Last Chance

Catch It or Regret It: Then and Now | Metaphoric Vinyl | Debutante Set

by Holly Otterbein

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Charmaine Caire's photographs of plastic toys (above) and landscapes look like cut-and-paste jobs. But Caire doesn't use Photoshop. Instead, she spends hours making sets filled with Civil War soldiers, vintage black-and-white photos and pipe cleaners, and then shoots the mini-scenery. Her works are often snarky and political. In Condi, a nude doll playfully touching her hair sits between two pink elephant heads.

Ten artists display original works made with the Roland Camm-1 Servo, an industrial machine that slices vinyl into signs. Some took the "metaphoric vinyl" theme not-so-metaphorically. In Christian Marklay Be Damned, James Rosenthal painted sarcastic phrases like "melt more music" on records. Taking a different approach, Chris Vecchio constructed electrically conducive vinyl out of a light bulb, wire and circuits.

The Other Woman, the ladies-only art collective behind "Debutante Set," is obsessed with shoes, cake, jewelry and furniture. The exhibit isn't as girly as it sounds: Darla Jackson's sculptures of female busts wearing painted-on corsets and air-constricting necklaces criticize gender roles. Aubrie Costello's ink drawings of couches, lamps and chairs capture the simple joy of shopping for household items.