It’s not too late to talk about Christmas, but let’s approach the season from a different angle. Peering into your empty wallet, rubbing your eyes due to a holiday hangover, you stare out at a streetscape littered with browning trees cast off in a ceremonial act of consumption. You feel as though you’re waking up from a dream and you can’t believe you got so caught up in the maelstrom. Meanwhile the trees are decomposing only to serve as feed for next year’s frenzy.
USM artist-in-residence Debbie Reichard spent the holiday season with university art students in a collaborative effort to speak about the belief systems that keep on getting Americans into this mess. “The Brown Christmas” currently inhabits the USM Art Gallery and playfully turns various symbols of the season on their sides.
The most enjoyable aspect of the exhibition is the overall presentation within the gallery space. You are greeted upon entry by a twisted Christmas carol as made by an orchestra of imps, bending and warping notes and looping endlessly. In front of you is a sea of BROWN. Pieces mostly line the walls, leaving plenty of room on the floor for a few earth-toned pedestals that emphasize the iconic nature of their supported objects.
Reichard toys with the season in almost Dada-like fashion, but this is no-nonsense. “The Brown Christmas” is a markedly pointed satire. “Santa Appears in Toast” is a 19x20 grid composed of pieces of white toast. Up close, there are waves of brown hues as the bread is singed in specific places. From afar, the ghostly visage of Santa magically appears, bringing to light the idea that the eyes see what the mind believes. What does a non-Christian see when the Virgin Mary appears on a wall, or an Elvis hater when the King’s image shows up in their soup?
Slightly more pointed in its argument is “Suspended Belief” which features an artificial Christmas tree mounted on the wall at a ninety-degree angle. This uprooting from the tree’s usual context is made all the more disconcerting by the dirty fake snow corroding as it rests on the branches.
“Obligation” makes the paper chain that often decks the halls just a little more permanent by casting it in clay. Suddenly, the festive and ephemeral becomes solid and binding, bringing to mind the familial ties involved with the season; the holiday as a social pact.
The “Overachiever” series features three separate ceramic camels, each with its own unique mutation. One dromedary reaches impossibly to get a look at its backside, while another curlicues its neck, and the third seems to have no bones at all, its extended neck slithering to the floor in a heap.
This series indicates an important technique of the artist. By establishing ceramics as her primary medium, Reichard can withdraw from a focus on personal technique. Instead, the themes within the body of work are played out through the impersonal figurines that would seem at home in a package of mutant Red Rose tea.
