INTIMATE CONVERSATIONS
“Intimate Conversations,” Society of Arts & Crafts, Boston, 1992

Gail Brown

The nine artists in this exhibit use clay, traditionally and otherwise, as a conduit, a channel to bestow their intimate concerns tactilely upon us, as well as to share their seemingly endless discoveries in the process. The issues raised are relationship based, complex and personal, sociological and historic. Familiar scale seems to enhance the ease of receiving these visual statements. The work and the messages are accessible and brim fully with the pleasure of communications: delight in recounting what will be natural, gratifying connections and pains shared when the ideas address universal human dilemmas. The pieces talk of self and other, the natural and people-made worlds and the continuum of art in history. The artists are women; the work addresses some issues of women, women and men and all manner of creative contemplation.

Melissa Stern creates a world of small, guileless figures whose posture and gestures connect primarily with our inner selves. They tenderly summon ever present memories of painful awkwardness and naive expectations. There is both an empathy for and a dark humor about their/our vulnerabilities. The deceptively simple forms, of ceramic and mixed media with layered surfaces lavish with primary color and rough texture, provoke us to the core. We can laugh and cry together over Stern’s concerns for all our “missing” parts; in a seemingly modest fashion, big issues, self doubts and emotional nakedness are aired through an all-inclusive black/gray humor. She addresses relationships, adulthood and parenting. The paired figures seem alternately defenseless and aggressive, grabbing at our guts, reminding the child in all of us of our own thin skins, exposed.