Reviews: Vermont

Brenda Garand
Julian Scott Memorial Gallery, Johnson State College • Johnson, VT • www.jsc.edu

Brenda Garand, Digging Clams to Feed Crabs is like Serving Cake to Rats in a Pantry, steel and rabbit fur, 28 x 46 x 14", 2007.

The elegant steel sculptures in this exhibit are like drawings in air, with lines ranging from thin wrapped wire in Chicoutimi to two-inch steel bars in Caught Between the Tracks and the Road. They are rich in surprises: a small, desiccated mammal deep inside the turbine-like tunnel; tufts of burgundy fur where the tines meet the scoop of Digging Clams to Feed Crabs is like Serving Cake to Rats in a Pantry; the gracefully-draped material in Kamouraska turning out to be roofing paper.

Garand, speaking to BFA students in the gallery on November 5, said the scale of her artwork was related to the scale of her body. She stepped into her largest piece, Je Me Souviens, and spread her arms to demonstrate that her reach traced the contours and perimeter of the arching steel lines of the sculpture.

This complex piece, suggesting a romantic history, contains straight and curved sections of black steel rod and bar, some ending abruptly in mid-air, others intersecting, then taking off in new directions. The edges of the flat bars are subtly embellished with a dotted line. The eye is drawn powerfully to two rods that originate at the apex and imply a sloping chute exiting in a wire basket containing a red-leather glove holding a fabric heart.

Ten of the twelve works in the exhibit are affixed to the wall, where they create shadows like ink drawings. The human hand appears again in Sprites, two of which are stuffed, wrapped, and contorted white kid gloves accented with black fur and wrapped wire. The three Sprites are held away from the wall on slender wires, creating multiple shadows.
One of the gallery’s entrances is flanked by two pieces, made with steel and roofing paper. The piece to the left has an outburst of thin wires with bright red bundles of frayed fabric tied along their length, creating a sense of ebullience and life. The piece to the right looks like a wilted jester’s hat, with only a few tufts of white fur along the crown. So depending on whether you walk clockwise or counter-clockwise through the gallery, you move from life to death, or from death to rebirth. Surprise

—Janet Van Fleet

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