There’s a Mike Kelley piece from the late 80s called “More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid”—a gaggle of crocheted animals assembled into a wall of homespun cute.  Whether his title is sarcastic or straight-faced, the message transmits—some objects, especially those made by hand, seem to carry a different weight.  My family is a scavenging family, partially for thrift and partially for the joy of exploring the weird histories of objects.  We find ourselves often in places like the Goodwill “bins” where clothing is sold by the pound and piles of plastic toys mingle–their limbs and synthetic hair and wheels creating a gaudy riot of discarded mass production.  When a handmade object is uncovered, it plays a divergent note.  It asks to be investigated and handled with a different level of curiosity—no matter how well- or poorly-crafted.  The particularity of the person on the other end is what is so attractive about these items—a sense that a piece of a unique life has been stamped and preserved there.

Allison Manch’s embroidered handkerchiefs are apologetically particular—autobiographical even—and are made of pieces of popular culture that are part of her personal history.  Like running across a penciled list written in a bygone era, a viewer may not know exactly what the references are.  She or he might not be familiar with the clips of song lyrics that have been carefully and lovingly knotted by Manch, or the names and faces of the record producers reproduced in black and red thread.  The universal part of this work is the sense of “love hours” given over to the subject, while the idiosyncratic phrases and symbols hold the sort of insider mystery that outsider artists* are known for.  You don’t have to know, for instance, that Manch’s family hails from Buffalo in order to appreciate an embroidered Bills helmet, but it does add to your delight.  And seeing the face of someone like Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott in this medium is a satisfying cultural flip flop akin to the mash-ups taken on by artists like Iona Rozeal Brown.

In a recent group of embroidered pieces, Manch dyed white handkerchiefs black and stitched in light-colored or metallic threads.  The images and phrases all have a sparkling resonance, even while some hint at bittersweet romance and others carry light-hearted pop song references.  These pieces are another step toward an aesthetic that finds itself somewhere between a great-grandmother’s handiwork and droll urban folksiness.

*Outsider Artists: a disparate band of sometimes compulsive makers who have not necessarily gone through the hoops of a systematic art education.

Filed under: art

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 18th, 2009 at 6:20 pm and is filed under main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.