Panoramic View: Things Left Behind

Katie Baldwin, Aunt Harriet and
Treasure, 2010, Moku hanga and
letterpress, 11" X 7"

In my first post for entirely too long, I was tempted to depart from my usual habit of only writing about art that would be at home in a nineteenth century sun room and write an "In Depth" post about a piece of felt in Katie Baldwin's extraordinary exhibit, Things Left Behind. (Note to self: stop writing War and Peace-length sentences)

The felt in question is a representation of a long, relatively straight river. I had planned on writing about the whimsical cleverness of the piece and how wonderful it is to walk along it and feel like a bird flying from one end of the river to the other, arriving at a new locale. Fortunately for you, dear readers, I soon realized the folly of my plan. Such is the whimsical cleverness of the piece that it is quite impossible to discuss it without discussing the entire exhibition, including many, relatively traditional, figural works. Hence: this "Panoramic View" entry.

The river in question occupies the central space of the DCCA's Beckler Family Member's Gallery and is the only piece in the exhibit that is not hung on the walls. Unless you are in the habit of sneaking into galleries by slithering around the corners of doorways, it is also the first object you see as you enter the gallery. For a length of blue felt, it is a surprisingly complex piece that is responsible for uniting the rest of the works. The banks  of Baldwin's river gently curve inward and outward in a softly undulating line. If the river were straighter or more sinuous, one might be tempted to speed along the banks. Instead, Baldwin invites her viewers to take their time as they walk along the the miniature river; to enjoy the gentle curves and minute detail of the miniature banks.


As you walk along the river, you are aware, in a peripheral sense, of the pieces on the wall. The slow journey along the felt/water allows your brain to absorb these peripheral glimpses so that, when you reach the end of your journey and finally examine the woodcuts, you feel as though you have wandered into your own faded  memories.

Some of the woodcuts are of scenes that are familiar and harken to personal experience--like the image above--while others--two inuit children playing in the snow, for example--evoke memories that transcend personal experience and appeal instead to a broader cultural heritage. All of the woodcuts, however, deal in one way or another with distance, whether of time or of space. Baldwin's manipulation of time is not limited to her style and subject matter.  Lest her viewers wander too quickly from piece to piece and ruin the calm, meditative mood of her work, Baldwin includes text in many of her works. The font is almost always small and, through its size, compels viewers to come closer to the work, read, and fall into the memory Baldwin has created.

As viewers travel from one moment in time to the next, they also travel along the self-same river that lured them into the exhibit. Space and time are thus merged in Baldwin's exhibit, but not in a simple, linear fashion. This is, after all, an exhibit that rejects the necessity of forward impetus. There is no direct historical narrative along the walls. Instead, there are a series of moments. Once a viewer travels back to his or her "starting point," he or she discovers that it is impossible to determine which side of the river is meant to be the beginning and which side is meant to be the end.

Such is the nature of this exhibit. For Katie Baldwin, beginnings and ends (i.e. the modern preoccupation with getting the job done ASAP) are nowhere near as important as preserving precious moments in time.

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"Things Left Behind" is being exhibited in the Beckler Family Members' Gallery at the DCCA. The Exhibition will run until February 6, 2011.

"Panoramic View" is a series of posts dedicated to stepping back and looking at exhibits at the DCCA in their entirety.