Margaret Eriksen

Review: A consideration of “local”, and the work of Margaret Eriksen

                                                                                                                     -Misty Morrison

            Cat with Very Little Brain, Ceramic/Acrylic.

Before I painted her, she sat out in the backyard for some time. When I started on her head I discovered a (discarded) wasps nest in her 'brain cavity'! Its still there.

           

           

            I went into Ohio University Lancaster's Wilkes Gallery with a number of presupposed expectations about local artists running through my thoughts. It wasn't until the moment when I glanced around the gallery space, and stood in front of the first painting that I began to confront these thoughts, and then much more slowly, as is the way with these things, the acceptance that I was subject to them. Following which I began to question just what it is about the application of the word local to the practice of art that is so easily acceptable as a negative.

An old song says “Kids! Whats the matter with kids today?!! Why can't they be like WE were (perfect in every way)? -Oh, What's the matter with kids today?” There are many reasons that children have difficulties in school. It's not just lack of effort from them and their teachers!

Why can Johnnie (and Sue and Leroy) still not read? Acrylic on canvas

            Answers to this musing are too numerous to list in the course of a review, and I'd like to focus instead on why I decided for myself that this attitude in response to Margaret Eriksen's work would be misguided. We feel like we know where the local artist is coming from- after all, their inspirations are perhaps places or things we passsed by on our way to see their work. I've given a great deal of thought lately to the practice of considering the intended audience of a work. If the bar I aspire to in my own practice is to raise questions, where does this work fall into that?

            Eriksen's piece “Why can Johnnie (and Sue and Leroy) still not read?” is a very straight-forward acrylic painting on canvas, the surface of which is taken up with stylized portraits, painted words, and color shapes creating a patterned ground onto which words and portraits are placed. There is a great deal of ambiguity for me in the juxtaposition of smiling portraits, and the cliché words attempted to announce exactly why Johnnie, Sue, and other children might not be performing in school. If I hadn't known from the artist's bio, I would know now that Eriksen had taught. It is quite within my presuppositions to expect a retired art educator to address the problems with the education system in their studio practice. But this work goes a little further than that for me, in that what it proports to be doing- telling me what is the matter with kids today- it is in fact, not. Instead, it is raising questions for me. The information that it does give me, that kids in local school districts face problems that make learning challenging, does nothing to lessen the question of why. Because I think it's obvious to anyone reading the painted words “hedonism”, “television”, and “environmental pollution” that the attribution to any one thing, most likely as outdated in concept and understanding as is our education system, just isn't solving any problems. Which raises the question: what will?

           

Lunchin' at the Sistine, Mixed Media

            Eriksen uses “humorous” as a descriptor in her own statement about her work, and there is a great deal of humor in them, but also something of whimsy. “Lunchin' at the Sistine” is the most overtly both, delivering no direct social message, but allowing us to form many of our own assumptions as to potential themes. This painting, and the body of work as a whole, references traditional tropes of painting that make them easily accessible (and in some cases easily disregardable) to insert social commentary that doesn't answer and of the issues it raises, combined with something wimsical to make it palatable. The recipe, though no update to any of the means she's employing, I have to say is compelling none the less. The group of work as a whole begs the questions, what is sacrificed of expanded perspective in the choice to remain local? Can that be a choice made to engage a specific audience? What sort of expanded understanding can be gained without leaving “home”?   Misty Morrison