Nitpickers at CSPS

Work by Katherine Parker Work by Vanessa Vobis

NITPICKERS
Katherine Parker and Vanessa Vobis
with Craig Dietrich
Cedar Rapids debut | Katherine Parker and Vanessa Vobis both deal in detritus – shed hair, bargain bin oddities, things collected from domestic spaces and thrift shops. They transform their specimens into new entities that shift the material’s original meaning and create foreign, yet somehow familiar bodies. Their work points to the absent body, the memory of things departed, decayed, or imperiled, and asks the viewer to become attuned to that which we sense, but cannot always see.
The objects in Parker’s untitled drawings (actually of mats of human and animal hair), painstakingly rendered, seem familiar, but they defy precise identification. Harking back to nineteenth century hairwork, one could view them as memento mori or as a metaphor for memory — tight masses, fraying at the edges, gradually disintegrating. The drawings exist as an affirmation of slow, deliberate activity and testify to the value of sitting with objects, beings, and ideas for an extended period in order to know them well and fix them in one’s mind.
Vanessa Vobis’ large-scale dioramas, “Plot” and “Body Beasts,” and the installation, “Crystal World,” commingle the artificial and organic. Her materials — water, sweaters, beads, Styrofoam, flocking, and other items gleaned from the thrift store and the Dollar Store — are transformed into organisms and ecosystems referencing tide pools, Eden, and things viewed under the microscope. Her oversized dust mites stand in for neurosis and abjection, making visible metaphors for parts of ourselves that we don’t notice or don’t wish to address. The larger-than-life sweater bugs have themselves become hosts to the very beasts they resemble.
Vobis has collaborated with Craig Dietrich in creating the Species Science Lab, constructing the ecosystems where Vobis’ life forms dwell. These miniature worlds, made from our era’s excess commodities, simultaneously attract and repulse. Fantasy spaces filled with hybrid creatures whose component parts betray their artificiality, the ‘ecosystems’ made by the Species Science Lab point toward a blurring between the man-made and natural world.
Apr 2 through 27
CSPS | 1103 Third St SE | Cedar Rapids
Open Weds through Sun 11 to 6

Related events | CSPS hosts an artist reception for Katherine Parker, Vanessa Vobis, and Craig Dietrich, Fri Apr 4, 5-7 pm.

Visit Vanessa's Web site or Craig's
Click here for a downloadable gallery guide
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