Buffalo, NY
I do not love fables, preferring the inanimate elements of nature to be anthropomorphized. A talking rock beats a talking fox in my book. In Polly Little’s compositions, animals do not speak but they might as well, so intently do they occupy her painted canvases and carved wood blocks. The blocks are leftovers from the process of making prints, which Little exhibits as well, and normally they are just that, leftovers. Little does something novel with them that also feels novelistic, recalling the style of Swedish children’s book author Jan Brett. Affixed to the tops or sides of same-size canvases, the blocks act as marginalia, bringing different animals in different registers together into the same tale: ram, rooster, and aye-aye join with gecko, bison with beaver. What’s the moral? They make fine prints too, including a witty one of those notorious wood chompers, beavers, who might have had a hand—or tooth—in making their own picture.
—Lori Waxman 11/11/16 2:30 PM