Flagpole Magazine
October 8, 2003
Debbie Michaud
Recess: The Playground Revisited
While the tragic end to my story results from an unavoidable adolescent growth spurt, there also comes a time in our culture when sanctioned playtime ends. Recess stops abruptly in elementary school, forcing children to sacrifice their tire swings and slides for the protractors and study halls of middle school.
Recess, the current exhibit at the University of Georgia's Broad Street Gallery, pays homage to our playful past. Didi Dunphy and Carol John have put forth a collaborative effort to create an interactive community space. By physically engaging the audience, Dunphy and John operate outside the initial boundaries of art and culture. To touch art, to play on it and to move it around—these acts usually register as taboo. Here the artists indulge the viewers in that repressed need to put their hands on it and register experiences with all five senses.
John has three groups of works on display, each segment mirroring the size and shape of Dunphy's corresponding piece. All of the pieces posses essentially the same content—a repetition of squares with rounded corners—but vary in color and arrangement. While the pods remain shades of white, gray and black, they sit in squares of differing hues. The first and third groupings, like the first swing, entertain backgrounds with bright pinks, oranges, yellows and reds. The middle set relies on degrees of blue and corresponds to the second swing. Finally, a bulbous neon appliqué fence lines the windows, forming the first and last layers of this interactive installation.
It's understandable why Dunphy chose to add a fence—even if it is an illusion. While swinging on the turquoise swing Broad Street lies a mere 10 to 15 feet away. The fence provides a sense of enclosure without feeling confining. Its ephemeral qualities come from its colors, chartreuse and hot pink, and the two-dimensional form. The repetition in the "chain-link" fence mimics John's compositions and vice versa, extending the sense of a unified area.
John's paintings sit on the wall slightly above eye-level, providing an interesting perspective while swinging both back and forth and up and down in the foyer. Point of view and scale become even more important in the next room where John's small recurrent pod shapes contrast with Dunphy's one massive piece. Seesawing gives the impression of soaring. This allows John's work to become a bird's eye view of the earth, similar to the scene from a plane window. Plots of land morph from plains to city to coast, following modern civilization's subdivisions and highways.
Each element of the installation depends on the others. The experience changes according to the number of people present, the room and the level of participation. In an attempt to encourage a full experience, Dunphy and John organized two events surrounding the exhibit. According to Dunphy, their purpose resides in recreating the neighborhood: "I wanted to create a visual collage of the neighborhood with people dressed to signify their roles," she says.
The first gathering took place September 23 and included, among others, three nurses, three southern belles and two jugglers. The next party, scheduled for October 14, will host belly dancers, police officers and chefs in an effort to recruit those who may not normally attend art events.
This idea has theatrical appeal as well as a comic sensibility. The experiences and the exhibit work together to make art both fun and accessible. There is no reason to be intimidated by an interactive installation, although it may be a natural reaction. The rich colors and smooth textures form an inviting retreat with a crisp and dreamy atmosphere.
Recess is the playground most kids only imagined while climbing a rusty jungle gym. The exhibit's equipment still has that telltale playground squeak, but it resides appropriately amongst the high-gloss Naugahyde and fresh modern art. In approaching sculpture as playground equipment, Dunphy tried to "capture the newness of memory and nostalgia," she says.
Everyone certainly has a tendency to glorify youth, with its sense of playfulness and freedom. While these may not always be the most accurate depictions of childhood, they do posses a universality that Dunphy and John demonstrate nicely in their works.
I can remember outgrowing the trapeze on the swing set my father built. My glorious days as a backyard trapeze artist had ended. There would be no more reaching anxiously for the handles or heroic dangling above ground. Now I could walk right up to it, rest my arms through the handles and swing back and forth with my chin resting on the bar.
Two large Naugahyde swings by Dunphy, one pinky-orange and one turquoise, hang from thick, yellow-coated industrial chains in the gallery's foyer. Acrylic balls and plastic thread form the tassels adorning each corner of the swings. The seats have room for at least two and are set far enough apart to allow for ample leverage. The gallery's main room hosts an enormous purple seesaw upholstered in a glittery high-gloss Naugahyde. Shiny and twisted bike handlebars sit at each end, simultaneously emitting a sense of the raw and the refined.
WHAT: "Recess," by Didi Dunphy and Carol John
WHERE: UGA Broad St. Gallery
WHEN: Through Oct. 24
HOW MUCH: FREE!