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Art displayed in the best of taste
Rogue Gallery exhibit draws sweet inspiration from love of chocolate
By BILL VARBLE Forget sugarplums, where's the chocolate? For the holiday season, an art exhibit at The Rogue Gallery and Art Center in Medford offers quirky takes on everybody's favorite decadent substance, with chocolate-themed artworks ranging from the the sublime to the, uh, overindulgent.Director Judy Barnes and the folks at the gallery made area artists a challenge: Make a piece of art that glorifies, is shaped like, or is actually made from the neatest substance ever derived from the cacao bean. "The gallery did a chocolate exhibit about 16 years ago," she says. "Everybody kept asking when we were going to do it again." Wait no more. The chocolate art -- it's on display in the main gallery -- is as formal as Judy Morris's watercolor, "Dans Une Boite," a study of flowers in a candy box, and as informal as a chocolate castle created by kids from a gallery art class. In Joyce Feigner's watercolor "Original Sin," a sly temptress/serpent attempts to inveigle Eve not with an apple but a Hershey bar, and it looks like Eve's going for it. A pair of nearly life-size figures by artist Zelpha Hutton depict "Mona" and "Lisa," each of whom has the Mona Lisa face. Mona is dressed up like her namesake and holds a box of Valentine's Day chocolates. Lisa, a babe, sports a modern workout leotard, a head band and, of course, chocolate.Three other exhibits are running in addition to the choc-o-rama. "Small Treasures" is an exhibit of portable art pieces, none larger than one foot. An exhibit of Gwen Stone's miniature kites is designed to appeal to the kid in all of us. And the artist Lucia's collection of retablos, a form of Mexican folk art, portrays Roman Catholic themes in traditional little tin frames.But the operative word this month is chocolate. Here are chocolate paintings and chocolate photos. Here are chocolate calendars, chocolate nudes, chocolate ice cream cones. Here's a chocolate layer cake festooned with Venus de Milo statuettes and a little replica of Michelangelo's David on the top. There's even a "kissini" -- a bikini top made entirely of Hershey's chocolate kisses. Here is "Chocolate and Young Men," artist Margery Mercer's homage to Beatrice Wood. The small assemblage depicts a buff dude apparently captured by a net along with a chocolate-frosted cake, both within the purview of a bikini-clad young woman. Mercer explains that she met Wood when the latter was turning 90. Impressed by her liveliness, she asked the secret of a long, active life. "Chocolate and young men, of course," Wood replied with a twinkle in her eye. |
