubiquitous products to come out of the industrial age with its designs mutating well into the 20th century. First produced and marketed to the middle class homemaker as a substitute for more expensive porcelain, milk glass is a white opaque glass with highly decorative surfaces and ruffled edges. The forms suggest functionality but in actuality most pieces were relegated to a display surface. From early American style to bio-morphed modern design, milk glass came into the home primarily through gift giving. This could render some wives and mothers either helpless to avert the deluge or numbed by the assault but often caught up in the frenzy of collecting more. Vases, goblets, vinegar cruets, ashtrays all poised, were rarely called into action but profuse in many homes. The constant shuffling and repositioning on tabletops and in display cases was a means to finding the perfect arrangement.

Mandalas are constructed as contemplative supports by many cultures both ancient and present to act as a passage into knowing the unknowable. Carefully arranged from various materials and generally circular, mandalas offer access to what is not visible.
Streed has exhibited her drawings, encaustic works and installations both nationally and internationally to include most recently the Des Moines Art Center; University of Northern Iowa; Black and White Gallery, Williamsburg and A.I.R. Gallery where she sat atop a 9’ stand doing her performative drawing.

Media

Schedule

from October 06, 2010 to October 31, 2010

Opening Reception on 2010-10-07 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Crit Streed

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