Mixed-media artist, photographer and contributing Xpress writer Bridget Conn’s obsession with organizing and aligning disparate organic forms such as honey, apple cores and sheets of note paper, recalls the familiar urge to “clean house” and take control — something like a ’60s-era housewife, á la Betty Draper. From a certain perspective, one might feel a passive aggression in the many allusions to baking — the used tea bags, the black-and-white photographs and remnants of pretty things now dead and brown that silently whisper, “See all I’ve done for you, and what have you done for me?” Alternatively, Conn might just be paying homage to the nostalgic trappings of food and ritual. For Timeline, Conn has arranged a variety of photographs and dioramas produced over the past 10 years into a seamless installation that makes each piece appear as if it was created specifically for this show. The materials in Conn’s work hold meaning, but, formally speaking, it’s just satisfying to see hundreds of grains of rice and tiny hatch marks lined up in meticulous rows. On display until Oct. 30 at Pump Gallery in the Phil Mechanic Building. http://www.philmechanicstudios.com/pump.html.
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