“Handmade objects emerge into a visual playground"

April 19, 2007 by Geoff Gehman

Amze Emmons, a printmaker who teaches at Muhlenberg College, had this idea to organize an exhibit of handmade objects with fairly novel materials, objects that are ''sincere and subversive'' and bound to no particular category. He wanted to see ''what grew in the spaces between media''; he wanted to be a sort of curatorial scientist.

''Emergent Behavior,'' Emmons' show at Muhlenberg, comes pretty close to hitting his bull's-eye. It's a fairly fertile collection of boundary-stretching works by eight artists who happen to be women. Some of them are fine archers; some need some target practice.

Emmons places pieces all over the place, creating a visual playground. Rising from the floor are Diane Carr's artificial natural monuments: jagged, frosted ''ice crystals'' of foam and styrene; a paper/balsa/foam ''rainbow'' that resembles an arched mountain garden. Christine Buckton Tillman's alkyd-painted plywood logs are tumbled nearby like refugees from a lumber mill run by Andy Warhol.

On the floor near the door is Leslie Mutchler's geodesic storage sphere made of coroplast plastered with digital photographs of knobs and pull rings. A kind of Pandora's dome, it extends Mutchler's fascination with a consumer obsession with organization, particularly stacking.

Placed on pedestals are Tillman's bump-on-a-log ceramic logs with striped colors and Regan Wheat's rather amorphous black and gray knittings tucked inside and emerging from cocoons of clay and plaster. Titles like ''What Is Mine Is Yours'' identify them as domestic nests.

The best pedestal works are Tracey Snelling's models devoted to America's romance with last-chance love, or lust, at seedy desert sites. ''Switchboard Hotel'' has a blinking neon sign and doors open to reveal dirty red carpet and a musty air of foul play. One room plays a tiny video of a guy frozen by an air conditioner, seemingly bedeviled by the sound of a demented whippoorwill.

Wendy White's ''Helvetica Bold'' is its own pedestal. A rectangular wooden box/column supports a paint can holding a pole topped by a soccer ball. It could be a sculpture for an apocalyptic stadium or an ersatz totem pole for one crazy sporting-goods store.

Emmons places the largest, trickiest installations in opposing corners to duke it out like avant-garde prize fighters. In one corner, from Richmond, Va., is Cece Cole's ''All Tomorrow's Parties'' -- the title of a Velvet Underground song and William Gibson's post-holocaust cyberpunk novel. Imagine a laboratory-darkroom crammed with mutant experiments: test-tube grasses, a mobile of silver-painted branches, water replaced by reflective paper. Imagine the aftermath of a riot on a photo-shoot set.

In the other corner, from Iowa City, is Tova Carlin's ''Born Again/Ready to Die,'' an allusion to presence, absence and evanescence. A neon-colored knitted garment -- scarfed, gartered, corseted -- hangs on the wall over a floor piece with a puddled orange garment linked to bent parallel lines of pink tape. It's a curious combination of crime scene and crucifixion.