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MOTHERS AND MARTYRS - THE ART OF ERIN CURRIER by Joni Tickle of Parks Gallery Taos With a blend of drawing, painting and the colorful overlay of its and pieces of common trash, Erin Currier creates portraits that spring with an exalted zing from the flotsam and jetsam of our material world. Truly an artist of the world, Currier travels widely, primarily in Third World countries, learning about the people and their cultures as she goes. She fills sketchbooks with immaculate drawings and poetic reflections, and gathers the paper trash that reveals so much about the essential experience of a place. When Currier returns to her studio in Taos, N.M., the trash becomes a primary ingredient in the creation of portraits of great beauty and passion. "Her work is so bold," said Dawn Walker of TOPS in Malibu. "That may be why her art appeals to so many Malibu collectors. She's not afraid to be political, but there's great compassion in everything she does." TOPS, which has represented Currier for nearly six years, was an early champion of her art. The gallery's exhibition last fall, "VIVA," was the talk of the town. The subjects of Currier's current series, "Mothers and Martyrs of the Americas," range from portraits of the mothers of Sandinista rebels killed in Nicaragua to a wrenching portrait of Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie. Till was the black youth from Chicago who was killed in the late 1950s in Alabama for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Her Whores of Puerto Cabeza tells the tale of Nicaraguan prostitutes
who serviced U.S. Marines in 1926 and passed along information about
a cache of weapons that proved critical to the arming of the Nicaraguan
revolutionary leader Augusto César Sandino's forces against
American troops. Black Panthers II is a tribute to the oftenoverlooked
contributions of women militants in the 1960s whose grassroots organizing
resulted in programs that provided food, clothing and immunization
for children. American School Boys contains near lifesize portraits
of three American martyrs: Matthew Shepard, a 21yearold gay man savagely
beaten in Wyoming; Emmett Till and Bobby Hutton, the young Black Panther
who was shot and killed in 1967 by police in Oakland. In the welter
of paper trash behind the figures is a shooting range target of a gunman,
a picture of President George Bush in a crown, and the words "gay," "black," and "shot." "I'm politically active through my art," said Currier. "That's how I express my beliefs. I want to open the viewer's mind a notch. If I wasn't able to do that, I wouldn't do art. Beautiful art is certainly valid, but in my work, beauty seems circumstantial. The spiritual and political meaning and the construction are foremost." Though beauty may not be her principal concern, the aesthetic quality in Currier's work is undeniable. "She begins with immaculate drawings of the figure," says Stephen Parks of Parks Gallery in Taos, Currier's other representative, "and then, working quickly and intuitively, overlays the drawing with cutout shapes of trash. Sometimes the faces are painted, sometimes constructed of cutout bits of trash. The eyes are always hand-painted, and it's through the eyes that she expresses such great compassion." "In our day and age of mass consumption, we are what we use," Currier said. "Be it blonde hair dye, double skinny lattes or freerange turkey sausage, we express our political beliefs, our intellect, our sexuality - who we are - by our use of product." With her work, she forces the viewer to ask: "Who are we beyond our consumption?" Art critic Tom Collins finds a more classic reference: "There
is a kind of Byzantine aspect to Currier's figures and an obvious similarity
to some of the stylistic strategies of Russian religious icons, which
is apt considering the artist seems to be using her considerable artistic
talents in the service of higher, political good." Parks Gallery, Taos, NM (505) 751-0343 www.parksgallery.com |
