The Channels

Issue date: 2/3/10 Section: Entertainment

Media Credit: James Sinclair Different sheets of painting, drawing, spray paint, and written prose are layered in very specific placement to create "Little Orgone Box."

A 22-foot long area rug made entirely of shirt labels may make spectators stop to contemplate the utter density of it all.

And if the rug doesn't stop them, maybe the perfectly chopped up bibles will.

The suitably named "Density" exhibit, showing in the Atkinson Gallery from Jan. 25 to Feb. 19, features completely computer free, hand crafted pieces created with incredible attention to minute detail.

Because the local and national artists worked meditatively slow on these extremely time-consuming subjects, the viewer is in turn required to slow down to absorb and appreciate the amount of visual data presented.

How long it in fact takes to braid a carpet made of clothing tags, visitors may never know-but neither do the owners.

One of the Atkinson Gallery's sitters, Brendan Morris, commented on the rug hanging from the ceiling of the exhibit.

"The artist is unknown, they just found it in a flea market," he said.

Atkinson Gallery Director Dane Goodman guesses the artist was most likely a textile worker for that type of access to shirt labels, and made it during the 50s or 60s estimated through the style.

But for the pieces of local artist Linda Ekstrom, a style seems to be obvious to observers: a religious statement through desecrating bibles for art.

As shown in the gallery, she has cut one bible into a loose pile of one-sixteenth inch strips, and twisted another-pages, jacket and all-into a long wire tangled on top of a table.

Although a viewer may make assumptions about a controversial style behind the pieces, Ekstrom is in fact a devout Catholic, Goodman said. The artwork simply poses a new way for the bible's content to be viewed.

For a more colorful and large-scale experience, an entire installation of paper weavings and snowflake shapes have been push-pinned into the gallery wall. But it is not just paper-the artist uses paint sample strips, post-it notes, newspapers, and fruit stickers to weave everything together.

With the wall as the pinning canvas, it took two and a half days to place it all in the gallery, with the help of a ladder and three coats of paint, Goodman said.

"Density" exhibits artwork the eye cannot take in briefly. Goodman explained that this exhibit will not be a "spectator sport."

In fact, it's best to view these contemporary pieces without setting a time limit. The viewing for this exhibit is a type of mutual relationship; the art will deliver as much as the time willing to spend analyzing it.

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