Last Chance

Catch it or Regret It

by Nadia Stadnycki

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this week's Last Chance

Local artists celebrate dolls and other playthings in paintings, illustrations and mixed media (including Heather Jo Wingate's Natashia Paperdoll, pictured). Modeled after a paper doll, Nina Hinart's wood-and-clay doll comes with three different sizes of interchangeable cloth breasts so that she can be voluptuous or modest. Our favorite: Amanda Miller's illustration, in which she substitutes a deer for a human, and includes exquisite dresses for it to wear.

Kathryn Pannepacker's peace project of flag weavings combines flags of nations in conflict with objects that remind her of the severity of war. In Darfur (blood, money, oil), paper money and matches are woven into the titular country's flag, to symbolize the atrocities connected with genocide and struggles over oil. In addition to the flag series, Pannepacker wove multicolored Q-tips and jute in horizontal stripes to make her own LGBTQ flag.

Michael McDonnell's watercolor paintings of interiors and still lifes look like snippets from a mysterious dream. The wide room in Simple Interior? resembles a maze, with countless black-and-white-checkered floor tiles reflected in staggered white walls. His still lifes have a more antiquated quality, what with their pale, earthy colors and old-fashioned longnecked bottles, jugs and containers — though he sporadically places modern cleaning bottles among them to clash with the style.