{"id":22025,"date":"2013-07-07T08:30:07","date_gmt":"2013-07-07T14:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=22025"},"modified":"2023-11-15T10:22:47","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T16:22:47","slug":"love-hours-at-alice-gallery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/love-hours-at-alice-gallery\/","title":{"rendered":"Love Hours at Alice Gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"lovestories\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Contemporary representations of parenthood are rampant in popular culture. Ranging from idyllic to distressing, such portrayals oftentimes generalize a complicated experience.\u00a0Love<\/em>\u00a0Hours<\/em>, an exhibition currently at the Alice Gallery in Salt Lake City tackles this immensely personal and time-honored experience. As a scholar of feminist art, the show\u2019s curator Laura Hurtado works to expand this rhetoric, not by deconstructing popular imagery of parenthood, but by expanding its various connotations.<\/p>\n

More than a general treatment of the subject through the eyes of various artists, Hurtado\u2019s vision contains multiple meta-narratives and nuances. Perhaps the strongest of these narratives is the reference to time. Each of the works in the show contains what Hurtado calls a \u201ctime signature,\u201d expressing a desire to record or index each moment of the parenting experience. In fact, the concept of time is implicit in the show\u2019s title-Love Hours<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 the innumerable moments of love, labor and care that encompass the experience.
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\nLove Hours<\/em>\u00a0tackles the various contradictions of parenthood \u2014 utopic vs. dystopic, messy vs. blissful \u2014 which both foster and complicate the preconceived \u2018tasks\u2019 of parenthood. The show\u2019s visual material characterizes a touching, if not obsessive, attempt to catalogue a history of parenthood\u2019s most ephemeral moments. The artists render their subjects in touching and complicated ways \u2014 paying homage to a visual record that is undoubtedly personal.<\/p>\n

The work of Leah Moses explores the indexical and often abstract experience of motherhood. In a striking series, Moses creates a record of fetal movements on fragile paper, collapsing various moments in time and documenting the evolution of life.|1|<\/strong>\u00a0Her other piece,\u00a09 Days Nursing<\/em>, exists as a visual record of breastfeeding. Moses plays upon the delicacy of her materials, creating a \u2018quilt\u2019 made out of newspaper.|2|<\/strong>The quilt contains patches of text and image detailing the etiquette of breastfeeding. As such, the work plays upon what is often considered \u201cvisual evidence\u201d of good parenting. By mapping an experience of great intimacy and warmth, Moses reveals an often protective and hidden experience.<\/p>\n

As an art historian, Laura Hurtado investigates representations of motherhood in visual culture. Much of this history stems from the Feminist movement of the 1960\u2019s. Mary Kelly stands out as one of the movement\u2019s most dynamic artists. Hurtado regards Kelly\u2019s rejection of familiar and generic portrayals of motherhood. Kelly\u2019s work is rooted in the philosophical realm-often using abstraction as a vehicle for navigating the complicated role of parenthood. Thus, as Hurtado proudly acknowledges,\u00a0Love Hours<\/em>\u00a0is an homage to Kelly\u2019s feminist innovation.<\/p>\n

Kelly Brooks\u2019 \u2018movement maps\u2019 combine Kelly\u2019s penchant for abstraction with the show\u2019s larger dialogue of time and indexing. Brooks\u2019 conceptual works is multifaceted. She begins by using video to record her family engaged in everyday tasks.|3|<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Her \u2018maps\u2019 then abstractly render the movement of bodies. The end result of this process is a series of abstract drawings, color-coded with a legend in the corner relating the color of the abstract mark to its human counterpart.|4|\u00a0<\/strong>Visually, the drawings appear similar to the high modernist tradition of decidedly masculine artists such as Jackson Pollock. In these works, Brooks conflates the subjective abstract scribble with sentimental meaning. For Brooks, home is the canvas and family the abstract mark.<\/p>\n

The show relishes in the subtle and delicate aspects of parenthood. Heightening this effect is the auditory poetry of Sylvia Plath ruminating from a vintage record player. A line from one of Plath\u2019s poems adorns the wall above the record player.|5|<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0As with the exhibition\u2019s other works, Plath\u2019s poetry is a nuanced rendering of the experience of parenthood and a move away from the ideal.<\/p>\n

Although the show relishes in such nuances, there is room for some traditional renderings of the cycle of life.\u00a0 A beautiful portrait of a woman holding her child created by Utah painter Trevor Southey hangs near the exhibition\u2019s opening.|6|<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Across from it hangs a small drawing by Nathan Florence entitled,\u00a0Marian at 8 Months<\/em>.|7|<\/strong>\u00a0 The drawing is at once an academic study of human anatomy and also a loving time signature of the critical moments preceding birth. In a contrast to the subtle or sentimental, Brad and Susan Barber\u2019s video evokes the sense of urgency involved in procreation. The artistic duo explores this stressful moments of preparation from both the female and male perspective.|8|<\/strong>
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\nLove Hours<\/em>\u00a0succeeds in deconstructing the familiar and popular representations of parenthood. While indisputably celebratory of the creation of human life, the show importantly disengages any supposed emotional outcome. Instead, artists ask us to ponder the many facets of an enormously subjective experience. The exhibition reminds us that the creation of life and the role of parenthood is by no means static or objective. In fact, the process of creation is one artists can intimately relate to. The exhibition, with its many intellectual, cultural and above all personal ramifications forces one to consider what feminist scholar Julia Kristeva calls, \u201cthe enigma of gestation.\u201d<\/p>\n

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