Monday, September 6, 2010

Malanie Crader at O'Kane Gallery

O'Kane Gallery may be off the beaten path for lots of art lovers in Houston, but it always has interesting shows. The Eula Project by Melanie Crader is no exception. When you walk in, you'll see a variety of small geometric paintings that mostly look quite abstract. (I want to apologize right now for not getting the titles of these pieces.)

Melanie Crader
Melanie Crader, don't know the title, some kind of paint on board

They are maybe a foot wide by about 18 inches high--maybe a little bigger, but not much. Painted on board, they don't have much three-dimensional presence. Crader uses some kind of metallic paint or leaf on some of them.

Melanie Crader
Melanie Crader, don't know the title, some kind of paint on board

Some of the images are not really abstract. Occasionally you can see that Crader is depicting some real thing, like this envelope.

Melanie Crader

Melanie Crader, don't know the title, some kind of paint on board

But mostly the pieces seem to be patterned abstractions, usually with fairly restricted color-schemes (but not always). They look great. The size, the flatness, the colors all work. They feel familiar, too.

Melanie Crader

Melanie Crader, don't know the title, some kind of paint on board

And there is a reason for that. Crader's grandmother was not much of a packrat, apparently. She died fairly young, and passed on a small number of objects to her children. Crader discovered a small box of these objects ibn her mother's attic--all that was left of Eula. The objects are on display as well.

Melanie Crader

Now the paintings are not free-floating abstractions. They are depictions--abstracted to be sure--of her grandmother's last possessions. They collectively form a sort of portrait of Eula. A pretty strange way to depict a person, no? Maybe, but this has a long history in American art. Had Crader been a late 19th century American artist, she could have made her "portrait" of Eula in the fashion of William Hartnett or John Peto--her ancestors. They too used mundane, modest objects to tell personal stories.

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