Red Line Service, Chicago, IL
Styles of artmaking betray radically different approaches to life: the cool confidence of Alex Katz’s portraits, the meditative restraint of Agnes Martin’s grids, the ironic joy of David Hockney’s pictures. Shay Jones makes unapologetically maximalist handicrafts that are true to something else: the cacophony and multiplicity of our human world. For 30-plus years she has been fashioning her Kork Kids from wine and champagne bottle tops glued together with a custom-made "mud," then carved and painted into classic mermaids, Irish dancers, ladies in top hats, and women with gray hair and eyeglasses. More recently she’s stitched up a series of aprons called Lotsa Pockets which, as the name implies, have many places for stashing stuff. The added-on pockets are cleverly cut and sewn from other garments. They also have more decoration than you might think you need-—flower and insect appliqués, colorful embroidery, vintage buttons, stripes of ribbon, patches galore. But that’s the thing with Jones’s artworks-—they deal generously and humorously with the so-muchness of it all: all the identities, the songs, the clothing, the stories, the feelings, the noise. And from that art can be made.
—Lori Waxman 10/5/2024 3:52 PM