COVID-19
I have vague memories of a fuzzy little rug in coordinating colors that hung on the wall in my brothers’ childhood bedroom. Turns out it was a tufted textile, an ancient weaving technique that in the right hands morphs into something simultaneously playful, challenging and nostalgic. Based on Scheme, a winter solo show on limited view at River House Arts in Toledo, Loraine Lynn is one of those artists. Made during quarantine and intended for viewers to sit on or touch, the works in Scheme, sized doodle to mural, look like they were scribbled with every color of marker following no set plan or else a wildly unpredictable one. Purple and white polka-dots interrupt green and pink diagonal stripes; squarish loops in every shade of green overlap with zebra bars; blobs are intercut by a snaking line in shades of blue; thick grey arrows outlined in neon overlap dizzyingly. There are no squares and few straight lines, zero empty spaces, not a single simple silhouette. Elizabeth Murray, the late great painter of cartoonishly bold and madcap shaped canvases, would no doubt want to curl up on one.
—Lori Waxman 2021-02-23 10:08 AM