Tami Demaree: A Searing Lesson Every Girl Should Know
Doug Holst: Pentominoes    Jan 5 - Jan 28, 2006

Demaree’s work clutters itself fighting to be girly, cute, droll, adorable and saccharine and refuses to be naïve or jaded. Her installations echo the manic webs girls spin in their bedrooms after school and at night.

There is an immediacy to the materials. They are found in craft stores or on the street at garage sales. The pieces urgently express love,loss and lyricism. “When ‘I love you’ is sung on the radio it is totally public” says Demaree, “but when we say it to each other it is dreadfully private. How do you illustrate romance without cliché pop cultural and social signifiers?”

To experience Demaree’s work is to be lost in a dark wood in which real and manufactured emotions have overgrown each other like competing vines. They leave no trail of bread crumbs leading out to a lit world of emotional authenticity and empowerment, just the consolation of “that pop song that reminds us of a loved one, or a movie that always makes you cry even though you’ve seen it before,” says Demaree. “This show is littered with gushy sentimental tropes and the reminders of a pathetic romanticism that will linger with you like a cheap perfume.”

Also showing, Milwaukee-based artist Doug Holst. The artist will create a wall mural on site as part of his exploration of pentominoes (shapes formed by combining five squares). Holst’s paintings employ elemental concepts of symmetry, space, balance and pattern. They are works of systematic abstraction grounded in rational order yet rely on intuitive responses to spatial balance and color.