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Art

Artist turns heartache into moving exhibit

In two installations at Covivant, an artist's grief over her father's death finds an outlet in evocative sculptures.

By LENNIE BENNETT
Published March 2, 2006

TAMPA

We are probably more atavistic in the way we deal with death than any other ritual. The coffins we cannot close without adding personal mementos share an ethos with the pharaohs' treasure-stuffed pyramids and Incan burial caves stocked with food, wine and servants.

Yet death, considered through history as a largely private matter, has become in this century an occasion to mourn in a public, anonymous forum. How else to explain the proliferation of roadside memorials that ask us to remember someone we never knew?

George Ferrandi's two installations at Covivant Gallery speak to both impulses. Calling them conceptual tombs might sound creepy. In fact, they are marvelous.

Her father, Tony - known as Big Tony because he stood 6 feet 5 - died in summer 2005. In the months since, she has used her art to explore a personal loss in a metaphorical context, a process that has the potential to numb or heal.

For Undertaking, created recently, her father's produce van is parked in the gallery, back doors open, empty as a looted mausoleum except for three guardian statues. Its contents have been removed and line shelves and tables like a postmodern re-creation of Howard Carter's discovery of King Tut's tomb, objects that mimic the ancient golden reliquaries and utilitarian necessities.

They're mostly of rough white plaster. A number are slightly goofy statues of Tony. A plaster sink is surrounded by plaques on which morning necessities - comb, toothbrush, razor - are finely drawn in counterpoint to the basin's crude modeling. A display case holds a collection of tiny tools exquisitely shaped from chocolate candy wrappers. Clunky, oversized plaster "coins" painted silver are embossed with "Chump Change . . . In Lieu of Flowers." Paintings of Tony's friends - Viv, Lil, Fred, the General - and a large bust of the artist's mother, along with a weirdly shaped wedding cake and the family dog, are included in the tableaux. A reclining Tony, covered with an embroidered silk spread, silver foiled bird perched on his head, rests in peace.

All the Ones That Have Arms Are Saluting emerged from her hands shortly after her father's death. It's an emotional keening compared to the elegiac ceremony of Undertaking.

Her father here is larger than life, more than 8 feet tall, made of a plywood armature and plaster head, hands and feet, dressed in pajamas made of wax paper. He's strongly monolithic and sweetly pigeon-toed. Wires emanate from him, connected to wax paper birds, perched along the walls and illuminated from within.

Nearby, a cabinet is filled with fabulist figures resembling cats and dogs in plaster or carved soap (and her skill with that material merits a special mention). Many are painted and dressed like dolls or fetishes. Most raise an appendage.

Ferrandi acknowledges the debt we all have to DNA, as old as prehistoric mud, and the traceable gifts of genealogy. She wears her inheritance lightly and makes of it a farewell and a bequest.

Curator and gallery owner Carrie Mackin grouped both Ferrandi installations under the exhibition title "Songs for Other Swans" and included owl sculptures, cut from sheets of wood and propped up shooting-gallery style, by John Orth , a Gainesville artist and musician. They're clever and witty, mining the associations we have with the birds. He beheads some of them and writes in blood-red glitter, "SORRY." Regret takes many forms.

Lennie Bennett can be reached at (727) 893-8293 or lennie@sptimes.com.

[Last modified March 1, 2006, 14:08:32]