Knoxville, TN
5 April 2008 12:59 PM
Sparkly glitter, unicorns, cartoon bunnies, and colored markers go together like little girls, spice, and everything nice, but what happens when they’re overlaid atop church bulletins exhorting one to “come back to the heart of worship”? Confusion, surely, but also the surprisingly compelling whirlwind of Bible Belt beliefs, youth culture, and girl power that whirl around unhinged in Alice Stone’s ambitious, mural-size mixed-media drawings. Atop a background of religious ephemera printed on color paper, Stone drafts the stuff of every little miss’s fantasy—and then some. Lurking amid the pretty orange sunsets and green leaves lies a house in flames, a rabbit in fishnets, and a men’s urinal, among other more adult surprises. And if some of her drawing technique recalls children’s doodles, others suggest the kind of compulsion at work in Louise Bourgeois’ "Insomnia Drawings." And like Bourgeois’ work, which epitomizes the fusion of the biographical, fantastical and cultural, Stone’s unexpected yet weirdly familiar hybrid work invites the viewer in with its colorful familiarity, only to reveal the most uncanny of combinations at play.
—Lori Waxman