Portland, ME
9/30/10 3:03PM
Maine, as far I know, has not yet been recognized for a regional contemporary art style. Allow me to nominate Alisha Gould’s sculptural practice. For here, in her work, we find decidedly local adaptations of international trends. “Vacua,” a series of horns made from a rich combination of felt, paper, agar-agar and clay, evokes many things, including bullhorns and gramophones, but also some of the local flora variety: giant dead sunflowers and black wood ear mushrooms among them. “Model for Interior #1” offers strange perceptual play through cut-throughs and mirror tricks installed in an architectural structure as local as they come: a house’s steep-pitched roof and exterior walls covered in cedar shingles. Finally, “Folly #1” and “Folly #2” set glowing, cubic ornamental gazebos deep in the forest, but form their sides out of sleeping bags and woven IKEA rugs. Though these pieces are, respectively, about the void and spatial play and the wondrousness of light and shadow, they also cannot help being about Maine itself.
—Lori Waxman