USM Art Gallery, Gorham

February 2-March 11, 2006  (Closed February 19-26)
Opening reception: Thursday Feb. 9, 5-7 p.m.

Artist talk: Thursday, Feb. 9, 4:15 p.m.Bailey Hall,
Room 10, Gorham campus

Snow date for talk and reception: Tuesday, Feb. 14

Debbie Reichard: Manifesting More

    Throughout history, one motivation for making art has been to make the perceived visible. Stemming from this desire, Debbie Reichard’s exhibit The Brown Christmas  employs postmodern strategies. Debunking notions of the “unique artwork” made by an “expressive genius,” she appropriates commercial modes of production such as ceramic figurines.

    Confronted by a withering barrage of artificial trees, lights, and every conceivable box o’ cheer on the shelves now appearing immediately after Halloween, it is hard for most not to feel a bit crushed by the mighty hard sell of Corporate America. Reichard feels this makes Christmas “an easy target due to its excesses.” One of these excesses are trees we see tossed on the street after Christmas. At USM, Reichard, a Visiting Artist-in-Residence, has worked with her Collaborative Art class to recycle these “goods” into a site-specific installation–a modular tree limb construction relating to both the surrounding trees and four steel cubes in front of the gallery. 1

    Inside the gallery, Reichard explores less tangible excesses. It is as if, instead of vanishing after the holiday, the tremendous energy borne of material consumption continues to churn on its own. Christmas carols morph into fuzzy, disintegrated sounds and the holiday reds and greens turn into mud. 

    The Brown Christmas presents its own personifications. A fudge-colored nine-balled snowman grins broadly from its diminutive head. A snowman appears on two brown holiday napkins through simple embroidered lines. Displayed side-by-side, the left napkin depicts an upright snowman, but in the second napkin he has been gleefully knocked down as if in a video game. The other personification is featured in the most adventurous and richly textured piece – Santa Appears in Toast.  Here, art students assisted in cooking 380 pieces of toast, which Reichard then carefully selected, nailed in a grid, scraped, and finally coaxed into the image of a recognizable Santa.

    In the altering of small, beige, ceramic Christmas animals, Reichard’s avoidance of her own direct expressive gestures liberates imaginative possibilities for what agency might be responsible for their creation. Overachievers I, II and II were made from three slightly different camel molds, all given elongated necks. One camel’s neck is corkscrewing out of control, another camel’s neck circles around to contemplate its rear end, while the third little camel lays its long, weary head to rest.

    The centerpiece of the exhibit, entitled More, is a nativity lamb manifesting a cloud-like formation of over 150 wings. Is this an updated myth of Icarus? A future Dolly clone with an out-of-control DNA? Or perhaps the title is a private wry comment on the consuming activity of artistic production. This beautiful construction of delicate complexity suggests all this and…more. For me, this winged lamb is a gentle reminder that we remain largely ignorant of our own resources.  We have the capacity to be more genuine, more generous, realize our potential more–if we could only perceive the gifts hidden in our own nature. Clearly, this exhibit demonstrates that Debbie Reichard is one who is manifesting More.

–Carolyn Eyler

Director of Exhibitions and Programs

Thanks to Debbie Reichard, her Collaborative Art class, Michael Shaughnessy’s Design II class, and the art department and art gallery work study students who assisted in creating and installing pieces for this exhibit.  Special thanks to art student Jon Oliver, for his skilled and insightful help throughout the entire exhibit.

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1 The four cubes are part of a conceptual artwork, Time Landscape, installed by environmental artist Alan Sonfist. Constructed from four different metals with an estimated deterioration time of 300 years, each cube contains seeds of Maine’s different biomes, from grasslands to mountains.